What foods can help me lose belly fat?

Increase the fiber and whole grains in your diet; include omega 3 fatty acids, green tea, and alcohol in moderation, turmeric, jojoba beans, seeds, and coffee.

During my weight loss journey one of the most valuable lessons I learned was how some of the foods we eat actually make us fat while others actually help our metabolism and decrease inflammation.

There are five food felons that I learned to avoid and it was actually avoiding foods more than eating certain ones that helped me lose not just general fat but the fat around my middle known as the omentum or the dangerous belly fat.

The five food felons can be found by learning to look at the nutritional information on the packet as well as the ingredient list. I avoid all foods that contain the dangerous five outlined by the YOUdocs in their book YOU ON A DIET. Part of my mission as their YOUnurse has been to educate everyone to learn to read labels and avoid the following foods:

• enriched, bleached or processed flours
• simple sugars
• high fructose corn syrup or any syrups
• saturated fats (found in animal fats and palm and coconut oils)
• trans fat ( partially hydrogenated vegetable oils)

Learning to replace these foods with natural sugars like honey, agave or pure maple syrup was the next step. Reducing my animal fat by eating white meats like chicken or fish and eating more plant based meals instead of meat also helped me to start losing the belly fat. Switching to whole grains, brown rice and avoiding the processed foods and food additives was also key to my success.

If you are trying to lose your spare tire or that dangerous belly fat, start by learning to read labels. Become aware of which foods trigger the hormones that lead to belly fat and which foods like the whole grains, high fiber foods and healthy fats actually help reduce inflammation and you to lose that spare tire forever. Start dumping your fridge and cupboards of all those foods that have the five food felons. My husband thinks the worst and the one that made the most difference in our lives was the high fructose corn syrup which is in diet salad dressings, breads, cereals snacks and so many of the daily food items that you may need to slowly replace your cupboards and give the bad stuff away.

You can never go wrong with stocking foods like legumes, brown rice, wheat pastas, beans etc. They will stretch your food dollar and be healthy too!