The Flat Belly Diet is a new addition to the diet and weight loss industry but, truth be told – it isn’t a welcome addition. The Flat Belly Diet is not inherently bad or dangerous, it doesn’t recommend doing anything that your doctor or nutritionist wouldn’t be happy about but ultimately the Flat Belly Diet gives us no new information. It is basically a marketing scam created to help you burn money before you burn any fat!
I have no doubt that some people have had a modicum of success by using the Flat Belly Diet program and I do not dispute that within it there are some gems of weight loss knowledge. My reasons for believing that this is just another weight loss gimmick program as follows;
1. First you must buy The Flat Belly Diet book which costs a reasonable $31.95, the problem is the book is simply the first step in the program – if you want to continue you’ll have to pay $19.98 a month for a subscription.
2. The marketing of the Flat Belly Diet book has been excessive with the authors appearing on numerous TV shows and giving countless interviews.
3. The website is extremely slick offering huge promises and even featuring a virtual belly flattening service where you can upload your picture and their expert team will show you how you’ll look after you have achieved your weight loss goals by following the Flat Belly Diet. This service is absolutely free of course! It is an ingenious way to get your contact details!
4. One of the authors has claimed that they have found “the cure for belly fat!” Anyone suggesting that they have found a cure for anything should be treated with skepticism.
5. The Flat Belly Diet claims that by using it you are able to hone in on belly fat, if you have read some of the articles on this site you will know that ‘honing in’ and losing fat on any one area of the body is absolutely impossible. When you lose fat, you lose it from all over your body, not just one place.
The reason that the Flat Belly Diet makes such claims is simply down to the fact that it is great marketing! Belly fat has been shown to cause negative health effects and everyone would love to have a flat stomach. As with other severe calorie restriction diet any initial fat loss will be quickly offset when you come off the diet program and that isn’t good news for those of your looking for permanent fat loss!
6. The Flat Belly Diet is based on a regime of calorie restriction. The idea is you eat four meals a day, each consisting of 400 calories. So you are eating 1600 calories per day, far below anyone’s maintenance level – there is nothing new here! Any regular dieters will tell you that they have been counting calories since they started – the problem is, this kind of regular calorie restriction is not an optimal way to lose fat consistently – your starvation mode will kick in after a sustained reduction in calories. What’s more calorie counting is damn hard work!
7. So on the Flat Belly Diet you need to be counting your 400 calories for each meal, if this wasn’t difficult enough you also need to be consuming a source of MUFA with each meal. MUFAs are Mono unsaturated fatty acids and are part of the family of ‘good fats’. Foods that contain MUFAs include nuts and avocados, whole-grain wheat and oatmeal as well as many different oils.
If you have any kind of expertise in nutrition you’ll know that these ‘good fats’ are extremely healthy and I am not disputing that – what I am disputing is the fact that these types of fatty acids need to be included in every meal – they do not! My view is the reason this is advocated is simply for marketing purposes – it’s the little bit of magic that sells the product!
8. Finally, the Flat Belly Diet claims that you don’t have to exercise to get great results! Every man and his dog knows how important exercise is if you want to stay healthy. I don’t care how good your nutrition is, if you aren’t physically active then you aren’t going to get the kind of optimal fat loss results that you are looking for. Exercise and nutrition go hand in hand, weight loss is about changing your daily habits for the better.
Well there are my reasons as to why I think the Flat Belly Diet is a scam. Of course eating less is necessary if you are seriously seeking weight loss but you don’t need to limit yourself to 4 400 calorie meals per day for the rest of your life. Eating plenty of MUFAs is a good idea but they are not the “antidote to belly fat”.
If you get involved with the Flat Belly Diet program I am sure you will see a reduction in weight in the short term whilst you are excited and motivated but over the long haul I would suggest that all the counting of calories and adherence to the ‘rules’ will lead to you quitting the diet and falling back into old habits.
There is no miracle cure for belly fat, I’m sorry but that is the real truth. The good news though is that it is definitely possible to lose a lot of weight from your belly fast and keep it off for good. If you are interested in that I suggest you invest your hard earned cash in a program such as Truth About Abs which is a high quality exercise program rather than waste it on a hyped up marketing exercise like the Flat Belly Diet.
Good luck with your weight loss and feel free to share any of your experiences with the Flat Belly Diet or with indeed any diet by posting a comment here.
