The flat belly diet lasts for 32 days, with four days of pre-diet preparation and 28 days of dieting. However, the author of the Flat Belly Diet, as seen on Oprah, insists that "diet" is a misnomer, and this method is simply a better eating plan that allows dieters to eat well, be satisfied and lose weight -- even without exercising. The diet can be tailored for individuals with allergies, vegetarians and other special cases. Here's how to lose weight and look trim with the flat belly diet.
Tips For You
- Begin the flat belly diet with four days of bloat-control eating to prepare yourself for the Mediterranean-inspired eating plan. For this pre-diet, simply avoid simple carbohydrates, sugary foods, carbonated beverages, fatty foods, chewing gum, spicy foods and fried items. You'll drink the "sassy water" during this time to help with weight loss and prepare you for your diet. The sassy water recipe is in the Flat Belly Diet book.
- Buy ingredients for your flat belly diet and rid your kitchen cabinets and fridge of any junk foods. Remove temptation and surround yourself with healthy eating choices, including good snacks, to prepare yourself for success.
- Create a meal plan using the flat belly diet book, in which you can customize each of your three meals by interchanging the choices. Each meal must include something in the monounsaturated fat category, such as nuts, olive oil, chocolate, seeds, avocados or olives. The reason for this is that these MUFAs, as they are dubbed, may aid with weight loss and help you feel satisfied even when eating less.
- Eat each of your 400-calorie meals four hours apart. The diet allows 1,600 calories per day to nourish your body without adding weight, and to help your body burn calories already hanging on around your tummy area. IN addition to the three regular meals, you have 400 calories allotted to a floating meal or snacks.
- Add exercise to your flat belly diet to supercharge your weight loss and improve overall body strength. While exercise is not required on the diet plan, there is a chapter devoted to the optional flat belly exercises, which you should consider doing 3-5 times a week to improve your flat belly diet results.
Written by Liz Vaccariello, editor in chief of Prevention magazine, the Flat Belly Diet claims you can lose up to 15 pounds in 32 days if you follow it correctly. The first four days of the diet call for a low-calorie anti-bloat jump-start that is supposed to acclimate you to the diet and get you on track to healthier eating.
Things You'll Need
- 8 liters water
- 4 tsps. freshly grated ginger
- 4 medium cucumbers, peeled and thinly sliced
- 4 medium lemons, thinly sliced
- Bunch of mint
- Avocados
- Olive oil
- Flax oil
- Sunflower Oil
- Nuts and seeds
Tips For You
- Drink one entire recipe of the Flat Belly Diet's Sassy water every day, which is made from two liters of water, one tsp. fresh grated ginger, one medium sliced cucumber, one lemon and 12 mint leaves. Make one recipe the day before you start the diet and then one each for the following three days. You will be drinking the whole 2 liters of water and ingredients every day of the jump-start.
- Eat four 300-calorie meals and include some monounsaturated fatty acids with every meal. This includes avocado, flax oil, olive oil, sunflower oil and nuts and seeds. Don't eat red meat and do eat legumes (black beans, soybeans), whole grains (brown rice, whole wheat pasta), fruits, vegetables and lean meats like turkey and fish.
- Avoid caffeine or sparkling beverages as these cause bloating.
- Start an exercise plan that includes cardio like brisk walking or jogging and weight training or resistance exercises like push-ups, sit-ups and lunges. The cardiovascular exercise will increase your metabolism and burn more calories and the weight training will make sure you don't lose muscle mass while you do lose fat.
The Flat Belly Diet is an extremely popular diet plan based on calorie counting and the strategic addition of monounsaturated fats to meals. Devised by experts at Prevention, the Flat Belly Diet was inspired by findings that the consumption of monounsaturated fats, commonly called MUFAs, causes the liver to more efficiently excrete fats, LDL cholesterol and other toxins from the body so that they do not form fat clusters around the mid section, which is what happens when there is no MUFA present at meal time. Read on to learn the sources of these "good fats" and how to put them to work to reduce the fat around your belly.
Tips For You
- Drink 2 liters of "sassy water" per day for 4 days. This is the jump start phase of the Flat Belly Diet. To make "sassy water," add 1 tsp. freshly grated ginger, 1 medium cucumber, peeled and thinly sliced, 1 medium sliced lemon and 12 small spearmint leaves to 2 liters of water. Serve cold. While enjoying the "sassy water" and eliminating excess water from your body, familiarize yourself with the monounsaturated fatty acid sources and plan some menus.
- Identify the monounsaturated fat (MUFA) sources. They are avocados, olives, dark or semi sweet chocolate and specific kinds of nuts (almonds, almond butter, Brazil nuts, cashew butter, chunky natural peanut butter, dry roasted cashews, dry roasted peanuts, dry roasted sunflower seeds, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, pecans, pine nuts, pistachios, roasted pumpkin seeds, smooth natural peanut butter, sunflower seeds, sunflower seed butter, tahini and walnuts) and oils (sesame oil, peanut oil, canola oil, olive oil, walnut oil, pesto sauce, safflower oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil and flaxseed oil).
- Know the proper serving size for each MUFA. Avocado = 1/4 cupOlives = 10Chocolate = 1/4 cupNuts = 2 tbsp.Oil = 1 tbsp.
- Learn how to use each MUFA. Avocados can be sliced and easily added to salads and sandwiches, or smashed with lime and served with chips. Olives can be eaten right out of the jar for an easy MUFA fix. Chocolate may be enjoyed in chips, chunks or shavings. Toss some chips in your oatmeal or put some shavings over your fruit. Nuts can be tossed in salads, baked in bread or snacked on out of the bag. Oils are used in cooking, stir frying and pesto sauce. If you make fruit or protein shakes, add olive oil to it for a simple addition.
- Eat 4 meals per day of 400 calories each and add a serving of your choice of MUFA to each meal.
The Flat Belly Diet is touted as a plan that will help people shed extra pounds and inches that collect around the midsection and belly. Using proper nutrition, the diet helps to eliminate a build up of contaminants, fat, and excess water weight. Sassy water is one of the main staples of the Flat Belly Diet, and should be drunk every day.
Things You'll Need
- 8. 5 cups water
- 1 tsp/ grated ginger
- 1 medium cucumber
- 1 medium lemon
- 12 spearmint leaves
- Wide-mouthed Bottle or jug
Tips For You
- Pour the water in the bottle or jug. Ideally, this water should be filtered, so that it is as pure as possible. If you don't want to buy several gallon jugs of water each week, you can invest in an water filter, such as Pur or Brita, in order to ensure that your water is filtered.
- Wash the cucumber and spearmint as thoroughly as possible. If your cucumber isn't organic, it will have a waxy coating on it. This waxy outer coating can be removed by soaking the cucumber in apple cider vinegar and rinsing in warm water, while scrubbing with a rough towel.
- Peel the brown outer coating of the ginger off with a vegetable peeler.
- Slice the cucumber and ginger as thinly as possible. Cucumber is an important ingredient in the Flat Belly Diet sassy water because it is a natural diuretic, and helps the body release stored excess water.
- Tear the spearmint leaves.
- Add the ginger, cucumber, and spearmint to the filtered water. Shake the container well, mixing the filtered water and ingredients together. Ginger is an ingredient of the flat belly diet sassy water recipe because it's reported to boost metabolism.
- Put the container in the refrigerator and drink it the following day. In order to have a successful diet, the water should be drunk instead of juices, sodas, and other drinks. If you live in a hot climate, consider making a double batch of Flat Belly diet sassy water, because your local weather could cause dehydration.
