If you are a woman over 40 with excess body fat to lose, especially around you midsection I want you to put down the low-fat blueberry bagel with low-fat cream cheese and fry yourself up an egg. 

Pronto.

Please put down the whole grain toast with jelly and a glass of calcium fortified orange juice.

Throw away the non-fat, Triple Zero Oikos strawberry yogurt and granola.

Step away from the bowl of low-calorie Special K with skim milk.

Why?

It's all comes down to understanding that your weight has more to do with a very powerful hormone than calories.  And even more important is whether or not that powerful hormone is turned "on" or not.

The bagel, low-fat cream cheese, toast and jelly, orange juice, non-fat yogurt, cold cereal and skim milk all have one thing in common.

They are high carbohydrate foods that stimulate your body to produce large amounts of your fat-storing hormone insulin. 

Weight is controlled by metabolic hormones, not calories.

It is true that your metabolism slows down a little each decade, causing most women to gain about 1 pound per year due to age. [1]  But by the time women hit premenopause (anywhere from 40-55 years old) and menopause and beyond (around 55+), it feels like a lot more than one pound per year.

Natural weight gain due to aging, while real, doesn't explain why most women over 40 experience a dramatic increase in weight, specifically, belly fat, which is very difficult to lose.

Clients are constantly telling me how they have a closet full of clothes that don't fit and nothing they seem to do (like going to super expensive pilates classes twice a week) is making a difference.

Something else must be going on, right?!

Remember our equation for a healthy weight from What Do Hormones, Weight Gain, and Metabolism Have to Do With Each Other:

[healthy hormones --> healthy cells --> healthy metabolism --> healthy you --> healthy weight]

If we start at the beginning, we can...