Belly fat or subcutaneous fat is a natural place for fat to be stored. It is easy to carry there and hard to get rid of because your body sees it as a great energy resource. But it isn’t just the fat that you see that is dangerous it’s the fat that exists around your organs behind your belly, the visceral fat that can cause great health risks like colon cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes.

What causes this type of fat?

One of the main culprits of belly fat is Trans fat, which is man made fat that is put into foods. This seems to be worse than any other type of fat for stretching your waist. Another problem is your sedentary lifestyle and your eating habits. Lack of sleep can also play a part in gaining weight since sleep deprivation cuts down on Leptin, which is a appetite suppressant.

How to get rid of belly fat.

Simply eating less, especially trans fat, is the easy answer. But to really be effective you must try to eat smaller meals each day, say 5 small meals instead of 3 big meals. And of course you must incorporate some kind of exercise program, walking is a great way to start.

Losing weight is more a mental exercise than anything else. We know, or we should know what to eat and we should know how much to eat. But why don’t we? Habits are hard to break. The habit of using food to make us feel better and the habit of eating when we have nothing else to do are habits that must be broken in order to lose weight.

Maybe it is 2 in the afternoon on Saturday, nothing is on TV and you have no plans to do anything, you decide that it is a good time to snack. Are you hungry? No, but you always have a snack around 2. That’s fine if the snack is fruit or any other healthy snack.

Unfortunately the snack may be chips, cookies or anything else that might be fattening. Why not the apple or low fat yogurt as a snack? Your mind just can’t get past the idea that junk food tastes better then fruit. A lifetime of bad decisions makes you reach for the cookies.

Can you change? Will the change be easy? You can change and with the right mindset you can eat properly. Two things that have to change, one that boredom is not a reason for eating and two healthy snacks can taste as good as junk food. You need to write a note to yourself and put it in a visible place in the kitchen saying that boredom is not a reason for eating. I know that sounds corny, but it is simple and it can remind you if you get a little forgetful.

As for the junk food, think exactly why you prefer junk food, it’s the sweet or fattening taste and the habit of eating them. Oranges and apples are sweet too; give them a try or any other fruit that you want. Remember it is a habit to eat junk food; it can be a habit to eat the right foods.

Tell yourself that you are going to try it for a week. Each day write down the snacks you ate and why you ate them. At the end of the week, look over what you have written. Eating healthy snacks makes sense and you really know that. The taste of healthy foods or snacks can be as enjoyable as junk food and you know that too.

Think about it and give healthy snacks a try.

The chocolate diet works on 2 premises, one that chocolate is a healthy food source that contains antioxidants that help with heart disease and high blood pressure. The other premise is that most people love chocolate and it would be very difficult if not impossible to eliminate chocolate from their diet. This all makes sense, but surely people with a sweet tooth and who want to really lose weight can find a substitute for chocolate. As for the miraculous powers of chocolate, I am also sure that there are other foods that are just as helpful.

One important note is that the chocolate that you consume will be through a chocolate diet shake, not candy bars.

The calories allowed on this diet are around 1000, which isn’t much, you better hope that the chocolate shakes either fill you up or slow down your metabolism. There isn’t really any proof of that.

As always, it is never a good idea for a diet to concentrate on one type of food, especially if that food is chocolate.

She wasn’t too upset when she found out that she only lost a pound. One pound is better than no pounds. The problem that she is going to face from here on out is to find the time to exercise which she didn’t do much of this week because of scheduling issues and her being sick. She knew this would be a problem because I don’t get home till late and she has to pick our son up from school, go home make dinner and help him with his homework. And on Tuesday he has to be at scouts and Wednesday it is choir practice. She isn’t complaining but she is just going to have to find some time to exercise.

One of the folks at Weight watchers told her to break up her exercising during the week. That is her plan and we will see how it goes.

The 3 day diet has been around since the mid 80’s. It promises quick weight loss up to 10 pounds although most of that weight will be water pounds. The proponents of this diet are quick to tell you not to go beyond three days with this diet. Eat your regular diet for 4 or 5 days before beginning another round of the 3 day diet.

The key to this diet is to make sure to exactly follow the diet, which in under 1000 calories a day. That’s not many calories. So after 3 days of it you will probably be very hungry and ready to pig out.

Here is the menu:
Day 1
Breakfast
Black coffee or tea, with 1-2 packets Sweet & Low or Equal
1/2 grapefruit or juice
1 piece toast with 1 tablespoon peanut butter
Lunch
1/2 cup tuna
1 piece toast
Black coffee or tea, with 1-2 packets Sweet & Low or Equal
Dinner
3 ounces any lean meat or chicken
1 cup green beans
1 cup carrots
1 apple
1 cup regular vanilla ice cream
Day 2
Breakfast
Black coffee or tea, with 1-2 packets Sweet & Low or Equal
1 egg
1/2 banana
1 piece toast
Lunch
1 cup cottage cheese or tuna
8 regular saltine crackers
Dinner
2 beef franks
1 cup broccoli or cabbage
1/2 cup carrots
1/2 banana
1/2 cup regular vanilla ice cream
Day 3
Breakfast
Black coffee or tea, with 1-2 packets Sweet & Low or Equal
5 regular saltine crackers
1 ounce cheddar cheese
1 apple
Lunch
Black coffee or tea, with 1-2 packets Sweet & Low or Equal
1 boiled egg
1 piece toast
Dinner
1 cup tuna
1 cup carrots
1 cup cauliflower
1 cup melon
1/2 cup regular vanilla ice cream

 Our bodies produce a fat, a brown fat, that doesn’t store energy like the yellow or white fat, this fat helps burn energy. The function of brown fat is to mainly maintain body temperature. Interesting enough brown fat cells become more active in cold weather and that women more than men have this type of cells.

 Newborns have brown fat cells located on their back to help them to keep warm. Adults don’t have as much but they still have brown fat and it is located around the neck. The amount of brown fat may be less than a half ounce.

 What is important is the fact that brown fat cells may be the key to reducing weight and research is being done to find ways to produce brown fat cells.

 Dr. Lyons asserts that white or yellow fat can be replaced by the good brown fat through an exercise plan that he devised. He also has diet that includes fat in it.  Dr. Lyons exercise regimen emphasizes weight training as opposed to cardio training. He also advocates eating smaller meals, which a lot of diets advise today, and he encourages getting a lot of sleep.

Walter Voegtlin developed the diet in 1975. His theory behind the Caveman diet is that our ancient ancestors were a healthy lot who ate mostly meat that they hunted and very little carbohydrates. Voegtlin argued that we like our cave dwelling ancestors are carnivores who are supposed to eat meat and food that can be gathered. Examples of the gathered foods are herbs, fruits, nuts and vegetables. What can’t be gathered is spaghetti and bread, in other words no grain products were eaten in the Paleolithic time and you shouldn’t eat them either. And you can forget about diary products like cheese, milk, sugar and no ice cream. I am sure that there isn’t any cave wall etching of cavemen eating ice cream.

The diet does provide for a lot of protein with all the meat that is consumed. And it is an interesting idea that we as humans are somehow connected genetically with the diet of the caveman. Another argument for this diet is that our modern diets open us up to disease like cancer that the caveman didn’t have to worry about.

But all this goes against eating a sensible diet consisting of the 5 food groups. Any over abundance of one particular group of food can’t be that healthy for you.

But surprisingly there is a lot of support for this diet. Ultimately you (and your doctor) would have to decide whether it was right for you.

The cookie diet was created by Dr. Sanford Siegal in 1975. Dr. Siegal is a physician and a weight loss expert. The diet is simply eating six ‘special’ cookies each day. Not just any cookies but ones that Dr Siegal developed and ones that he will sell to you. There is also shakes that work along with the cookies.

Back to the diet, six cookies each day and a reasonable dinner and that’s it. If you read The cookie diet website this particular way of losing weight has been a complete success. There are even rip off cookie diets that are trying to cash in on Dr. Siegal success.

One problem that I see is that the total calories for the day are only 800. You can lose weigh fast but that many calories is awfully low. Another problem is the lack of fruit and vegetables, any good diet should have lots of fruits and vegetables. And one website suggested that the cookies didn’t taste very good.

Cookies that don’t taste good! I couldn’t put up with that.

Like other fad diets the cookie diet loses the weight fast which means you will probably will put the weight back on fast.

As you probably guessed the consumption of grapefruits is prominent in this diet. Grapefruit juice along with breakfast, grapefruit juice along with lunch and for a little variety a half of grapefruit or grapefruit juice with dinner. But not grapefruit juice for the bedtime snack (I guess that would be a little too much)

As for what you eat with your grapefruit juice, meats, fish and fresh vegetables are okay, but starches are off limit. And you have to drink a lot of water each day along with that grapefruit juice. (Lots of trips to the bathroom)

Why grapefruits?

Apparently the reasoning behind the large amount of grapefruit juice is the theory that grapefruits are fat burners. There isn’t any evidence to this. But grapefruits are a good source of vitamin C and fiber.

It is never a good idea to go on any diet that promotes quick weight loss such as the grapefruit diet. You might loss the weight quickly but you will surely gain it back just as fast.