Keeping an eye on the calories you consume every day calls for a high level of discipline. Lose your belly diet requires a careful watch on the foods you consume daily. Read on to know the merits and demerits of this way of eating.
Lose your belly diet recommends you to consume monounsaturated fats derived from nuts, plant foods including olive oil, etc. The start of this diet plan makes you go without salt and also keeps you away from foods that trigger gas or bloating (foods such as onions, beans, broccoli, etc.). You may also have to cut down on carbs – especially those supplied from bananas, pasta and the like. At this very start of this diet plan, your daily consumption of calories must not exceed 1,200 calories.
Soon after that, the diet plan expands to let you consume upto 1,600 calories per day. This is broken as 400 calories per meal. It is also important for you to have a meal once in 4 hours. The diet restricts usage of salt in any of the foods you consume. For pre-packed foods, you need to watch out the sodium levels before eating them. Lose your belly diet allows you to have monounsaturated fats as part of your meal. However, you need to exercise needful control on the portions of fats you intake.
Understanding “lose your belly diet”
This diet may involve a sizeable cut in your daily consumption of calories. This can be achieved either by working out a lot and also be simply eating less. Losing your belly is a direct effect of consuming lesser calories, and monounsaturated fats; such a diet does not practically add any additional load to your waistline. The diet has a lot of semblance and even mirrors the Mediterranean diet, which is widely considered good for your cardiac health. Intake of monounsaturated fats can reduce your bad cholesterol levels (known as LDL) and thus can slim the chances of strokes or heart attacks.
The positive aspects
Lose your belly diet does not cost you much. Your grocery bills may see a mild spike – especially due to the intake of avocados and nuts. On the other hand, you might also make some savings by cutting down on foods with saturated fats (especially meat, other animal fats and similar food products). It is possible for vegans as well as vegetarians to follow the diet. There are ample substitutes provided for such people in this diet plan. Its low salt intake can boost your cardiac wellbeing.
The diet also includes drinking 2 liters of fluids – such as water. You may add fresh ingredients such as mint, cucumber or lemon to your drink.
Limitations
Of the two types of fat, subcutaneous fat is found underneath your skin while visceral fats are seen deep inside, around your various organs. The diet assumes that reducing visceral fat is the toughest thing to do. But in reality, this type of fat is relatively easier to reduce through workouts, increasing the consumption of complex carbs instead of refined carbs and by the intake of monounsaturated as well as polyunsaturated fats. This diet has another limitation wherein it only focuses on the intake of monounsaturated fats with no need for you to do workouts!
Another limitation is it equates the slimming of your waist line as a measure for weight loss. It remains silent on the reduction of visceral fats. It may be because of the need for highly expensive tests to measure the visceral fats. In other words, lose your belly fat has no other tangible indicators to show how much fat has been reduced.
The diet also assumes that consumption of monounsaturated fats can give you a satiated feeling. But this is not scientifically proven to be right. The popular nutrient found in food items that can give you a filled-up feeling is protein. The diet neither mentions the intake of proteins nor the quantum of proteins taken per day.
This diet also does not tell you about what kind of carbohydrates is to be consumed. The need to choose complex carbohydrates over refined carbs is not emphasised.
Last but not least, reduction in the intake of calories this diet suggests does not depend on your weight, your age or height. Such an averaged-out way to reduce daily consumption of calories may not fetch long terms success. It may at best provide you with some short terms results.
Above all, you may need to consult your doctor if you are diabetic. Your blood sugar levels will need to be closely monitored. With such diets, you run a big risk of hitting a very low level of blood sugar.
In sum, lose your belly diet calls for a complete change in your diet. Unless you are prepared to make drastic changes, this approach to flatten your belly may not be good for you. If your weight loss goals are not very ambitious, you are advised to follow a simple weight loss regimen including regular workouts and staying away from processed foods.
Education: Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT) from New York University. Experience: 5 years of experience writing for physiotherapy and sports medicine blogs, providing expert insights on injury prevention and rehabilitation.
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