The “Belly Off” Diet

The day after Super Bowl and all the festivities, eating, and drinking that this “holiday” requires.  Did you wake up all fuzzy headed, bloated, and hoarse from cheering on your favorite team?  Did you completely blow your diet plan that we all started on New Year’s Day.  Well, I certainly fell for the rivalry and fun and now am thinking of ways to get back on track with the battle of the bulge.

It is not too remarkable that one of the hot and spicy items searched for this morning was “The Belly Off Diet”.  This diet has been featured on the Men’s Health online community since 2002.  The “Belly Off! Club” has collectively lost over 2 million pounds since it was started.  This club achieved this phenominal feat by a combination of reducing intake of refined grains and sugar, portion control, exercise, and healthier eating.

The paper back book on this diet is scheduled for release on April 28 of this year.  It is written by Jeff Csatari and the editors of Men’s Health.  Not to be confused with The Flat Belly Diet written by the editors of Prevention Magazine, this diet plan is geared towards men’s weight loss while the Flat Belly Diet is targeted towards the fair ladies.

MSN actually did a preview of both of these diet plans, go to MSN Health and Fitness and enter both diets to review.

The Belly Off Diet is a well designed plan that features three satisfying meals a day with two snacks in between.  This plan encourages a high protein breakfast, a sensible lunch and varied dinner suggestions that keep the diet interesting.  As I talked about in an earlier post, low calorie and low carb diets don’t work that well and can actually be harmful to your body.  In that particular post I explained how these types of diets trigger the body’s metabolism into shutting down the weight loss that we first enjoyed at the onset of these plans.

The Belly Off Diet addresses this diet plateau by allowing a full calorie day once a week thereby insuring no weight loss plateau and so keeps your metabolism working toward your weight loss goals.  Every Tuesday is steak night with this plan accompanied through out the week with dinners such as Tex-Mex Chicken, Broiled BBQ Pork Chops, BBQ Chicken, Spicy Fish etc.  And it allows one beer a night on certain nights. Yay!

Breakfast  is varied between eggs, oatmeal, fruits, juice and coffee, lunch is usually light and the two snacks are a combination of fruit, yogurt, nuts, and popcorn.  My earlier post entitled “Pepper your nuts” explained how a handful of spicy nuts would dramatically decrease your appetite between meals.

Go and check out the 8 week meal plan that includes a daily meal plan, a weekly shopping list, recipes for all meals, and even a dining out guide which includes over 70 different dining facilities including Chili’s, Outback Steak House, Olive Garden, and Red Lobster just to name a few.

To check it out go to http://bellyoff.menshealth.com

To your health.

Clink!