Does the Flat Belly Diet or MUFA diet work for weight loss?

Welcome MUFA & Flat Belly Diet Searchers.  We have noticed a large percentage of our visits have been from people like you searching for MUFA.  So, We decided to revisit the MUFA / Flat Belly Diet.

With three questions for you:

• Are you following the Flat Belly Diet?
• What do you think of MUFA is it a fad diet or is it the next best thing since Protein Diets?
• How do you Balance MUFA vs. Calories?  Since, that’s the biggest challenge I have had.

Here’s my quick review for those of you new to the Flat Belly Diet.
Disclaimer: I have yet to complete the entire book, (I’ve only skimmed it).

Let’s review the basics of the Flat Belly Diet:

1. Have a calorie goal, they recommend 1600 calories/day
2. Eat MUFA at every meal.
3. Eat Often.
4. Manage your emotional eating.

Now:  Does the MUFA | Flat Belly Diet Really Work?

As we’ve said before at simpleweight, it does not matter what diet you are on, if you eat you less calories than you burn, then of course you will lose weight. When I wrote, Do I really eat 3790 calories a day, I learned that the average US person eats 3790 calories a day. Now, if you are a normal average person, and you go from eating 3790 calories to 1600 calories, then of course you will lose weight. So, restricting calorie intake is a key of any weight loss plan.

Now, the key for the Flat Belly Diet, is science research states by eating MUFA at every meal you will feel fuller longer and help to curb your appetite. If you are interested in the science, you can check out the British Journal of Nutrition (2003), 90:717-727 Cambridge University Press, specifically the article titled: Substitution of saturated with monounsaturated fat in a 4-week diet affects body weight and composition of overweight and obese men

Substituting dietary saturated fat with unsaturated fat, predominantly MUFA, can induce a small but significant loss of body weight and fat mass without a significant change in total energy or fat intake.

More science states that:

In conclusion, diets in which saturated fat is partially replaced by MUFA can achieve significant reductions in total and LDL-cholesterol concentrations, even when total fat and energy intakes are maintained.
Cholesterol reduction using manufactured foods high in monounsaturated fatty acids: a randomized crossover study

Okay, so you want to add MUFA to your diet, How can you do so?

Check How to add MUFA to breakfast, lunch, or dinner for weight loss?

The question as I stated above, is the challenge of balancing the 1600 calories a day with high calorie MUFA foods.

The other challenge is weight loss is both an emotional task as well as a physical task.  Physically is really the easy part:  Eat Less Food,  Exercise More.   Emotionally, weight loss is the difficult part.  With any lifestyle change, we have to very strong motivations for making the change.  The motivation to change must outweigh the difficulty in overcoming our predeliction for eating and emotional and pscychological attachment to unhealthy habits.  I’ve explored the topic of motivation many times here at simpleweight, and it can not be stated often enough.

You must think positively, manage expectations, create strong motivations, and make weight loss socially fun in order to sustain long term habitual change such as weight loss and weight management. For more information, I suggest you read:  7 steps to a positive and healthy lifestyle.

What are your motivations and how has the MUFA diet worked for you?

Your Fitness Bicycle Follows Your Habitual Inner Eye.

As my last post implied about restaurants, I was on vacation for a bit.

Upon returning from vacation, my writing time, my family time, my work productivity, my exercise habits, and my simpleweight development time have been competing for attention as demonstrated by my recent drop off in simpleweight posts. It’s amazing when one’s commitments begin to compete how people react.

• Some people buckle down, pick one thing and get right to it.
• Other people multi-task, and do little things from every piece.
• Other people become overwhelmed by the forest of projects that the tasks that are trees get lost and ultimately procrastination sets in.
• Other people trim their obligations.
• We all follow our Inner Eye trained by our Habits.

Since humans are creatures of habits, regardless of your response, all of us tend to slip in to old habits.  I know I have.  My eating quantity is up, my exercise is down, and my emotional state is directly related to that.  While reading the web as I love to do, I noticed this:

When the schedule gets squeezed, exercise and diet are the last things to cut from my daily routine.  –some commenter on some blog somewhere.

That’s a great mind-set.  Health and Fitness should be one of your top priorities.  I know I can help improve it.  In fact, I believe when you improve your diet and exercise, the rest of the commitments tend to fall in place.  It’s a balance between your passions, your fitness, and your spiritualism/science.  When one is of out whack, the rest of them follow suit.

Here’s a good analogy:  While driving a car or riding a bicycle, if you look to the right, you will start to move towards the direction you are looking.  It’s a balance.  The same came be said for our fitness habits.

If you let one of your habits veer off course, the rest of your habits will follow.  The reverse can be said.

For example, I noticed if I start exercising, I feel good, and then without thinking I start to become conscious of my eating habits.

Another example, a friend of mine and I went to a baseball game.  I ate a hot dog, and he ate a salad.  — Huh? A salad at a ball game?  Well, the backstory is the friend is highly motivated to eat healthy and exercise.  In no uncertain terms, his doctor said exercise and eat healthy.  Wow, what motivation.

Now, my friend asks, instead of how am I going to fit that run in,  how am I going to fit in everything around my running time.  The exercise time is non-negotiable.  By changing your self-questions, one changes their habits and ultimately creates the healthy balance.

Where is your inner eye looking?  How has that impacted your fitness habits?

7 steps to mix Weight Loss with Eating Out at Restaurants.

Steps to Weight Loss and Restaurants: Think, Read, Ask, Alter, Half, Slow, & Walk

It’s difficult to navigate the landscape of the over-sized, over-oiled, over-salted menus of today’s restaurants. In my opinion, mixing Weight-Loss with Restaurants is similar to mixing oil and water.

It’s much easier to prepare your own meals in portion sizes that you control what ingredients are being used. Having said that, one can still enjoy meals at restaurants and lose weight. It’s definitely possible, but more difficult.

A recent article in the Chicago Tribune describes Bernie Salazar’s, of Biggest Loser Fame, method for eating out and losing weight.

Bernie Salazar, who eats out twice a week, sometimes has half of his meal boxed up before the food ever gets to the table. And he asks them to keep it in the back—to avoid eating it right away. “Keep it out of sight,” he says. Do not have the other half sitting on the table with you. “A meal in a box is just a present!” he says, adding that he would be tempted to open it – and eat it – if it were sitting there with him.

Above all, he says, don’t be afraid to ask for food to be prepared the way you want it. “Would you rather offend the waiter or the cook by being picky or would you rather offend your heart?”

source: Trine Tsouderos, Chicago Tribune: A ‘Biggest Loser’s’ calorie-busting tips

Let’s break it down into steps we can repeat every-time we dine out.

7 tips for eating out and maintaining weight loss

1. Think before picking a restaurant. Try to find restaurants that don’t sacrifice taste in low-calorie dishes. Obviously, metropolitan areas like Chicago offer a large variety of restaurants to choose from, but in Paducah, KY, one might have less of a culinary choice.
2. Read and comprehend the menu. By actually reading the menu for comprehension, you’ll have to think about it. Consequently, if a starter sounds appetizing (then you’ll remember while reading) that you will have to exercise more later to compensate the increase in calories.
3. Ask questions! How is this prepared? What oil are our using? Is it fried or baked? How many calories are in this dish? Most restaurants will not divulge or conveniently choose not to know how many calories are in their menu items. By asking questions about how the food is prepared, you can make a better educated case into how many calories, carbs, fat, protein, nutrients are in the dish you are about to eat.
4. Ask the waiter, chef, to alter the dish to your dietary needs. In other words, ask them for no salt, or to bake the fish instead of frying it. Paraphrasing Salazar, its much better to offend the restaurant than to come to a premature death due to poor diet.
5. In the event that you do find yourself in a large-portion restaurant, while ordering your food, Ask the restaurant to half your order, and keep the doggie bag in the back as a gift for you when you leave the establishment. This way, you are not tempted to eat it, because its not on the table. Secondly, you’ll have a meal for home. I’ve suggested splitting the order in half in the past prior to eating, but I had not thought about asking the restaurant to split the order before even delivering the food to my table. That’s such a great idea.
6. Eat Slow during the meal taking it one bite at a time. Chew your food completely, savoring each bite. By making the meal a slow event, you enjoy the food and give your body time to digest the food. Consequently, you’ll eat less and get your money’s worth.
7. Take a walk after you eat to help with digestion. Exercise helps burn the calories. In fact, many experts suggest eating before and after a workout helps the body burn fat. I don’t go that far, but just the fact of walking around helps increase your activity and thus increases your Food Out.

What are your steps for maintaining weight-loss while eating at your favorite restaurant?

Help Wanted: Front End Designer Apply Within

Yes,  Simpleweight is looking for a Front End Designer willing to become a partner in our new Triumvirate Technology Team.  We solve problems with Technology.  Do you want to join us?

Here’s what we have?  We’re currently a team of two, Ryan and Scott.

We’ve always felt we’ve been missing someone.  We need a Designer.
Help us convert our  Duumvirate into a Triumvirate.

If you’ve read Getting Real, we’re fond of small talented, hungry teams.  We stayed small on purpose, but it’s time to grow.  We’ve got the Developer (Ryan), We’ve got the Sweeper (Scott),  We’re missing the Designer (Possibly You).  I know its odd, I read stories of different designers having difficulty find back-end developers.  Not us,  We have the developers, we need a Designer who is creative, effective, efficient, and an awesome Web Application User Interface Specialist.

However, we don’t just want any ordinary web designer. Here are our needs:

• You are a designer who is passionate about Design. You read the popular design blogs, but you stay true to yourself.  Our individual lives, jobs, family life take priority, but your passion is so strong, that you are designing in your spare time.

• You are a designer who writes well and thinks.  We often communicate via email/chat.  So, clear concise writing is imperative.  We feel good writing demonstrates creative thinking. Finally, good writing helps grow a business with blogging, twitter, friendfeed, etc.

• You are a designer who wants to learn, experiment, and do.  If you look at our post:  Why Build Simpleweight – Defining Simple Weight Success, our number one goal and our number two goal details learning.  We built simpleweight to learn about ourselves, to learn about entrepreneurship, to learn about weight loss, and to learn new technology.  Learning happens by doing and experimenting.  So you must be a learner and a doer.

• You are a designer who has a broad list of passions including but definitely not limited to Health, Fitness, or Weight Loss.  We’re trying to help large numbers of total strangers achieve a healthful weight loss balance.  However, we’ve got a number of other ideas in our ten webs project that we’d like help on.

• You are a designer who lives in the Northwest Suburbs of Chicago, but this is not really a requirement it is optional.

• You are a designer that is efficient yet exceptional with web and graphic design tools. We will be wowed by your ability to take designs and make them come to life into interfaces that people will want to use many times a day.

• Finally, You are a designer who is willing to work for FREE and become a partner in our Triumvirate. You think I’m kidding?   Simpleweight is more about helping others than making big dollars.  Yes, if we had 200 million users, we’d all be doing pretty good financially, but our hope is that those 200 million users are healthful and saving the economy money.  We’re not a non-profit company, we expect to make a profit.  Eventually, it is our desire for our websites, applications, and other projects to grow enough financially where we’d be able to decide whether we want full-time jobs or not.  Until that time comes, our profit is funneled back into the company to help more people.  We expect you to have a current income that is sustaining your lifestyle.

Now, we understand no one works for FREE.  What do you get in return for working on simpleweight?  You get an outlet for your passions: Design and Fitness.  You get to learn and grow your career.  You get experience that is unmatched in your current set-up, because you now become a ground-floor partner in a business that compliments your passions. You get untold rewards that are limited only in our collective creativity and ability to act.  How cool is that?  You also get some developers to help you take your ideas to market into real-live products. Yes, we’re open.  Our ideas become your ideas and vice versa.

Are we asking for too much?  We don’t think so.  If you do, then obviously, you’re not the right candidate.

Contact us – We’d love to hear from you, see your portfolio, or read your blog.  Tell us why you should become a member of our triumvirate?

New Diet Books of 2008 for weight loss

Today, 2008 is 7/12ths complete, and summer weight loss has only a month to go. It’s time to get back to basics and review those 2008 new years resolutions, goals, and weight loss articles that proliferated in January.

Time Magazine wrote a piece titled: Weighing the New Diet Books which does a good review of the 2008 diet books.

I’m amazed at all the diet books out there, and they keep coming. Of course, I am tempted to write my own diet book. In fact, I have two working titles and I’ve been brainstorming outlines for a while. Besides that, What are the New Notable Diet Books of 2008 for weight loss

1. Eat This, Not That!, By David Zinczenko with Matt Goulding, 304 pages.
2. How to Eat Like a Hot Chick, By Jodi Lipper and Cerina Vincent, 168 pages. (Such a short book, What! Do Hot Chicks not eat much ?)
3. Skinny Bitch in the Kitch, By Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin, 192 pages.
4. Slim for Live, By Dr. Gillian, 223 pages.
5. The GenoType Diet, By Dr. Peter J. D’Adamo with Catherin Whitney, 317 pages.
6. The All-New Atkins Advantage, By Dr. Stuart L. Trager with Colette Heimowitz, 362 pages.
7. The No-Crave Diet, By Dr. Penny Kendall-Reed and Dr. Stephen Reed, 224 pages.
8. The Spectrum, By Dr. Dean Ornish, 386 pages.
9. The Ultimate TEA Diet, By Mark “Dr. Tea” Ukra, 306 pages.
10. Women’s Health Perfect Body Diet, By Cassandra Forsthe 356 pages.

A couple of notables missing from Time Magazine’s list:

1. The Flat Belly Diet, by Liz Vaccariello
2. The 12 Second Sequence: Shrink Your Waist in 2 Weeks by Jorge Cruise, 256 pages.
3. The Advanced Mediterranean Diet: Lose Weight, Feel Better, Live Longer, 304 pages.

Let me give you a hint (since my book is not yet published). I think you are what you read, and you are what you eat. So, if you read books about science, you’ll become a scientist. If you read books about diet and nutrition, you’ll soon adapt those habits as well. So, you can never read too many books. You’ll always learn something. However, It does not matter how many diet books you read, you still need to DO! Action needs to conincide with your reading Exercise, Fitness, Weight Loss, Diet, or even Cooking Books. If you don’t do, you’ll never reap the benefits.

What are some of my books in my Library that I re-read every so often?

I still recommend the free Hack Diet Book as a great starting place. For other great books, I recommend the following:

• 8 Minutes in the Morning: A Simple Way to Shed up to 2 Pounds a Week Guaranteed by Jorge Cruise and Anthony Robbins
• The 3-Hour Diet: Lose up to 10 Pounds in Just 2 Weeks by Eating Every 3 Hours! by Jorge Cruise
• The Abs Diet: The Six-Week Plan to Flatten Your Stomach and Keep You Lean for Life by David Zinczenko and Ted Spiker
• Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think by Brian Wansink
• The Cardio-Free Diet by Jim Karas
• You: On A Diet: The Owner’s Manual for Waist Management by Mehmet C. Oz and Michael F. Roizen
• The Volumetrics Eating Plan: Techniques and Recipes for Feeling Full on Fewer Calories by Barbara J. Rolls

What about you? What is your favorite Diet or Fitness Book?

Categories : Diet Tags : , books, Diet, fitness, weight loss

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