How to Lose Weight All Day Long

Timing your workouts and meals may be the secret to your weight loss success

Understanding and working with your body's natural hunger and sleep rhythms will vanquish cravings, increase energy, and help you lose more weight.

It's not just what you eat or how much you exercise that matters; it's the timing of each component that is the true secret to weight loss success. Research shows that our bodies' inner eat-and-sleep clocks have been thrown completely out of whack, thanks to all-day food cues and too much nighttime artificial light. The result: You're caught in a "fat cycle": a constant flow of hunger hormones that makes you prone to cravings. By tuning in to your body's natural eat/sleep schedule, you can finally say good-bye to your belly.

The Perfect Day of Eating

Drop Around The Clock! Follow this hour-by-hour slim-down schedule to control hunger hormones, banish cravings, and get trim and toned--fast!

6 TO 8 AM: GET MOVING.
Within a half hour of rising and before you eat breakfast, do 20 minutes of cardio. Research has found that exercising before breakfast may help you burn fat more efficiently. If you can get outside, even better. Early morning sunlight helps your body naturally reset itself to a healthier sleep/wake cycle (regular indoor lights don't have the same effect).

How to Burn More Calories with Every Workout

6:55 TO 8:55 AM: DRINK UP.
Before every meal, drink two 8-ounce glasses of water. Research shows that people who drank this amount lost 5 pounds more than nonguzzlers.

Try Refreshing Sassy Water Recipe to De-Bloat Your Belly

7 TO 9 AM: EAT BREAKFAST.
The alarm clock also wakes up ghrelin, the "feed me" hormone made in your stomach. Ignore ghrelin and your body will produce even more, eventually making you ravenous. To suppress ghrelin's effect, eat a mix of complex carbs and protein, such as eggs and whole grain toast, within an hour of waking.

Get 8 Healthy Breakfast Ideas

10 TO 11 AM: MUNCH MIDMORNING.

Ghrelin begins to rise again a couple of hours before lunch. It turns off when you chow down, particularly on carbs and protein, so have a small combo snack, like blueberries and Greek-style yogurt.

Get 30 Healthy Snack Suggestions

12 TO 1 PM: HAVE YOUR MIDDAY MEAL.

Galanin, another hunger hormone that makes you crave fat, rises around lunchtime. However, dietary fat causes you to produce more galanin, which then tells you to eat more fat. Instead, fill up with complex carbs and protein, such as chicken-vegetable soup or black bean chili.

The Best Sandwiches for Weight Loss

2 TO 3 PM: TAKE A NAP.
Instead of hitting the vending machines, find a quiet place to grab a few Zzzs. (Hint: Your parked car is the perfect impromptu sleep pod!) Just set an alarm--15 to 20 minutes will energize your body without affecting your ability to sleep at night.

3:30 PM: GET BUZZED.
Need a boost? This is your last chance to have a cup of joe. Drinking coffee after 4 PM disturbs circadian rhythms and can keep you from falling asleep at night.

4 TO 8 PM: TRIM AND TONE.
Now's the time to do your strength training, plus any additional cardio. This is when your body temperature is highest, so you're primed for peak performance. In one study, subjects who worked out in the late afternoon or early evening built 22% more muscle than morning exercisers.

7 Strength Moves You've Got to Learn

5 TO 7 PM: TIME TO DINE.
To ensure you don't wake up hungry in the middle of the night, add a serving of healthy fats, such as flaxseed or fish oil, to your meal. If you're a wine drinker, pour a glass now. Drinking later can delay dream (REM) sleep, waking you frequently during the night.

9 TO PM: HAVE A PRESLEEP SNACK.
Enjoy a carb-based bedtime snack, such as a serving of low-fat frozen yogurt. Nighttime carbs create tryptophan, which helps your brain produce serotonin. This feel-good chemical triggers your body to make melatonin, the sleep hormone.

9 TO 10:30 PM: POWER DOWN.
Step away from digital devices, including the TV. They emit a blue spectrum of light that's even more disruptive to sleep than regular bulbs. Do something calming--read, take a bath--in dim light so you're ready to nod off when you hit the sheets.

10 Reasons You Can't Fall Asleep

9:30 TO 11 PM: GO TO SLEEP.
Crawl under the covers at the same time each night and get up at the same time each morning, even on weekends. Having a regular sleep-and-wake schedule helps you fall asleep faster over time.

Get 3 Days of Recipes from the Belly Melt Diet

TELL US: What time of day do you find the hardest to stick to your diet?

--By the editors of Prevention

The Weight-Loss Nutrient You're Not Eating

Fiber: Weight-loss superfood?The U.S. often isn't the first nation to come to mind when you think of countries with healthy eating habits to adopt, but it turns out we may be influencing how our friends across the Atlantic dine.

The "all things fiber" trend taking over American supermarkets is also on the rise in Spain, Germany, Poland, and the U.K., where 62 percent of people say consuming enough fiber is important, a new European report found. Fiber even trumps calories, as only 56 percent said reducing calories was important.

This study intrigued me because while there are a number of foods with fiber added on the market-everything from pasta to yogurt-the latest nutrition data indicates that the average intake in the United States is less than half the recommended 14 grams per 1,000 calories (which works out to roughly 25 grams a day for women and 38 for men). And when I talk to my clients, most don't know much about this nutrient, other than it's generally good for you.

In a nutshell, fiber is a type of carbohydrate that your body can't digest or absorb, and there are two primary types: soluble and insoluble. Soluble is the soft, sticky type found in oats, barley, beans, and the "meat" of fruits, which helps to lower cholesterol and soften waste so it can pass through your system more easily. Insoluble is the tough type, found in whole wheat and the skin, stalks, and seeds of fruits and veggies, that helps to push waste through the GI tract and improve bowel regularity.

Fiber also has a number of weight-control benefits, which I've often touted on this blog. First, it fills you up, but because you don't break it down and absorb it into your bloodstream, you don't have to worry about burning off fiber in order to prevent it from getting socked away in your fat cells.

There is also some research showing that for every gram of fiber you eat, you eliminate about seven calories. That means if you gobbled 30 grams a day, it would essentially "cancel out" 210 of the calories you ate, which could result in shedding up to 20 pounds in a year's time.

Lastly, fiber has been found to slow the digestion and absorption of other carbs, which results in a slower, steadier rise in blood sugar and a delay in the return of hunger.

RELATED: In addition to fiber, be sure you're eating these eight super nutrients that help you slim down.

But fiber's powers don't stop at weight loss. It may also reduce the risk of death from any cause, according to a recent paper in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Women who ate about 25 grams of fiber a day were 22 percent less likely to die during the nine-year study than those who ate only 10 grams daily. And the risk of death from heart disease, infections, and respiratory diseases was reduced by as much as 50 percent in in the high-fiber eaters, with the greatest benefit seen from consuming grains. Pretty powerful stuff!

To boost your intake and hit the daily target, I recommend bulking up on naturally fiber-rich foods, primarily fruits, veggies, whole grains, beans, and nuts. Just a cup of raspberries, a cup of black bean soup, a medium orange, and an ounce of almonds packs more than 25 grams, so meeting the recommendation doesn't require a drastic change in your diet.

Some good general rules of thumb for upping your intake include:

• Choose more fruits with edible seeds, skins, and membranes, including apples, raspberries, and oranges.
• Reach for veggies with tough stalks and edible skin, such as artichokes and broccoli.
• Opt for whole rather than refined grains. Oats, barley, quinoa, brown and wild rice, and 100% whole-wheat versions of bread, pasta, and crackers are good options.
• Replace meat with beans or lentils at least five times a week.
• Snack on nuts and seeds, or use them to garnish salads, stir-fries, cereal, and yogurt.

Oh, and one more thing: As you increase your fiber intake, be sure to drink plenty of extra water. It's key to help the fiber move through your system. Too little H2O and too much fiber can be a recipe for bloating and constipation, or a pretty uncomfortable tummy ache!