Location and machine availability may be the biggest reasons why you chose your gym, but there’s more to be had with your membership. Get the most out of the hundreds of dollars you’re spending with this list of extras you may be overlooking at the gym. Workout props: Maybe you only use the machines, but don’t ignore the props lying all over the gym floor. Things like battle ropes (those thick white ropes anchored to sturdy beams) for sculpting strong arms to sturdy boxes for plyometrics exercises help change up a workout. Next time you’re leaving a class or people-watching on the treadmill, look out for anyone using unfamiliar props, and if one looks interesting, ask a trainer to show you how to use one. Weight room: If you only lift weights in class, spending time in the weight room can be hugely beneficial. Lifting at your own pace helps to master perfect form and figure out the right dumbbell weight for specific exercises. And if you never strength train, starting a weight-room routine can help jump-start your body’s metabolism while also helping tone muscle. If this still seems intimidating, check out our tips for learning to love the weight room . Find out three more things you may be overlooking at your gym after the break.

Whether you’re vegan or just want to make healthier baked goods, finding ways to omit the butter can greatly reduce the amount of calories, fat, and cholesterol in your sweet treats. There are countless ways to replace eggs in recipes , and here are healthier alternatives to using butter. Applesauce: This ingredient is often used to replace oil in recipes, but it can also be an alternative to butter, and works best in cake-like recipes (like this Vegan Banana Apple Chunk Bread ). Replace half the amount of butter in your recipe with applesauce; if the recipe calls for one cup of butter, use half a cup of butter and half a cup of applesauce. If you don’t mind a denser, more moist bread, replace all the butter with applesauce to cut even more calories and fat. Avocado: Substitute half the amount of butter in a baking recipe with mashed avocado (it works well with cookies); use the same method as you would when using applesauce. It not only lowers the calorie content but also yields a softer, chewier baked good, and is perfect if you want to omit the dairy. Keep reading for more healthy ways to replace butter in recipes.

You might think snack time is just for preschoolers, but everyone can benefit from eating a few bites between meals. Aside from filling nutritional holes in your diet, snacking can also help you on your road to weight loss. If the numbers on the scale are on your mind, here are three ways snacking can help you lose weight. Snacks Keep Blood Sugar Levels Steady If you’ve ever gone too long between meals and have gotten a headache, the shakes, and a loss of concentration, then you’ve felt firsthand what it’s like to have low blood sugar. Snacking between meals keeps blood sugar levels steady, which can help prevent you from grabbing the first (unhealthy) thing you can get your hands on and overindulging. Fiber Fills You Up Choosing snacks that are full of water and belly-filling fiber will help keep you full longer, so you actually eat less in the long run. Fruits, veggies, and whole-grain breads are great options, and if you need more ideas, here are 10 high-fiber snacks under 150 calories . No More Overeating You eat lunch around noon and dinner isn’t until 6 p.m. or later. No wonder you hit the dinner table feeling so ravenous that you stuff yourself silly. Now if you enjoyed a pear with some almonds around 3 p.m., you’d avoid that famished feeling and have the patience to prepare a healthy, sensibly sized meal. It works the other way, too. If you’re eating a meal and you know you’ll be enjoying a snack in two hours or so, you won’t feel the need to overeat at mealtime.

WASHINGTON (CBSMiami) – Women on birth control have gotten a long-awaited financial reprieve from the Obama administration Friday. The White House announced that most health insurance plans will be required to cover birth control without charging co-pays or deductibles starting August 1, 2012. The regulation follows the recommendation from federal health officials first proposed in the summer of 2011. “This decision was made after very careful consideration, including the important concerns some have raised about religious liberty,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement. “I believe this proposal strikes the appropriate balance between respecting religious freedom and increasing access to important preventive services.” Churches, synagogues, and other houses of worship will not have to follow the requirement. But, religious-affiliated hospitals and universities will get just a one-year delay and will have to comply by Aug. 1, 2013, according to thehill.com. Many health insurers already cover birth control, but several did not. At the same time, almost all insurances covered the cost of Viagra, which led to outrage amongst women’s groups across the United States.

Last year around this time, my friend Sue called worried about her college-age son Charlie because he seemed to be sleeping away his whole Christmas vacation. “At first, I thought, OK, he is just catching up because he was up many nights studying for finals. But now two weeks have gone by and he is still sleeping the day away.” There are a number of reasons that college kids or teens could be sleeping all day. As my friend suspected, we do indeed try to “catch up” on sleep. It seems to work to a certain extent, but we can’t make up for the full amount of sleep lost. Also, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what it is that we “lose” when we lose sleep. So Charlie could have been studying (and partying?) very hard before the holiday break and would indeed have the tendency to sleep in. However, it is doubtful that the catch-up period would last for weeks. Most teens and college kids require nine to nine and a half hours to feel their best. If they curtail their sleep for a few nights, they will usually have long sleep times for one to two nights. If they are chronically sleep deprived, then that period will be extended. Of course, we must keep in the mind that sleeping for extended periods could be a sign of illness. Diseases such as mononucleosis or depression can have an insidious onset marked by sleepiness and fatigue. The sleepy college kid or teen might have developed a primary sleep disorder such as obstructive sleep apnea , restless legs syndrome (now known as Willis-Ekbom disease) or periodic limb movement disorder. Most importantly in this age group, narcolepsy should be considered. Get some sleep: Is restless legs syndrome real? The telltale feature of narcolepsy is daytime sleepiness, and it usually occurs in teens and young adults. People can have actual sleep attacks where one minute they are awake and the next they are asleep. They could be driving or talking to someone and without much warning, they fall asleep. Many times, the sleepiness is not so dramatic; people can have profound sleepiness that impairs their quality of life, but still be able to fight off the sleep attacks. The other hallmark symptom is cataplexy which is often confused with sleep attacks. In cataplexy, the muscles become suddenly relaxed and people can fall to the ground and seem to faint. Muscle relaxation is a feature of REM sleep and what has happened is that that one aspect of REM sleep has suddenly intruded into the wake state. Cataplexy usually occurs after a person is startled or has a sudden burst of emotion, often a good one such as suddenly finding something very funny. Narcolepsy can, and often does, occur without cataplexy. Therefore, although the presence of cataplexy cinches the diagnosis, the absence does not rule out narcolepsy by any means. A suspicion of narcolepsy should be investigated with a sleep specialist. Kleine-Levin Syndrome is another disorder that should be considered if the young person has recurrent episodes of sleepiness and long sleep times. It is a rare and poorly understood disorder marked not only by hypersomnia (sleepiness) but also by megaphagia (overeating) and hypersexuality (usually masturbation). In the wake periods, there is almost always cognitive and mood disturbance. The episodes last anywhere from two days to four weeks and tend to recur at least once a year, although there is a tendency for them to abate over time. It is much more common in boys and young men than in women, although there is a well described hypersomnia syndrome that can occur during menstruation. The cause of Kleine-Levin Syndrome is unknown and none of the attempts at treatment has given consistent results. An important question to ask is what time the teen went to sleep. Teens and young adults have a natural shift in their circadian rhythm such that they are naturally sleepy only later in the night, for example, midnight-1 am. And the lifestyle of young people often encourages an even more delayed bedtime. Therefore, before you assume that your college kid has a sleep pathology that is making him sleep for 16 hours a day, find out when he finally finished gaming and when he stopped texting his girlfriend who is visiting her family in a time zone that is three hours behind. It turned out that Charlie was sleeping 10 hours a day, from 4 am to 2 pm, which, although on the long side, is still considered well within normal limits. Staying up late, as I said, is a biological tendency that is reinforced and exacerbated by social norms in that age group. The pervasiveness of continual electronics use only makes matters worse. Filed under: Mind and body , Sleep , Stress Tagged: By Lisa Shives — Special to CNN

Editor's note: CNN.com will be bringing you a series of interviews with amazing individuals who were at the TEDMED conference in October 2011. Read more here . Dr. Peter Diamandis wants you to be the CEO of your own health care. You should be able to make decisions based on technology that analyzes your body and gives you personalized feedback and treatment recommendations, he says. And Diamandis wants to speed the development of that technology along by offering prizes for the people who can make it happen. Diamandis is the founder and CEO of the X Prize Foundation , which offers $10 million prizes for various technological feats. In October, he announced the $10 million Archon Genomics X PRIZE presented by Medco, which is a challenge to sequence 100 genomes of centenarians quickly, cheaply and accurately. Such sequencing is getting more accurate and inexpensive all the time. And data collected from sequencing specific groups of people – those who have had specific diseases, for instance – will help scientists gain a better understanding of those conditions and how to treat them. “We’re about to enter a data explosion,” Diamandis said. “We finally have enough low cost, fast, ubiquitous computing to help us crunch these numbers.” As if that’s not futuristic enough, he also wants to take a hint from “Star Trek” in reimagining health care. Characters from that sci-fi hit used a tricordor, a device that can analyze and record data. One variant of a tricorder is specialized for medical purposes to diagnose diseases and get other patient information. Diamandis wants to have a $10 million prize to make a tricorder in real life. The prize would anyone who develops a mobile device that can match or beat a panel of board certified physicians in diagnosis. He envisions a hand-held device that has artificial intelligence, so you could talk to it. And you could cough on it to see if you have a cold, or prick your finger to test your blood. It’s called, appropriately, the Tricorder X Prize, partly funded by Qualcomm, and is still in development. Diamandis just finished a book with science writer Steven Kotler called “Abundance,” which is coming out in February. By his account the world is getting better at an accelerating pace. A “rising billion” people will be gaining access to the internet this decade, becoming interconnected through low-cost handsets and tablets. They will gain access to health care information and education that will help them become true innovators. Their passions and time investment will lead them to solve big problems. “As these problems get solved in the developing world at a very low-cost rate, it’ll come back here to the United States and give us amazing benefits,” he said. Diamandis and Kotler’s book introduces innovators such as Steve Hawking, Larry Page, Dean Kamen and others who are making strides in some of the biggest problems of our time. The X Prize Foundation is probably best known for the Ansari X Prize in space flight . The challenge was to fly two people 100 kilometers (62 miles) up – one notion of “where outer space begins” – twice in two weeks. In October 2004, SpaceShipOne was named the winner of the $10 million prize. The prize gave innovators a clear goal, and gave legitimacy to the undertaking of private space flight. In the five years after SpaceShipOne won this prize, $1 billion was invested in the personal spaceflight industry,  Diamandis has said. Diamandis, who wanted to be an astronaut as a child, has not personally been to space. But he holds two tickets – one with Space Adventures and one with Virgin Atlantic. He plans to be on one of these early commercial flights to space and fulfill his passion. “But it’s not just about going on a trip,” he says. “It’s the fact that we are on the verge of the greatest exploration humanity’s ever undertaken.” Filed under: Cancer , TEDMED Tagged: Elizabeth Landau – CNN.com Health Writer/Producer

I love the crisp, colder weather of Autumn, but I hate that it also signals the start of cold and flu season. There are plenty of things you can do throughout your day to prevent catching a cold , but here are five things you should keep in mind specifically on weekends. Don’t Overdo It on the Booze I don’t blame you for wanting to de-stress from your crazy work week by letting loose with a drink but be mindful of how much you’re kicking back. Heavy alcohol consumption doesn’t do your immune system any good , and also dehydrates you body. It’s OK to relax with a glass of wine or a cocktail, but one should be your limit . Sip water with your alcoholic bevvy to stay hydrated (since that also prevents colds), and don’t let alcohol tempt you to smoke socially (smokers are more prone to getting sick). Take Time to Chill Weekends tend to be for catching up on errands you didn’t get to all week, but all that running around is sure to run down your immune system. Take time each day to relax whether it’s by sleeping in, getting to bed a little early, lounging on the couch with a good book, or taking a stroll with a friend. Keep reading for three more ways to prevent catching a cold on the weekend.

FitSugar reader HealthyDiva is celebrating the change in seasons with this pumpkin protein frosting, which she posted in our Healthy Recipe group . Read on for the recipe!

Cheese is such a treat, and in vegan and dairy-free cooking it’s often lackluster – think grainy, slimy, and just generally fake tasting. Luckily, it’s not all bad. Whether it’s sliced in a sandwich, melted on top of a pizza, or smeared across a bagel, here are five types of dairy-free, vegan cheese that will have you wanting more. View Slideshow ›

Vegetables can be just what your breakfast needs. Just ask FitSugar reader Sprint2theTable , who shared this recipe for zucchini oatmeal in our Healthy Recipe group . I like zucchini bread for breakfast. Zucchinis are in season and especially delicious from the local farmer’s market. These factors lead me down a path to an obvious breakfast conclusion . . . zucchini oatmeal. Read on for the full recipe!