With the ever increasing number of people trying to lose weight, it is a welcome relief for many to find a new diet that does not make you feel deprived. This new diet even allows you to eat your favorite foods including chocolate. Dubbed as the Flat Belly Diet, this eating plan was invented by the editors of Prevention Magazine.
It's called the Flat Belly Diet, and it really works. Prevention Magazine actually invented the diet, and it works on the principle of including good quality fats in your diet, also called monounsaturated fatty acids. These are also called MUFAs by nutritionists, and they're proving an trenchant way to lose weight without feeling deprived, and finally keeping the weight off for good. The diet is simple and easy to follow, and you won't feel deprived at all when you're on it.
Monounsaturated fatty acids are found in foods like olive oil, peanut butter, almonds, and other types of nuts, as well as avocados. There are lots of foods that contain monounsaturated fatty acids, and this diet works because unlike some other deprivation diets, you need to include them in modest amounts. In fact, you need to have some at every meal.
How strong is it? In fact, one 46 year old participant lost 12 pounds and 11 inches in just over a month. How's that for success?
Here's why it works. Monounsaturated fatty acids actually help you lose weight when you eat them in moderation, especially in regard to helping you get rid of that spare tire you've got around your middle. Several studies have shown that if you eat a diet rich in monounsaturated fatty acids, you lower your LDL or bad cholesterol, and raise your HDL or good cholesterol. And a significant benefit and that is that you lower your risk of heart disease and improve insulin function.
Even better, when you eat monounsaturated fatty acids with every meal, you feel satisfied instead of hungry and deprived. And it's easy to include MUFAs with every meal. You can drop a little olive oil based salad dressing on your greens, food a chocolate chip cookie for dessert (yes, you can have dessert as well, with the chocolate chips providing the MUFAs in this case), or grab a handful of nuts to munch on before dinner.
To start the diet, you do what's called a four day anti bloat jumpstart, along with a few other diet specific tricks, and then embark on eating plan that includes three 400 calorie meals a day, a 400 calorie snack, and optionally include exercise as well.
The diet centers around five foods that anyone can find and that most find satisfying and delicious. These are avocados, olives, nuts and seeds, chocolate, and oils. You eat one serving from this group of foods at each meal.
And best of all, you will have more energy than you know what to do with, and the diet itself is about 1600 calories; this is more than enough to keep you energetic and satisfied without either depriving or overstuffing you.
