Bye-bye, winter weight + toxins!

Wouldn't it be great to shed 'hibernation pounds' and keep them off for good-without feeling deprived? You can! The key: optimizing your body's ability to respond to leptin. The hormone plays a vital role in curbing appetite, boosting metabolism and burning fat. But when pounds creep on, cells become resistant to leptin's slimming signals. Luckily, Spanish research found reversing leptin resistance increases your odds of long-term weight loss by 86%. Just...

- Melissa Gotthardt

Dig into delicious beef burritos
Or enjoy an omelet. Including a serving of protein-rich foods such as beef, poultry, eggs and beans in every meal increases the body’s ability to respond to leptin by 55% within 12 weeks. That’s an effect that effortlessly cuts calorie intake by 441 calories a day. So say investigators at Washington University Medical School reporting in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, who explain that protein prevents the blood-sugar spikes that make cells resistant to leptin over time.

Putter and play a few minutes a day