Truth about belly fat loss is hard to find. Trainers, doctors, nutritionists, and fitness experts of all kinds offer conflicting information. My search for reliable advice often takes me to the scientific literature, although research scientists also disagree on how to lose fat and keep it off.
The Basic Research
Fortunately, several research-based books have been published recently that provide some clear direction on why people become overweight and what they can do about getting back to being slim and healthy. If you want to follow my path, here is a short list of the best of those books, all of which are available at Amazon. I wish everyone could pore through them as I have, although I realize that these books add up to a lot of heavy reading. Here they are, in case you are interested:
Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease (by Gary Taubes)
Mastering Leptin: Your Guide to Permanent Weight Loss and Optimum Health (by Byron J. Richards and Mary Guignon Richards)
The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss and Long-term Health (by T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell II)
Healthy at 100: The Scientifically Proven Secrets of the World’s Healthiest and Longest-Lived Peoples (by John Robbins)
Grow Young with HGH: The Amazing Medically Proven Plan to Reverse Aging (by Ronald Klatz)
Body by Science: A Research Based Program to Get the Results You Want in 12 Minutes a Week (by Doug McGuff John Little)
A Common Thread: Hormone Balance
The common theme that underlies all of these research-oriented books involves the granddaddy (or grandmommy) of all hormones, human growth hormone (HGH), followed closely by its sidekick, insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1). When you produce the right amount of these, all other hormones tend to get in line and stay in balance. The result for you is lower body fat, more lean body mass, stronger bones, better skin tone, more energy, stronger disease resistance…and a whole host of benefits that simply add up to this: anti-aging.
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could turn back the clock and lose weight (and keep it off) as easily as you did in your 20s? Or, put another way, go back physiologically to a time when you didn’t even gain weight like you do now?
Fortunately, all this is possible because HGH and IGF-1 levels, which drop off as you get older and as you gain weight (a deadly double whammy!), can be enhanced naturally with just a few simple strategies involving diet and exercise. You can glean this information if you study the books in the list above. However, one strategy stands out as the most overlooked one in all the most popular diet and exercise programs today. Scientists call it intermittent fasting.
How To Put It All Together
Research on the benefits of intermittent fasting for losing fat and recovering youthful health is appearing more frequently in the scientific literature. You can even find a lot of commentary on it through a Google search. The nice thing for you, however, is that you don’t have to comb the scientific literature or wade through mounds of websites that all seem to be quoting each other on this topic.
All the explanations and how-to of getting the optimum results out of intermittent fasting are already available in one place, in a book called EatStopEat (isn’t that clever?). I’ve taken a look at the information behind this book myself, which leads me to recommend it to everyone I know who is still dealing with unnecessary weight problems.
In fact, to be honest, I am so impressed with the advice on belly fat loss in this book that I’ve partnered with the author to spread the word, in return for a small commission when someone purchases it through the link to his website here:
He provides a lot of great insight into fat loss that I have not seen anywhere else. So take a look to see for yourself, and you will get a good idea of what I mean.
Constant Dieting Is Unnecessary
Have you ever seen those ridiculous marketing ads for popular diet programs that claim you can eat whatever you want and still lose weight? The surprise is that they offer a small element of truth, even though they miss the boat on what you can actually do.
The nugget that they don’t tell you is that dieting is important, although doing so every day is unnecessary. You have to really know what you are doing to succeed by dieting on alternate days, though. That is where Jon Benson steps in with The Every Other Day Diet. His ideas are a mixture of pleasant surprises and common sense.
It is a nice feeling to know that you do not have to deprive yourself of your favorite eating pleasures every single day of your life just to keep the fat off. However, you do have to do things right to eat your favorite foods and keep your target weight for the rest of your life.
Rather than explaining the details myself, I encourage you to see what Jon himself has to say, then decide how his ideas can benefit you like they have benefited me. Go here now:
By the way, this applies to cavewomen, too!
Doesn’t it sound like fun? From what I know, this is the most enjoyable way to get your body fat composition down to the right level and keep it there for good.
That’s It!
As you can see by what the EatStopEat and The Every Other Day Diet programs can do for you, losing fat and keeping it off can be easy and rewarding when you know what to do.
All the best,
Dr. D