One of the biggest challenges for people trying to lose weight is what to do when they feel like eating but aren’t hungry. That’s the main reason people are overweight – because they don’t eat in response to their hunger and fullness signals.

They eat because someone brought pastries or pizza to work, because they’re upset about something someone did or didn’t do, or for entertainment. There are at least a thousand reasons why people choose to eat that have absolutely nothing to do with their body’s need for food.

I’m a weight loss coach for foodies, and because diets don’t work, I take a different approach. If you want to lose weight without dieting or depriving yourself of the foods you love, it is essential to get in touch with your body’s hunger signals and only eat in response to them.

Two Kinds of Hunger

Eating when you aren’t hungry, leads to your body storing that extra energy as fat. That’s how you gain weight. After menopause, our bodies are very unforgiving about the extra food, and we gain weight even more readily.

And don’t say, “But I’m eating healthy food!” Overeating is overeating, whether you eat healthy food or not. I know. I did it for years.

Most of us experience two kinds of hunger. ‘Body hunger’ is when your body needs food for energy. It’s the kind of hunger you feel in your belly. It produces hunger pangs, a hollow feeling, or even lightheadedness or mild headaches. When our body gives us that physical hunger signal, we should respond by eating.

Then there is that urge to eat for any other reason. I call that ‘head hunger.’ This signal doesn’t come from your belly. It comes from habits developed to use food to fix things it can’t fix. One such use for food is to be your friend when you’re lonely.

A good clue that you’re experiencing head hunger is when you aren’t sure what you want to eat, or you definitely crave something specific, like crunchy or sweet foods.

If you’re not sure of the culprit of your hunger, ask yourself whether a cup of plain yogurt or a banana would do the trick. If you only want something exciting to eat, you probably aren’t experiencing body hunger.

This is proof that in order to lose weight, you have to learn how to deal with the urge to eat when you aren’t hungry. That urge is a habit. Like any habit, you can change it. Here’s how that works.

Start with Your Thoughts to Lose Weight After 60

Remember, the urge to eat when you aren’t hungry is just a thought. It’s that little voice in your head saying, “I want chocolate!” or “That looks good!” or “I deserve that.”

You have tens of thousands of thoughts each day, and you don’t act on the great majority of them. If you had a thought, “I wonder what it would be like to try heroin,” you would (I hope) ignore that one, right?

Acknowledge that the urge to eat is just another thought, and choose to ignore it. I like to visualize letting the thought float away like a helium balloon. Often, if you disregard it, the urge will be gone in a few minutes. Sometimes, it may come back, but you can just notice it and release it again.

Don’t Reward the Urge

Have you ever trained a dog? When the dog sits on command, you give him a treat. That encourages him to do it the next time you give the command. The same is true when you give into the urge to eat. Psychologically, you’re reinforcing that behavior.

Keep It Up

The converse is also true. You can reinforce new habits with repetition. To break a habit, you have to repeat the new behavior over and over again.

Habits are like well-worn paths in our brains. Often the longer we engage in the habit, the more worn the path is, and the longer it takes to change our behavior.

When we let the urge to eat without being hungry pass, that path gets overgrown while we make a new path with the new habit of eating only when we are hungry. This is how neuroplasticity actually works. If we give into the urge, the old familiar path starts getting worn down again.

On the other hand, you can think of the positive effects of your efforts and use that to reinforce the decision to let these urges pass.

When I was going through the same process myself, and got the urge to eat for other reasons, I would think, “I’ve worked too hard at changing my habit to undo all of that effort!” I used my progress as an incentive to keep going.

The same was true with overeating. When eating a delicious restaurant meal, I sometimes would want to keep eating after my body had had enough.

I would think of how good I felt not overeating and how good it felt to have lost weight. That would help me decide that those extra bites just weren’t worth feeling bloated afterwards or gaining the weight back. Again, it was all about my thinking.

For many of us, the urge to eat when we aren’t hungry is due to emotional issues. If you want to stop emotional eating, I have a wonderful free 14-day Freedom from Emotional Eating Challenge, for which you can sign up for here.

How do you manage the urge to eat? If overeating has been a challenge for you in the past, what advice would you give to other women in our community? Are you trying to lose weight after 60? Let’s support each other on the road to healthy eating by sharing our experiences in the comments below.

From the crest of the hill two buildings came into view. On the left-hand side, there was an old gas station with a message painted on its roof that read: Howdy Folks, Welcome to Cow Town.

Then, on the right, a sturdy brick building sat surrounded by thick walls, with an arch above the gates bearing the sign: Home of the Good Shepherd. My mother pointed it out each time we rode by, referring to it as the convent.

The gas station was not slick or modern. It was a clapboard building with a screen door, perpetually loose and hanging by a crooked hinge. The only pump out front, a large round device, looked out of place and not gas station-like at all. When I think of the building now, I remember that it was a grey weathered wood that had been beaten by the seasons and had not seen a coat of fresh paint in years.

Childhood Memories

By the time I was ten years old, Denver was stretching its gangly legs into the plains, and the plains became suburbs. The once solitary buildings that had sat in the middle of those open spaces were now surrounded by commerce and tract homes. I don’t know when the gas station came down. I was probably a teenager by then. It didn’t make much of an impact except for the fact that I missed the sign on its roof: Howdy Folks, Welcome to Cow Town.

The convent is still a ghostly memory. Before my husband and I moved to Oregon, I drove by where it used to stand. The building holds a piece of family history, a story that I never forgot, so when it was gone, I mourned its passing as if it were an old friend.

I didn’t want to forget what it looked like and what it meant in the scheme of things. Seeing a hotel in its place made my heart ache for the sometimes-difficult truth of life that everything changes and ends.

Family Memories

My mother told me a story of being a little girl, and her family falling upon hard times; farmers who had hit a snag, a father too involved with Jack Daniel’s and a lack of money to support three daughters. She recounted the memories of her parents fighting, doors slamming, bottles breaking and the confusion of it all.

She and her sisters were packed up and taken to the Home of the Good Shepherd, where they lived for several months until the family got back on its feet. It is a homesick story of missing her parents, a sense of being adrift in the unknown.

Oh, if I could have changed those difficult times for her and taken her pain, I would. But the other part of her story is that there was a swing set at the convent and she loved to swing, pumping her legs as hard as she could to get higher and higher into the air until she could see over the convent walls out onto the land that butted against the Rocky Mountains, hoping to catch a glimpse of another world.

Longing and discontent would become familiar themes throughout her life. At night, she said, a train whistle would sound in the distance and she would lie in bed imagining where it could take her.

The Past Defines Us

Sometimes there are things that we don’t even notice are gone. And other times, we see the translucent outline of what once was, because of the history it embodies, because of the story it keeps alive in us. The past informs who we are.

At the crest of the hill, there is no longer anything remarkable. The convent and the gas station are long gone. I have tucked them into a memory in my heart where I hold onto the vision of the little girl who managed to soar so high on the swings that she caught the vision of hope and dreams beyond the convent walls.

Memories of places can hold powerful emotions for us. What places do you remember from when you were little that are no longer there or are now something else? Please share your thoughts and feelings in the comments.

She’s been teasing us for months and now, JLo Beauty is finally here. You might not be able to shop it yet but we have all the details so you can game-plan what to add to your skincare routine. Because if the 51-year-old uses her own line, well, we know it seriously works. Just look at that “JLo Glow.”

JLo Beauty was inspired by Lopez’s lifelong mantra, The Five S’s: sleep, sunscreen, serum, supplements and sano—from the Spanish phrase, vivir sano, meaning live healthy. Lopez is all about that life, shunning drink and smoking, eating well, exercising and drinking lots of water. Self-care and skincare go hand-in-hand with this ethos.

Growing up, Lopez’s skincare routine was much simpler: Ivory soap and Avon. Her mother told her olive oil was a cure for everything so Lopez made her it was the base for her skincare line. “It’s all about the family tradition of using olive oil for skin and hair,” she told STYLECASTER. The line aims to give you hydration and a “full, youthful, glowy look.” Not that looking younger is the key to looking beautiful. Lopez tells herself, “I’m beautiful and youthful at any age.”

“I think there’s an unnatural standard with all the filters and fillers in the world right now,” she continues. “Aging in a graceful way is a crazy thought. You look great, whatever age you are. Not great for 50, great period!” Not that she wakes up feeling amazing every day. Lopez is actually human. “I have mornings I wake up and feel like crap,” she admits. “I tell myself, like my idol Barbra Streisand, ‘Hello, gorgeous!’ I tell myself I’m going to have the best day ever, the best day yet.”

Source: Instagram

Keep reading for all the details on the new eight-piece line that officially launches January 1. But set your iCal, because you can get early access to shop on December 8.

Our mission at STYLECASTER is to bring style to the people, and we only feature products we think you’ll love as much as we do. Please note that if you purchase something by clicking on a link within this story, we may receive a small commission of the sale.

JLo Beauty.

That Fresh Take Eye Cream with Peptides

This hydrating eye cream is packed with patented peptides to help smooth fine lines, sugar-derived matrix for firming and a blurring complex to hide the look of dark circles.

JLo Beauty.

That Hit Single Gel-Cream Cleanser

This gel-cream cleanser features the brand’s Olive Complex, an antioxidant-rich, olive blend of
squalane, fermented oil, extra virgin oil and leaf extract for all-day hydration.

JLo Beauty.

That JLo Glow Serum with Olive Complex

Here’s that JLo-glow promise in a tube. It contains the Olive Complex, as well as yeast-derived ferment for softer skin, Japanese rice sake ferment for brightening and sugar-derived matrix for firming.

JLo Beauty.

That Limitless Glow Sheet Mask

Keep the glow going with serum-packed sheet masks.

JLo Beauty.

That Star Filter Highlighting Complexion Booster

Would it be a JLo line without bronzer and highlighter? In three shades, mineral pigments give an instant glow. Use it alone or add it to moisturizer.

JLo Beauty.

That Inner Love

Lopez says “you can’t really have great skin if you don’t do something from the inside out.” This supplement contains olive extract, vitamin E, manganese and copper. Check with your doctor to make sure they’re the right vitamins for you.

JLo Beauty.

That Blockbuster Wonder Night Cream with Hyaluronic Acid

Along with the Olive Complex, this “wonder cream” is full of antioxidant-rich peptides, hyaluronic acid and yeast-derived ferment for silky smooth skin.

JLo Beauty.

That Big Screen Moisturizer with Broad Spectrum SPF 30

Forget having great skin without sunscreen! Not only does this one have broad spectrum SPF30, but it also contains marine bamboo to help protect skin from blue light, as well as hyaluronic acid,
glycerin and natural sugars for hydration. 

Additional reporting by Alana Peden.

If you were brought up in the 60s and 70s, chances are you were trained to be a strong, independent woman. It’s likely you were taught that you didn’t need a man in your life. You thought that anything a man could do, you could probably do even better.

You proudly took on this masculine energy doing everything you needed to do to get ahead in your career. Yet when it came to love and men, chances are you found yourself struggling.

Men might have told you that you were controlling or demanding. It might have seemed that all men wanted were younger women who fluttered their eyelashes and got their needs met quickly and easily. Something men might not have done for you. This left you at home angry and alone on yet another Saturday night.

Does this sound familiar at all?

What Do Men Over 60 Really Want?

It’s time to set the record straight. Here’s the deal. Most men do want to be in a relationship with women closer to their age. This is because they share a common history with each other. Most men do try out younger women because they feel appreciated by them, something they don’t always feel from women their own age.

You see, men want to be your hero. It’s literally in their DNA coding to keep you safe, protected and provided for. They want to make you happy and will do anything within their power to make that happen for you.

What Is the Best Way to Talk to a Man?

The problem is when you need something from a man; chances are you’re using words and phrases he can’t hear. As women, our DNA coding is one of community. So when you ask a man to help you with something, you probably use words like, “Honey, can you help me move this table?”

If a woman heard this phrase, she’d say, “Of course!” This is because she thinks it’s important to lend a helping hand. She will do anything that helps the community be a better place. A man hears this phrase and thinks you are telling him what to do just like his mom did when he was young.

Why It’s Important to Make a Man Your Hero

Making a man your hero is the secret to getting his cooperation easily. These two phrases will bring out the hero response in a man. They work very well when you need him to do something for you.

Phrase #1 is “I need your help…” then ask for what you need.

Phrase #2 is “Could you do me a favor…” then ask for what you need.

When I’ve used these phrases, I’ve had men tell me they love helping a woman who needs their help. Try this. It will make a huge difference with the men in your life.

Show Appreciation and Get Cooperation

Here’s one last thing you need to know. Men feel underappreciated so thanking them and telling them how much you appreciate what they did for you goes a long way in getting the cooperation of all the men in your life.

Are you back in the dating game and finding it difficult to navigate as a woman over 60? Even prepared with the best advice about men and how to communicate with them, it may seem like a challenging thing to do. Finding love after 60 is possible! Read our article packed with advice from the Sixty & Me community members about dating and finding love later in life.

Have you used either of the suggested phrases when trying to get the attention of an older man? Are there any other tips you can share that might be valuable to a woman who is having problems communicating with a man?

She’s been teasing us for months and now, JLo Beauty is finally here. You might not be able to shop it yet but we have all the details so you can game-plan what to add to your skincare routine. Because if the 51-year-old uses her own line, well, we know it seriously works. Just look at that “JLo Glow.”

JLo Beauty was inspired by Lopez’s lifelong mantra, The Five S’s: sleep, sunscreen, serum, supplements and sano—from the Spanish phrase, vivir sano, meaning live healthy. Lopez is all about that life, shunning drink and smoking, eating well, exercising and drinking lots of water. Self-care and skincare go hand-in-hand with this ethos.

Growing up, Lopez’s skincare routine was much simpler: Ivory soap and Avon. Her mother told her olive oil was a cure for everything so Lopez made her it was the base for her skincare line. “It’s all about the family tradition of using olive oil for skin and hair,” she told STYLECASTER. The line aims to give you hydration and a “full, youthful, glowy look.” Not that looking younger is the key to looking beautiful. Lopez tells herself, “I’m beautiful and youthful at any age.”

“I think there’s an unnatural standard with all the filters and fillers in the world right now,” she continues. “Aging in a graceful way is a crazy thought. You look great, whatever age you are. Not great for 50, great period!” Not that she wakes up feeling amazing every day. Lopez is actually human. “I have mornings I wake up and feel like crap,” she admits. “I tell myself, like my idol Barbra Streisand, ‘Hello, gorgeous!’ I tell myself I’m going to have the best day ever, the best day yet.”

Source: Instagram

Keep reading for all the details on the new eight-piece line that officially launches January 1. But set your iCal, because you can get early access to shop on December 8.

Our mission at STYLECASTER is to bring style to the people, and we only feature products we think you’ll love as much as we do. Please note that if you purchase something by clicking on a link within this story, we may receive a small commission of the sale.

JLo Beauty.

That Fresh Take Eye Cream with Peptides

This hydrating eye cream is packed with patented peptides to help smooth fine lines, sugar-derived matrix for firming and a blurring complex to hide the look of dark circles.

JLo Beauty.

That Hit Single Gel-Cream Cleanser

This gel-cream cleanser features the brand’s Olive Complex, an antioxidant-rich, olive blend of
squalane, fermented oil, extra virgin oil and leaf extract for all-day hydration.

JLo Beauty.

That JLo Glow Serum with Olive Complex

Here’s that JLo-glow promise in a tube. It contains the Olive Complex, as well as yeast-derived ferment for softer skin, Japanese rice sake ferment for brightening and sugar-derived matrix for firming.

JLo Beauty.

That Limitless Glow Sheet Mask

Keep the glow going with serum-packed sheet masks.

JLo Beauty.

That Star Filter Highlighting Complexion Booster

Would it be a JLo line without bronzer and highlighter? In three shades, mineral pigments give an instant glow. Use it alone or add it to moisturizer.

JLo Beauty.

That Inner Love

Lopez says “you can’t really have great skin if you don’t do something from the inside out.” This supplement contains olive extract, vitamin E, manganese and copper. Check with your doctor to make sure they’re the right vitamins for you.

JLo Beauty.

That Blockbuster Wonder Night Cream with Hyaluronic Acid

Along with the Olive Complex, this “wonder cream” is full of antioxidant-rich peptides, hyaluronic acid and yeast-derived ferment for silky smooth skin.

JLo Beauty.

That Big Screen Moisturizer with Broad Spectrum SPF 30

Forget having great skin without sunscreen! Not only does this one have broad spectrum SPF30, but it also contains marine bamboo to help protect skin from blue light, as well as hyaluronic acid,
glycerin and natural sugars for hydration. 

Additional reporting by Alana Peden.