What foods are in the flat belly diet?
The Flat Belly Diet Foods: It has long been established that the Mediterranean diet is the healthiest, as it incorporates foods rich in monounsaturated fatty acids. These lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart disease. Combined with fresh fruit, vegetables and fish the Mediterranean way of eating is satisfying, healthy and won’t pile the pounds on. It isn’t a fad diet though and when diet writers need a new fad to promote it is very easy to latch onto a few basic elements of the Mediterranean diet and reinvent it as the Flat Belly diet.
The creators of the Flat Belly diet have decided the key to weight loss comes from eating foods high in monounsaturated fats. The foods which they claim are the key to weight loss are oils, olives, nuts, seeds, avocados and dark chocolate. Whilst these foods are do all contain MUFA’s there is no evidence that they will make your belly flat, and they are generally high in calories, but the Flat Belly diet adds them into a strictly calorie counted diet of 1600 per day. The foods are all satisfying and thus lower food cravings, apart from the dark chocolate.
The diet calls for one fatty acid to be included in each meal, and has lots of suggestions of how to do so, including mixing them with processed snacks. Flax seed oil can be added to milkshakes, dark chocolate chips to fat free Greek yogurt, and avocado chopped up and added to store bought salsa. Surprisingly the diet creators do credit flax seed oil with being high in omega 3 fatty acids, yet fail to suggest other foods which are also rich in these, such as egg yolks, sardines, herring, mackerel and eel.
The oils recommended by the Flat Belly diet are canola, flaxseed, peanut, walnut, safflower, sesame, sunflower, soybean and extra virgin olive. The latter is the only one used in the healthier Mediterranean diet and has the added benefit of oleic acid, also found in avocados, which is a preventative against breast cancer.
The Mediterranean use of olive oil is disregarded in the Flat Belly diet, but is widely used in everything. It is added to cooked vegetables, poured on salads, and used as a dip for bread. The Flat Belly diet strictly measures the amount of oil used to control the calories, but olive oil doesn’t need to be calorie counted by the teaspoon.
Nuts are added to many meals in the Flat Belly diet rather than eaten as a snack. Peanuts are legumes and an excellent source of protein, thus filling, but they won’t flatten the belly. Again it is the fact that they are strictly calorie counted which allows for their inclusion in a weight loss diet.
There is no evidence that the foods which the Flat Belly diet claims will lead to a flat belly will do so. They are all healthy foods and it is natural to replace sources of saturated fat with healthier monounsaturated fats for the overall health benefit. If your aim is to lose belly fat then including plenty of fiber in the diet is the key, along with exercise.
Anyone wanting to lose weight and maintain weight loss would be better advised to follow a healthy Mediterranean diet which already incorporates plenty of monounsaturated fatty acids, without the need for calorie counting. As with any calorie controlled diet the weight will pile back on when one begins to eat normally again.
The creators of the Flat Belly diet have decided the key to weight loss comes from eating foods high in monounsaturated fats. The foods which they claim are the key to weight loss are oils, olives, nuts, seeds, avocados and dark chocolate. Whilst these foods are do all contain MUFA’s there is no evidence that they will make your belly flat, and they are generally high in calories, but the Flat Belly diet adds them into a strictly calorie counted diet of 1600 per day. The foods are all satisfying and thus lower food cravings, apart from the dark chocolate.
The diet calls for one fatty acid to be included in each meal, and has lots of suggestions of how to do so, including mixing them with processed snacks. Flax seed oil can be added to milkshakes, dark chocolate chips to fat free Greek yogurt, and avocado chopped up and added to store bought salsa. Surprisingly the diet creators do credit flax seed oil with being high in omega 3 fatty acids, yet fail to suggest other foods which are also rich in these, such as egg yolks, sardines, herring, mackerel and eel.
The oils recommended by the Flat Belly diet are canola, flaxseed, peanut, walnut, safflower, sesame, sunflower, soybean and extra virgin olive. The latter is the only one used in the healthier Mediterranean diet and has the added benefit of oleic acid, also found in avocados, which is a preventative against breast cancer.
The Mediterranean use of olive oil is disregarded in the Flat Belly diet, but is widely used in everything. It is added to cooked vegetables, poured on salads, and used as a dip for bread. The Flat Belly diet strictly measures the amount of oil used to control the calories, but olive oil doesn’t need to be calorie counted by the teaspoon.
Nuts are added to many meals in the Flat Belly diet rather than eaten as a snack. Peanuts are legumes and an excellent source of protein, thus filling, but they won’t flatten the belly. Again it is the fact that they are strictly calorie counted which allows for their inclusion in a weight loss diet.
There is no evidence that the foods which the Flat Belly diet claims will lead to a flat belly will do so. They are all healthy foods and it is natural to replace sources of saturated fat with healthier monounsaturated fats for the overall health benefit. If your aim is to lose belly fat then including plenty of fiber in the diet is the key, along with exercise.
Anyone wanting to lose weight and maintain weight loss would be better advised to follow a healthy Mediterranean diet which already incorporates plenty of monounsaturated fatty acids, without the need for calorie counting. As with any calorie controlled diet the weight will pile back on when one begins to eat normally again.
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