How Much Protein Should I Eat To Lose Weight

Eating foods with protein may improve both short and long-term weight loss success. According to new research, dieters who eat more protein are able to increase lean muscle mass, improve metabolism and decrease body fat. But that leaves many dieters asking, how much protein do I need to lose weight?

How Much Protein is Best for Dieters?

Before you stock up on protein supplements and high protein snack bars, make sure you know your recommended daily allowance for protein. Eating too much of any nutrient isn't a good thing and you want to make sure you use protein properly for weight loss.

Some researchers believe that when dieters consume more foods with protein, they see greater weight loss results. How much protein is best? Three recent studies have found that dieters who consumed 25-30% of their calories from lean protein lost more body fat and substantially increased the number of calories that their bodies burned at rest.

In one study of overweight and obese women, researchers evaluated dieters who consumed a high protein (30%), high dairy diet to a lower protein (15%), lower dairy diet. The high protein group lost more body fat and gained more lean muscle mass than the women who consumed the low protein diet. The low protein group lost weight, but they also lost more lean muscle mass.

Study authors suggest that this loss of lean muscle may contribute to the long-term weight gain and frustrating weight loss plateaus that plague so  many dieters.   Lean muscle mass burns more calories than fat, even when the body is at rest.

When the low protein group lost lean muscle mass, they may have lost the ability to burn more calories throughout the day. On the other hand, the improved body composition of the high protein group may help them burn more calories in the short and long term.

So does that mean more protein is better? Not necessarily. If you eat too many calories, no matter what kind of calories they are, you will gain weight. Even though some studies suggest that weight gain from lean protein is better than weight gain from fat and carbohydrates, if weight loss is your goal, eating the right number of calories is still the key to success.

Should I Take a Protein Supplement?

The short answer is probably not. Most people consume too much protein already, so adding more in the form of a supplement is not necessary. There are still some people, though, who don't get enough. Should they invest in powders or pills? The answer is still probably not.

Foods with protein are also high in other vitamins and minerals that are essential to your diet. Lean meats, dairy and seafood contain iron, calcium, niacin and thiamin. Protein-rich lentils are a good source of fiber.

Many supplements are expensive and some may contain sugars and other ingredients that you don't need. Why waste the money and consume the extra calories? Try to include at least one lean meat or dairy product in each meal throughout the day and chances are good that you will reach the recommended intake of protein to keep your body lean and healthy.

Use Lean Protein Recipes to Lose Weight

Try to eat some protein at every meal. Stock up on lean dairy products, chicken, fish, lean ground turkey, lentils and green leafy vegetables. Use healthy cooking techniques that cut fat and calories. Before you know it, you'll be creating delicious meals that are low in fat but high in the nutrients that you really need.That said, I do use protein powder on days when I do a heavy workout. A long run or a workout with weighs that strain the muscles. You want to strain the muscle when you workout. That helps them to grow, but after the workout you want to eat some protein to help those muscles recover. 

Good Reasons For Losing Weight

When and How

From aboutHealth.com 
Obesity has been linked to type 2 diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure just to name a few, but now researchers tell us that excess body fat can also cause Alzheimer disease. Boy, that's scary.

Researchers have specifically found that obesity in middle age predicts an earlier onset of Alzheimer disease—and a higher burden of disease (meaning that the disease will be more severe when it hits).

In an analysis of the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, researchers looked at the relationship between midlife body mass index (BMI) and the time of onset of Alzheimer disease as well as the severity of the disease.s

The study authors found that higher BMI in middle age (50 years of age) was associated with an earlier onset of Alzheimer disease as well as higher measures of disease severity.

The researchers found that there was more amyloid deposition (a defining factor of Alzheimer disease) in the brain of patients with a higher midlife BMI, as compared with those who had a healthy BMI at age 50.

This indicates a more severe form of the disease.

The researchers concluded that a healthy BMI at midlife may thus delay the onset of Alzheimer disease.

Obesity and Dementia

Earlier studies have consistently shown that obesity is associated with dementia. In another study similar to the one above, but conducted in eastern Finland, researchers followed patients for a total of 26 years, measuring their BMI at an average age of 50 as well as later, at an average age of 71. The researchers observed which patients developed dementia later in life, and found that, again, higher midlife BMI was associated with a higher risk of dementia and Alzheimer disease.

An analysis of the Swedish Twin Registry by researchers concluded that “both overweight and obesity at midlife independently increase the risk of dementia [and Alzheimer disease].” 

Stave Off Weight Gain in Middle Age

The evidence seems clear at this point: overweight and obesity at midlife puts one at a higher risk of developing dementia as well as an earlier onset of Alzheimer disease.

Unfortunately, midlife is also a time at which many individuals tend to gain weight, as metabolism slows down a bit and many become more sedentary.

Knowing this, however, should lead to greater vigilance in middle age to keep up an active lifestyle and eat healthfully.

Note: for more information on Alzheimer disease itself, check out About.com’s dedicated site at alzheimers.about.com.

Losing body fat should be your goal. Read up on weight loss and losing body fat. It doesn’t cost money to lose weight. The internet is full of free information.

But the quickest way and cheapest way is to buy an ebook online and get everything you need in one short read. I have two ebooks on Amazon:

How Bad Do You Want To Lose Weight

Getting To A Healthy Weight

Check out one of them, I think you can find all the info you need and plenty of tips on how I lost my body fat. 

Look for my e-books at the websites listed below. You'll get information on Healthy eating, exercise, and diet. Instead of spending hours on the internet reading dozens of posts, you can save time by picking up one of my e-books. 

Go to any of the websites below and search the title to find these e-books. These books give you all you need to lose weight without spending money on gym memberships, diet plans or meal plans. Look for my books at Amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com,

 iBooks, Kobo.com, Scribd.com, or Gardner Books in the U.K.

My new e-book is available on Smashwords.com, just type “getting to a Healthy Weight” in the search box at the top of the home page. 

A Closer Look at Processed Foods

A great post from WebMD explains the dangers of processed foods.

By Brenda Goodman
WebMD Health News

Melanie Warner is the author of Pandora’s Lunchbox: How Processed Foods Took Over the American Diet. A former reporter for The New York Times, she spent a year and a half investigating the modern system of food manufacturing in the U.S. to conclude that “much of what we now eat is not so much as cooked as it is engineered into finely-tuned, nutrient-deficient creations of science.”

Warner says she began to wonder what manufacturers were adding to foods after she started what she calls her “food museum”—a collection of products like cookies, crackers, and even guacamole from a grocery store deli that she discovered could sit on the shelf of her pantry or refrigerator for months or years past their expiration dates without spoiling.

Since her book came out in 2013, the FDA has told food manufacturers that trans fats are no longer safe to use in processed foods, and many major companies, including Kraft, General Mills, and Nestle have pledged to get artificial colors and flavors out of their products—a practice called “clean labeling.”

WebMD asked her what she thought of these developments, and whether companies have really committed to making healthier products.

Q: I’m sure you’ve noticed this recent spate of public announcements from Kraft and General Mills and Nestle that they’re going to get artificial ingredients out of their foods. Do you think companies are feeling more consumer pressure to talk more about how they make their food?

A: Companies, I think, are only going as far as people push them, and by people I mean consumers—the people that are eating their products. They’re doing it because they’re being pushed in that direction by consumers.

They get all this input coming from social media and focus groups and all this market data gathering that they usually do. What they’re hearing is that people are concerned about this, and they’re worried about sales. They feel like if they don’t do this there’s going to be an impact on sales, and they’re probably right.

But they aren’t doing it to be better companies. They’re not trying to truly open up the doors. They’re not truly trying to reform their foods to make them healthier. They’re simply reacting to what consumers are telling them. I know that sounds cynical. That’s just my observation of how food companies think and how they operate. Or any consumer-facing company, really.

Q: After telling us so many revealing details about how processed foods are made, you say in your book that food companies aren’t going to fix this. Since they’re making the food to begin with, why shouldn’t they be the ones to reform it?

A: I’ve had this debate and argument with some people in the food movement who think that we need to be putting pressure on companies. We need to look at regulation and force companies to do things. That’s great if it happens, but companies are so good at getting around regulations. They find every loophole they can. And it’s also really hard to get any regulation passed.

So I think it’s really about pushing forward with a new consciousness about food and educating people and opening people’s eyes up. I’ve been really amazed and heartened by how much has happened on that front within the last 10 years. There have been books written, articles, documentaries. People are looking at all this much more with a much greater awareness about what’s healthy for us to eat and caring about our health. Not everyone — there’s still a huge ways to go.

I think that’s where the momentum needs to continue. We need to keep focusing on opening up people’s eyes to what happens inside the food industry. And if they decide ‘Oh, it’s fine. No big deal,’ then let people decide for themselves. But most people when they see what happens inside the food industry, whether it’s on the farms or in factories decide, ‘Oh, that’s kind of gross. I think I’m going to find other options.’

Q: Where is the FDA in all this?

A: I think people have gotten so used to the FDA not doing anything that it’s hard to summon anyone’s outrage about it. They say, ‘Well, the agency doesn’t have a big enough budget to really police our food supply.’ But they’ll never get enough money if people don’t get angry about it and insist on greater regulation.

It is a Herculean job to try either initiate or try to stay on top of the scientific research on so many different food additives. Let me just say that. It is a really big deal. But there’s just clear examples of how the FDA is just not being rigorous at all in ways that it definitely could.

Trans fat is just the most recent and glaring example. We’ve known for at least 10 years, probably more, that trans fats are one of the most harmful things in the food supply and it’s just now that FDA has taken away the GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status of partially hydrogenated oils. So, just the fact that they sat on it for that long and didn’t want to press the food industry, and from what I can tell, the reason they didn’t take action was that the food industry said ‘No, wait, it’s not that bad. We’ll just reduce the amount, and we’ll still have half a gram, you need to give us time.’ So they kind of go in line with the schedule that the food industry requests.

There are other examples like BHT, which is the preservative that’s used so that oils don’t go rancid in foods, and you find it in a number of processed foods as well as in packaging. That’s a probable carcinogen, according to the Health and Human Services department, so clearly that could be something that’s banned and not allowed in food. So those are just small examples of where the FDA could take simple action without going through tons of scientific studies. The data is already there.

Six months ago, there was a study that popped up on a couple of emulsifiers that are pretty widely used. Polysorbate 80 was one of them. It’s a whole area where there has been hardly any research done because it’s relatively new, our knowledge of the gut microbiome. We have no idea what all these additives are doing to our gut bacteria. That’s just another example of how there is a need for more research.

I’m not going to be the one screaming, ‘Don’t eat any food additives, they’re all horrible.’ I think in a limited amount, your body can handle (them) and has a system for detoxifying. Because everyone eats some processed food. We’re all exposed to food additives. It’s just a question of quantity. If people are consuming a diet heavy in processed food, then they’re getting an abundance of all these different kinds of food addititves. And I think the FDA needs to be a lot more aware of that, the accumulation of many, many food additives coming into our bodies day after day for people who are eating these diets heavy in processed food.

Q: What do you think is the next trans fat?

A: Certainly the most dangerous things in our food now are sugar and refined grains. They’re in abundance in processed food and their effect on the body in excess is well documented.

Refined grains get turned into glucose in the body very quickly. If you’re eating a whole grain product, like oatmeal, there’s some fiber that helps to slow down the absorption in the body, but if you take out that fiber, there’s nothing to prevent it from being readily converted into glucose and functioning very similar to the way sugar does in terms of rapidly going into the bloodstream and causing these rapid spikes in blood sugar, and your pancreas produces a lot of insulin to compensate, and you have that whole cycle that can lead to metabolic syndrome and diabetes if left unchecked.

Q: Do you think when you take artificial colors and flavors out of a processed food, that makes it a better product? Is clean labeling really going to make our food healthier?

A: That’s a tough one, I think. Some days I think, ‘OK, that’s kinda good. It’s making something less bad.’ It’s good to have those options as a better alternative when you do want the chips, cookies, frozen stuff and cereals. But on the other hand, the concern is that it gives those foods a health halo and confuses people. And then people think, ‘Well I can eat more … or (it’s) a healthy product.’ … I think people have to be sophisticated about it and think ‘Well, there are none of these seemingly horrible additives, but what are the other ingredients in them?’ If there’s a lot of sugar and refined grains, then I think you have to look at those ingredients and make an assessment.

(Some companies) are taking out artificial colors and flavors without really addressing the other stuff. Like BHT and methylcellulose and all these other ingredients and preservatives.

Q: How natural are “natural flavors”?

A: All the natural flavors are still highly processed. Special strawberry flavor doesn’t come from a strawberry. They’re coming from a natural source. It could start with corn, or soybeans, or yeast. It starts with a natural source, but the way you get to it is highly processed, similar to the way you would for an artificial flavoring. The process is very similar. It’s just what you start with that’s different, that makes it natural. People can decide whether that’s better. I don’t necessarily think it’s better.

Q: We looked into problems of adulteration with processed foods like parmesan cheese.  When I asked a cheese expert if he wanted the FDA to do something about it, he said no. He said the agency has to stay focused on preventing foodborne illness caused by contamination with E. coli and Listeria and things like that.  He said these additives aren’t really a health issue. What do you say to that?

A: If you have to choose one or the other, you’re going to go with prevent E. coli and Listeria, obviously. But why do we have to choose?

It’s ironic that the FDA was inspired by Harvey Wiley, MD, who wanted an agency to oversee food, specifically because there was so much adulterated food and no one was overseeing this. That was the original inspiration for the FDA in the first place. So you didn’t have sawdust in your coffee and things like that. Now it’s cellulose in the parmesan cheese. Maybe that’s why all those shakers of parmesan cheese, when you buy them, have no taste. There’s no flavor. You have to put so much on to get a little bit of taste.

Forget Three Square Meals -- Americans Eat All Day Long

This is so true and I'm an advocator of the "5 small meal a day plan", but it's easy to overdo the calories. When I started the small meal plan I had to put everything on paper  first and count the calories and you have to stick to the plan you make. Always eat at the proper time and never skip a meal and stay between 250 and 300 calories every meal then do your exercise and you won't get hungry and you will lose weight.

1. 
   

By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter

(HealthDay News) -- Many Americans have tossed the conventional three-meals-a-day routine out the window, and replaced it with frequent chow downs spread throughout the day, new research shows.

The study found that most folks were eating for 15 or more hours while awake, and the lion's share of calories were eaten well after 6 p.m.

"Most participants thought they don't eat or drink that regularly outside their breakfast-lunch-dinner routine," said study co-author Satchidananda Panda, an associate professor in the Regulatory Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif. Most people also assumed that they had been confining their eating routine to a 10- to 12-hour window, he added.

But after tracking actual eating patterns, Panda found that the "recorded fact was different."

The study's results are in the Sept. 24 issue of Cell Metabolism.

The findings stem from a new effort to track real-world eating behavior by means of a newly designed mobile app.

For three weeks, 150 healthy men and women continuously snapped photos of all the food, drinks and nutritional supplements they consumed. In turn, the app tracked all caloric intake, along with the exact time and place food was consumed, the researchers said.

All the participants were between the ages of 21 and 55, and resided in the vicinity of San Diego, the study reported. No one was asked to modify his or her normal eating habits in any way. Also, no study volunteers were dieting.

After 21 days, investigators determined that food intake was generally both erratic and continuous.

In essence, the study authors found that whenever they were awake, people ate. More than half of the participants spread their food intake over a roughly 15-hour period each day. Fasting tended to occur only during sleep, the study found.

What's more, less than a quarter of daily caloric intake happened before noon. By contrast, more than a third of food was consumed after 6 p.m., the study said.

A follow-up experiment tracked eight participants who were classified as obese and who had a habit of consuming food for periods stretching beyond 14 hours each day.

The five male and three female participants were instructed to restrict all food intake to a 10-hour block of time per day for 16 weeks. The app was used to track their eating behavior, and this enabled all participants to log onto a website to follow their actual dietary habits in real time.

The result: Although no one had been instructed to change the kind or amount of food they normally consumed, the obese participants had cut back their daily calories by about 20 percent by the end of the four-month study period. They ended up losing an average of about 7 pounds. They also reported experiencing improved sleep and increased energy levels, the study revealed.

Panda said that at this point, the app is designed to serve as a research tool, rather than as a dietary consumer aid.

Lona Sandon, an assistant professor of clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, said the study findings are "not much of a surprise."

"Basically this new study helps confirm what we already suspect," she said. "Eating sporadically and at all hours is just not good for our health.

"I see this a lot in those that I work with in my weight-loss classes," Sandon added. "There is a lack of planning and stability in their eating schedules, so eating just happens whenever. Many skip breakfast, have a light lunch, then find themselves hungry and tired in the afternoon and seeking a pick-me-up from the vending machine, only to get home from work ravenous and wanting to eat anything and everything with no energy to exercise. They then spend the night snacking before bed. This is a common phenomenon.

"[So] planning ahead for regularly scheduled meals is an important strategy for weight loss or just simply eating healthier," she advised.

Is Fasting Really a Safe Way to Lose Weight?

Fasting may help some people but I'm not a fan. People with medical conditions shouldn't be fasting. That said, It's my opinion, some overweight people don't realize they have a medical condition. They don't want to see the Doctor because they don't want to hear the lecture about how they need to lose weight. So they just avoid any medical advice. This is one reason so many people fail at their attempt to lose weight. I Think if you have more then 20 pounds to lose you should talk to your Doctor first. If you take any kind of medication you want to ask your Doctor about a diet. Everyone's ability to lose weight differs. No one loses weight the same way others do. So read this post from MyFitnessPal.com and see if Fasting might be right for you.

Think of a time when you wanted to lose weight. Naturally, you knew to eat less, but how much less depends on your metabolism, which determines the total calories you need throughout the day. Eating fewer calories than you expend typically leads to weight loss, but how you want to budget these calories gets very personal.

While most of us prefer a consistent calorie goal, some find it helpful to slash calories through intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting is skipping meal(s) for a certain number of days with the purpose of creating a calorie deficit for weight loss. On the days you don’t fast you have the freedom of a higher calorie goal to eat with.

Let’s be clear: Intermittent fasting is not:

1) Going more than 24 hours without eating.
2) Regularly eating a very low calorie diet (think: less than 1,000 calories for women and 1,200 calories for men).

Both these scenarios can lead to nutritional deficiencies and other health complications and are not something you should pursue without the help of a health professional. Now that we have that straight, let’s jump in:

Defining Fasting for Weight Loss
Intermittent fasting allows you to shift the calorie-cutting phase of your weight loss to a couple of days per week as opposed to every day. It works because you don’t need to cut calories daily to lose weight. You can go under your goal one day and over the next but still lose weight if you eat fewer calories than you burn.

It’s important to note not all fasting diets are the same, and that something as simple as skipping a meal can count as fasting. Here are a few different ways people practice fasting that don’t include religious fasting:

• Complete alternate-day fasting: Fast every other day. A fasting day means no calorie-containing food or beverage for up to 24 hours. An eating day allows you to eat as much as you want.
• Modified fasting: Fast just a couple of days per week. For example, the popular 5:2 diet schedules 5 days of eating freely with 2 days where calorie intake is 20–25% of needs.
• Time- restricted eating: Eat freely as you feel hungry throughout the day, but only within a specific window of time. For example, setting up a window of 12 hours and only eating within that time frame. Skipping breakfast and not eating after dinner counts as time-restricted eating.

Are Fasting Diets Better than Non-fasting Diets?

by Krista Varady, PhD, at the University of Illinois at Chicago examined 11 daily-calorie-restriction and five intermittent-fasting studies. As an FYI, “daily calorie restriction” is how we’re traditionally taught to cut calories: cutting a consistent but small amount of calories every day. Varady found that both methods of cutting calories were equally effective at helping healthy subjects lose weight and fat, but intermittent fasting appeared to offer an added benefit. Those who practiced intermittent fasting preserved more lean mass (90% weight lost as fat, 10% weight lost as muscle) than those who followed the more traditional method of daily calorie restriction (75% weight lost as fat, 25% weight lost as muscle). Because lean mass burns more calories than fat mass, it is beneficial to help you lose fat while preserving as much muscle as possible.

While these numbers may look impressive, there are a few drawbacks to this review:

• Not enough studies exist. The review included just 16 studies—there just weren’t many studies addressing intermittent fasting. Because of this, there were disproportionately more studies for daily calorie restriction—11 daily calorie-restriction studies versus five intermittent-fasting studies.
• Small sample sizes. Study sample sizes were small, ranging from 8–173 subjects, with most studies hovering at 20 subjects.
• Difference in measurement techniques. Most daily-calorie-restriction studies use dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure fat mass while most intermittent-fasting studies use bioelectrical impedance. Because DXA and MRI are more accurate at assessing fat mass compared to bioelectrical impedance, it makes it difficult to conclusively say that daily calorie restriction preserves lean mass better than intermittent fasting.

The science isn’t perfect, but it confirms what we already know: weight loss happens when the calories eaten are less than calories burned. If you’re overweight or obese, both nonfasting and fasting weight loss can lead to similar health benefits that’ll make your doc proud! Just a 5–10% weight loss can help bring down pesky numbers on your blood test (think: cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar).

Is Fasting a Safe Choice for Me?
The answer really depends on how you approach it and how your own body responds. As mentioned before, going long periods of time without eating, or eating a very low calorie diet for extended periods of time, is not safe. Generally speaking, though, the human body is designed to deal with periods of fasting. If you’re a healthy adult with weight to lose, there’s little evidence to say that intermittent fasting isn’t safe.

However, fasting isn’t for everyone and you shouldn’t try it if you are pregnant, diabetic or healing from a traumatic event like surgery. Still iffy about whether fasting is a good choice for you? We suggest seeking guidance from a health professional before experimenting.

5 Tips for Fasting
If you want to experiment with fasting to switch up your weight-loss journey, here are a couple of tips:

1. Log your calories. If you’re doing a modified fast, you may want to track calories on a fasting day to help you meet your target calorie goal. For all other fasts, it’s helpful to track calories on the days you eat freely. Doing so can help offset the likelihood you’ll overeat and thus cut into your overall calorie deficit.
2. Take it as an opportunity to better understand hunger. Not surprisingly, fasting diets can bring unpleasant side effects, one of which is hunger. We’re all born with hunger cues to signal that our stomach is empty and we should eat. For most of us, this ability becomes blunted as we age especially in a plentiful society where food is not in short supply. We may even mistake thirst or cravings for hunger. Fasting can reacquaint you with what physiologic hunger feels like.
3. Drink plenty of water. Depending on how long your fast is, your body may switch to fueling itself more from fat and protein instead of carbohydrates. To do so will require more water to keep your metabolic machinery running smoothly. Also, if you’re already feeling minor unpleasant side effects from hunger, you don’t want to add a dehydration headache to the list!
4. Choose nutrient-dense foods. On eating days, choose nutrient-dense foods that pack plenty of important vitamins and minerals along with calories. Nutrient-dense foods include fruits, vegetables, whole grains, dairy, lean meats, seafood, nuts—you get the idea! These are foods you should choose even if you’re not fasting. Check with your doctor if you’re concerned about vitamin and mineral deficiencies or want to undergo an extended fast longer than 12 weeks.
5. Know you can always change your mind. Tried fasting and found it’s not for you? Fasting isn’t for everyone, especially those who get hangry really easily. Just know that you can cut calories the old-fashioned way and still lose weight.

Reverse middle age weight gain

Middle age, those years between 30 and 50, are the years we all seem to add body fat. So what's going on, why does this seem to happen to everyone? The answer is that we slow-down and as the slow-down occurs we burn less calories but it seems we never stop eating, we don't even slow-down your food intake, actually as you gain weight you seem to consume more calories a day and that puts on even more weight. It's so gradual though you don't realize what's happening. 

The weight gain on average is only about 1 to 3 pounds a year. They even have a name for it now because it's so common. It's called "creeping obesity", that 1 to 3 pounds you seem to gain every year and don't even notice. In most cases people don't wake-up to the weight gain until they have to buy new clothes. It might not sound like a lot of weight but over a 20 year period it can amount to 60 pounds. The following post from WebMD.com addresses this problem and give you some solutions.

You have a couple of things working against you. You're probably not burning calories as efficiently as you did when you were younger. That's because your metabolic rate (the number of calories you burn in a day) dips about 1% per year beginning around age 30, says Carolyn Brown, RD, nutritionist at Food trainers in New York.

You can outsmart that. Shift a few habits so you can rev your body back up.

Start with these five strategies.

1. Eat More Protein

Protein is the building block of muscle, and since muscle mass diminishes as you age, you need even more protein.

“Starting at middle age, you need 10% more protein than you did during your younger years,” says Christine Gerbstadt, MD, RD, author of Doctor’s Detox Diet: The Ultimate Weight Loss Prescription.

A bonus: Foods that are high in protein pack a greater metabolic boost than fat or carbohydrates. Biting, chewing, swallowing, and digesting protein-rich foods can burn up to 30% of the calories on your plate, compared to 5% for fat and carbs.

2. Tame Your Stress

The stress hormone cortisol is tied to an accumulation of fat around your midriff. And midlife can be a stressful time, says Florence Comite, MD, an endocrinologist in New York.

Chronic stress can also affect how well your body responds to insulin, which controls your blood sugar, Comite says.

Eliminating as much stress as possible from your daily routine will help cut the amount of cortisol your body makes. 

Do this: Meditate. Just 10 minutes of mindful meditation can make a difference, Comite says.

3. Don’t Skimp on Sleep

When you're short on sleep, your appetite kicks into higher gear. In one study of some 68,000 women, those who slept for 5 or fewer hours each night gained 2.5 pounds more than those sleeping 7 hours a night.

Do this: Set a soothing bedtime routine that includes turning off all screens at least one hour before bed.

4. Get Stronger

The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn, even when you’re at rest. But you start losing muscle mass around age 40, Gerbstadt says.

Resistance training helps. Keeping your muscles strong makes it easier to maintain your weight.

Do this: Use weights that are heavy enough to exhaust your muscles with 12 repetitions, yet light enough to complete at least eight repetitions. Do lunges, squats, dead lifts, and pushups (12-15 repetitions per set). Or, if you're not into weightlifting, do yoga or other exercises that use your own body weight for resistance.

5. Clean Up Your Diet

It's true: You can't eat the way you used to, without some consequences.

A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that people who ate the most refined foods (like sugar, white bread, cookies, and cakes) developed significantly more belly fat than those who consumed the same number of calories from less processed foods.

Do this: Always have healthy snacks on hand. Keep almonds in your pocketbook, trail mix in your desk drawer, and hard-boiled eggs in the fridge.

WebMD Feature

The Truth About This Gluten-free Craze

I read dozens of article about  gluten-free and enriched or processed wheat. First of all, gluten-free products are foods that have no processed or enriched wheat. At first consumers thought these foods were only for people with food allergies. But now we know that today's wheat is not your grandmother's wheat. Processed or enriched wheat can be just as dangerous as eating sugar products like fructose and just as habit forming.

So those of us watching our weight and those trying to lose weight need to avoid any enriched or processed foods and wheat in particular. Fortunately gluten-free products are very popular today and it's pretty easy to find a big section of gluten-free products in the major grocery stores. You can find bread, bagels, crackers even pizza crusts, cereals you name it, if it's made of flour there's probably a similar Gluten-Free product.

Science says the reason enriched wheat is bad for your diet is because it raises your blood sugar and not just a little but spikes it up and let you crash just as fast. That crash you get after the spike will cause 'food cravings' and in a short time you'll want more food. I know what your going to say "I don't eat that much at the table". And the reason for that is that it takes about one hour for blood sugar to crash. And by that time we don't go back to the table for more dinner but we do reach for snack food. Enriched or processed wheat is in all the snack food, chips pretzels, crackers, Chex,  and dozens  of other snacks.

Whether it's drinks or food the reason it seems like your constantly eating is because your blood sugar  jumping from super-high to super-low causes cravings so you think your still hungry and you want to eat more, but in reality your not hungry it's only a craving, your body is telling you that your blood sugar levels are low. It's not a trick, they are low and you did it to yourself by eating foods you shouldn't eat.

Avoid processed foods and any foods with enriched wheat flour.  So gluten -free will help you lose weight by avoiding food cravings caused be wheat and you can further help yourself by avoiding added sugar. Don't eat or drink anything with added sugar or sugar substitutes like fructose or corn syrup.