Eat Fat, Lose Weight with Flat Belly Diet

August 9, 2009 by admin
Filed under: Miscellaneous

Prevention Magazine has a Flat Belly Diet that was released with great fanfare and as if it was a new concept. It’s one worth repeating. Kudos to them for revealing a truth about food that should be self-evident but that we overlook. We need fat. There are good fats. God put all sorts of great foods on the earth that we’ve overlooked because there has been this ‘low-fat’ mentality for so long.

The Flat Belly Diet is based primarily on mono-unsaturated fatty acids (abbreviated MUFAs).

As stated on Prevention’s website: ‘There are five major categories of MUFAs: (1) oils, (2) nuts and seeds, (3) avocado, (4) olives, and (5) chocolate. Eating one serving of any of these foods at every meal will help reduce your accumulation of dangerous belly fat; control your calorie intake and you’ll lose inches and pounds, too–especially around your waistline.

There are two different types of fat: subcutaneous and visceral. Subcutaneous is right under your skin. You can see it and pinch it and you have a little everywhere that you have skin. You may have a lot on your waist or your backside.

Some subcutaneous fat is necessary but too much of it can be bad and is usually a visible sign of being overweight or obese. Subcutaneous fat is the first to go when you follow a diet rich in MUFA’s along with an exercise program and overall healthy diet.

The second type of fat (visceral fat) is much more dangerous and harder to lose. Visceral fat (which gets its name from viscera, which refers to the internal organs in the abdomen) resides deep within the torso, wrapping itself around your heart, liver, and other major organs. In fact, it’s possible to be relatively thin and still have too much visceral fat. That’s why it’s sometimes referred to as ‘hidden’ belly fat.’ Excess visceral fat can subtract years from your life.

Visceral fat has been linked to a long list of adverse health conditions, including:

High blood pressure, stroke, and heart disease
High cholesterol
Diabetes
Breast cancer
Dementia

One of the main reasons visceral fat is so deadly is because of its role in inflammation, a natural immune response that has lately been tied to almost every chronic disease there is. Visceral fat secretes precursors to an inflammatory chemical that helps fuel the systemic process that exacerbates early symptoms of disease.

In fact, according to a study published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, visceral fat may have a greater impact on the cardiovascular health of older women than does overall obesity. Danish researchers found that women with excessive belly fat had a greater risk of atherosclerosis than those whose fat was stored mostly in their hips, thighs, and buttocks. Here’s why:

The proximity of visceral fat to your liver boosts production of LDL cholesterol (the ‘bad’ one), which collects in your arteries and forms plaque, a waxy substance.

Over time, this waxy plaque becomes inflamed, causing swelling that narrows the arteries, restricting the passage of blood.

The narrowing passageways increase blood pressure, straining your heart and potentially damaging tiny capillaries.

The inflammation further increases your risk of blood clots, which can break loose and cause stroke.

But it gets worse. Visceral fat also contributes to insulin resistance, an early precursor to diabetes. Insulin resistance is a condition in which cells do not respond to insulin and the pancreas is forced to increase production in order to clear the bloodstream of glucose. Over time, insulin resistance can lead to full-blown diabetes, which can severely comprise the entire circulatory system and cause long-term issues with vision, memory, and wound healing.

As if that weren’t enough, a Kaiser Permanente study comparing people with different levels of belly fat showed that those who had the most belly fat were 145 percent more likely to develop dementia compared with people with the least amount of belly fat. Why? Inflammation again, suggest investigators.

These science-based studies should be reason enough to motivate you to shed your belly fat forever. But even if you reduce calories and exercise regularly, you can still be left with too much hidden visceral fat. What is the answer? According to Prevention, the answer is eating the right kind of …fat. Studies have shown that MUFAs, are the key to shedding both subcutaneous and the deadly visceral fact. It is these five fats that create the corner stone of the Flat Belly Diet.

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