Carbohydrate Timing Trick For Women Over 50 Looking To Lose Belly Fat

By Dr.Becky Gillaspy

Because of all the hype that comes with low carb diets, carbohydrates have turned into the villains of the dieting world. This is unfortunate because, especially as you age, your body relies on carbs for energy and carbohydrate foods are satisfying foods. By learning how to time your intake of your favorite carbohydrates, you can have your cake and lose weight too.

By the time a woman reaches 50 weight loss hormones become important players in the success of a diet. The hormone that takes center stage is estrogen. It is true that estrogen secretions diminish after menopause and this can cause a change in the way fat is metabolized and stored by the body. However, estrogen is not the only important hormone for fat loss.

When it comes to dieting the key hormone that controls your ability to burn fat is leptin. This is a hormone that is secreted mostly by your fat cells. In a study conducted on mice the manipulation of this hormone caused the mice to eat voraciously and become obese.

In humans, high levels of this hormone are what open the door for fat burning. However, when a person of any age goes on a diet, leptin levels plummet. This can be dramatic with a drop of as much as 50% in the first week of a diet.

What brings leptin levels up to normal? Eating more, especially eating more carbs. Seems like a Catch-22 doesn't it? You want to drop a few pounds so you reduce your calorie and carbohydrate intake to try to get the weight off. However, this causes your body to produce less leptin. Without leptin your body burns fat slowly... to speed it up you need to eat more calories and carbs.

It is no wonder so many people have trouble losing weight on traditional diets, but add to that the additional hormone issue for women over 50 and the problem seems to grow.

For instances, as mentioned earlier, changes in hormones such as estrogen cause women over 50 to experience changes in the way fat is stored. What this means specifically is that fat is deposited more easily in the belly. This is true for just about all women after menopause, even women who had previously had problems with weight gain in their butt and thighs.

An effective way for women over 50 to gain the upper hand on belly fat is to strategically time the intake of carbohydrates during the day. By doing this you get eat satisfying carbohydrates, which makes it easier to stick with a diet. Carbohydrate timing also allows your body to keep producing leptin, without storing it as belly fat.

Here is how to best time your carbohydrate intake to prevent the storage of belly fat.

1. Eat the majority of your carbohydrates early in the day. At this time of the day your metabolism is naturally high and this helps you utilize the carbs for energy, as opposed to fat storage. This also gives your body the carbs it needs to keep leptin levels elevated.

2. Eat carbs after a workout. If you are a woman over 50 you can help your body control hormone levels through regular exercise and the best exercise includes some resistance training (i.e. weight lifting). By eating carbohydrates after resistance training your body is able to shuttle the carbs you eat into your liver and muscle for storage. This reduces storage of carbs as fat around your waist.

3. Set up a Cheat Day one day a week. Some women notice that eating carbohydrates gives them a bloated belly. So many of these women like the idea of keeping carbohydrates low. However, this drops leptin levels making the body a poor fat burner.

The solution is to eat a lower carbohydrate diet during the week (start with 50 grams per day and adjust up or down to meet your needs), and then take one day over the weekend to add an additional high carb meal. This meal should stay around 1,000 carb calories. This one meal can reset leptin levels.

If you are a woman over 50 who is having trouble losing belly fat, then it is important to consider the role your fat-burning hormones play in your success. By manipulating the times you eat carbs during the day and week, you will find that those stubborn pounds start to melt away.

There is no question that these strategies take a fair amount of planning, but what if I told you there was an easier way to keep leptin levels high and increase your fat burning potential?
Is that something you might be interested in?
You see, if you could do that, you could essentially keep your body in a fat-burning state 24/7... high leptin levels = high levels of fat burning.

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Good Food Good Health - Calcium

By  Ted Wosko

A good food for good health is calcium and is great for bones and staying slim after 50. As you all probably know I am closer to fifty now than forty, even though I still feel as I did in my twenty's, (some friends may add I still act like it sometimes).

Recently it has dawned on me that if I still want to feel this good for the next twenty years that I really should take steps now, so that I can maintain the good health that I am enjoying at the moment.

I have been looking in general at women's health of my age and how to keep up good health through the next twenty years.

Middle-aged women, like myself I guess, have been told for years that they should take calcium and vitamin D tablets to protect their bones against osteoporosis that is why recently I have increased my intake of calcium.

I always eat a good balanced diet and as you know my theory is 'good food good health', so when I checked on the amount of dairy products Ted and I consume to calculate our daily intake, I was a little surprised that it was myself not Ted that was not always getting the required amount.

Our two daughters easily reach their required amount from their normal diet, as one of the cereals they eat is fortified with vitamins and they also drink a couple of milk shakes a day.

Osteoporosis is a disease due to loss of bone density with a break down of bone structure. Diseased bones become brittle, porous and thin, resulting in bones becoming easier to break especially those in the legs, hips and arms.

Women are far more prone to osteoporosis, in fact 80 per cent of all sufferers are women. So making sure we maintain a healthy balanced diet rich in dairy products is essential, and to check that our levels of calcium and vitamin D intake is correct.

Although 99 per cent of calcium in the body is found in the teeth and bones, the other 1 per cent plays a major role in our health and is found in muscles, blood, soft tissue, organs and nerves.

Meeting your calcium need is quite easy if you like milk and dairy products. Generally 8 ounces of milk provides about 300mg of calcium and general daily requirements are:

Children 1 - 8 years 500 - 800mg
9 - 18 years 1300 mg
19 - 50 years 1000mg
Women 51+ with HRT and men 51+ 1200mg
Women 51+ without HRT 1500mg
Breastfeeding and pregnant women 1200mg
The best sources of calcium and vitamin D are Milk, cheese and yoghurt, and also foods made with milk, such as custard, rice pudding, ice cream etc.
Fish and shellfish are an excellent source of Vitamin D - salmon, tuna, herring, halibut, shrimps and oysters as well as eggs, milk and cod liver oil.

Low fat foods also contain good amounts of calcium including low fat yoghurt, skimmed and low fat fluid milk and buttermilk. Cheese contains varying amounts of calcium and in general, the more firm the cheese the more calcium in contains. Soft cheese has a low amount present and cream cheese is not a good source at all.

Keeping good bone health is essential for all of us at any age, and therefore our intake of calcium is beneficial. Calcium moves in and out of the bones throughout our lives.

The need for good supplies of calcium throughout childhood and teen years is crucial, as bones grow in size and density through this period.

Calcium combines with phosphorous to form teeth and bones, making them hard and resistant to decay and breaks, it also:

Is vital in blood to help it clot normally.
Helps muscles to contract normally. A deficiency can cause spasms and cramp.
Is essential in the nervous system for messages to be passed from the brain to other parts if the body and back again.
Helps to regulate blood pressure. A deficiency or low intake of calcium has been associated with high blood pressure.

Calcium may help with the prevention of colon cancer. This is thought to work in tow ways, one if that it binds with fat and bile acids in the large intestine to keep them from causing harm, the other that it prevents the excessive growth of cells in the intestines that could otherwise lead to cancer.

Also new research has found that another incentive for taking calcium is that
It can help you stay slim, and this interested me greatly. The study found that women who were over 50 and took regular calcium and Vitamin D supplements are less likely to gain weight than those who do not, and what was surprising the women who had previously been deficient in Vitamin D and calcium had the greatest benefits.

The slimming effect is thought to be down to the fact that there is an improved breakdown of fat cells and also an increase in the production of leptin, a chemical that curbs your appetite.
Also experts said that stimulation of the metabolism is likely to be increased with a better balance of nutrients in our diet, and so I cannot stress to much the importance of the 'good food good health' benefits, and equally if you can get the required amount of calcium from a balanced diet can only be a plus, helping your body fight many diseases and the ever ageing process.

I have mentioned vitamin D several times and this is very important as calcium is not readily absorbed and used without this fat-soluble vitamin.

Vitamin D is often referred to as the 'sunshine vitamin', as the action of the suns ultra violet rays forms vitamin D in the skin.

Specialists say that we need 15 minutes of sunlight to produce enough vitamin D in fair skinned people which should last for a couple of days, darker skinned people however need up to 3 hours.

The use of sunscreen 8 SPF of higher will form a barrier and prevent the formulation of vitamin D, so just wait 15 minutes before applying, but so not do this through the hottest hours. Clouds and window glass also prevent penetration of ultra violet rays.

So for good bone health - which means having the most dense and strong bones possible at reaching adulthood, a regular good intake of calcium is needed and continuously required after this age to help eliminate the chance of osteoporosis in latter years.

If to little calcium has been stored before the age of thirty in the bones or calcium is drawn out to fast in later life, then osteoporosis is at a greater risk.

All our bodies after the age of forty lose calcium quicker in the bones than going back in, and because of this we all need to be made aware just how important calcium in the diet is.

Many people have been put off from consuming dairy products over the past twenty or so years, and because of this health specialists are concerned about the future female population and the risk of osteoporosis. Also the specialists are watching the worrying trend of teenagers and fad diets that will cause complications to well being in future generations.

So for all of us the message is do not skimp on your dairy product intake, skimmed milk is just as rich in calcium, check you are consuming the correct amount in your diet. If you cannot get the required amounts in your daily diet then think about supplements. Always check with your doctor or medical practice before taking supplements as a sensible precaution, as it is with any medication.

Remember good food is good health

Ted and Sandra

This article was composed by Sandra & Ted Wosko. We have always been interested in health issues especially having children, and as with most people, we all suffer with some type of ailment. We are always researching on more and more topics in the endless task of gaining more knowledge to increase our expertise, benefiting ourselves and other people alike.

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From Heavy to Light - Light-Hearted

By  Shoshana Garfield

I don't know how big I was at my heaviest because I couldn't bear to see the numbers keep going up on the scales anymore. My clothes were all size LARGE (or more) and I only bought skirts with a stretch waist.

When I stopped weighing myself, I was 160 pounds (11 stone 6, and I'm short), and I knew it kept going up because my clothes - even with the stretch waists - kept getting tighter. You may have similar experiences as the ones I have had - looking in a store window, seeing my bulky reflection impossibly superimposed on those slender mannequins. I remember how awful it was to get dressed in the morning and do my daily grooming - it was impossible to pretend I wasn't fat, and the pale lumpiness of me filled me with revulsion and self-loathing. And trying to diet!

Well, OK, I'd tell myself, so I'll have the whole bag of Doritos today so it isn't in the house anymore and I'll start tomorrow. And since I'm starting all this regimentation tomorrow, I might as well clear the freezer of that ice cream too.... and so on. It wasn't as if I enjoyed all that food, either. My food bills were high, and I when I was overeating, I would either pretend I wasn't eating - 'Wow! How did I get to bottom of that bag??' - or, just hate myself for every mouthful, while eating it. The compulsion to eat combined with that self-loathing was horrible, and yet everyday I did it to myself, over and over and over, day after day after day, for years.

When I first went to Weight Watchers as a teenager, someone got up and presented. I writhed in my seat with shame and jealousy before she started to talk. She was tall, thin and blond, everything I was not. She was so slim, slimmer than I could ever hope to be (I told myself at the time), with a figure that looked liked she was one of those people who were born to be thin. And then she held up an old picture of herself, when she was, as she said, 'fat' - she had lost 88 pounds (6st 4)! And then she said something that has stayed with me ever since: "I actually didn't lose 88 pounds. I lost one pound, then another pound, then another pound, then another pound, then another pound, then another pound, until I got to the weight I am now.

The point is, I didn't lose 88 pounds all at once. It was a whole lifestyle change. And sometimes it was tedious, and it sure started hard. And at first, people didn't even notice I was losing weight. Even after 20 pounds, people were still asking if I had a haircut - I was that fat. Hard word, 'fat', isn't it. Well, I tell you, it was only when I was OK with being fat that I could start losing one pound, then another pound, then another pound, then another pound." I thought she was brilliantly wise for the first part and crazy for the last bit, about being OK being fat. I was deeply in the negative self talk: 'I hate this fat! I hate my body! The rolls in my stomach when I sit, my squishy, flowing-over thighs - ugh! I hate myself for keeping all this weight on!

How could it possibly be OK to be so disgusting?'
Did you ever have these conversations with yourself? Tell yourself these horrible things, that if they came from a partner or a boss or a colleague, would clearly be abusive? And it's OK to treat ourselves this way? I'm jumping a head of myself...

Well, I managed to diet myself down to a size 12, but I didn't keep all that weight off, over 4 stone, all that time. After I left my first husband, who was even more abusive to me than I had been to myself, I piled weight back on - not back to what I had before, but I definitely needed a bigger sized wardrobe again. It wasn't until I was in the UK, and I did some emotional healing, that I was able to lose all the weight I had put back on - about a stone. I didn't even see that I had really lost the weight.

It wasn't until after I had my first daughter and had lost the pregnancy weight, and I went shopping with a friend with clothes retail experience - she told me I was wearing a size too big, that I was really a size 10! Great news, partly, and also really quite sad news - sad that I was still so separate from my body that I just couldn't see me. So, there was still more work to do, and just in time, as you will see in a minute.

I had just found a new stress release technique that allowed me to dig through the layers - and I really mean going in deep - of pain, that had been tying me down to these weighty issues all these years. The sexual abuses that I thought were healed down to pebbles were still mountains, the anger I thought I had let go of was an ocean - I had a whole landscape to deal with! And I did, with this technique, called Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). It is a way of easily and gently stimulating acupressure points whilst holding particular thoughts or speaking out loud. I used EFT almost every day for 6 months. And eventually, I came out the other side of it. I was a lot happier, a lot more grounded, and a lot more stable in myself in all ways. I had no idea what lay ahead to test me.

Just over a year later, finally at a stable size 10, my son died. I started eating chocolate every day - a lot of it - at least, a lot of it for me (one bar of Divine or Green & Blacks a week). Even with the unspeakable challenge of my son's death, I was finally healthy enough on the inside to not turn to food for that simultaneous comfort/punishment that I had suffered in years past. I began to realize that I was missing chocolate if I hadn't had it during the day, that I was planning around eating chocolate - the signs of addiction. It was only a few months in, and I couldn't cope. My son had died, and no one was going to take my chocolate away too!

I eventually accepted the obvious, that having chocolate wasn't going to bring him back, so I started tapping again for food. It wasn't that I had gained weight - I had not - my over-indulgence was at a completely different level than it had been before, thanks to the tapping. It was just that I really believe in the middle name of EFT - Freedom. So, even with all the life pressures I have had from an early age, the absolute misery of my teenage years and the added burdens and trauma of that extra stone I carried for awhile; the death of my precious son - even though I have had all those life experiences, I no longer use food to express my inner conflicts. I can just cope with them in a loving way now, thanks to EFT.

EFT has worked so well for me, and for my clients from my private practice, that I am impassioned about sharing it with others through training. I want to reach more people with this easily learned method of coping with our darkest places and issues. And I am passionate about sharing with others that Freedom is possible, complete Emotional Freedom, and this is the best way I know how to get there. It's hard not be interested in exploring this further, is it not? That's the way I felt when I first learned about it too, and here I am, years later, passing it on. And the words of the woman who presented at my first ever Weight Watchers meeting have stayed with me too, and how wise she was in all she said - well, I want to pass that on too. You will allow me to gift you with this, yes?

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