Meals to Help Lose Belly Fat

Losing fat can be a long and difficult process involving exercise, healthy eating and determination. In the last few years, a new approach has emerged.There are ways to work with food, to combine it in different ways that can actually help you lose fat. Food no longer needs to be feared.

Fruits, Vegetables and Raw Eating

• The raw food diet is a style of eating in which all things consumed must never have been heated above 116 degrees F. This excludes all processed foods, and most foods that have been cooked using typical methods. By including raw foods in your diet, you keep the enzymes within the foods alive. The theory is that if the foods can digest themselves using their still-living enzymes, it will give the body the opportunity to work on other problems, for example, your belly fat. Most fruits and vegetables can be consumed raw and they are readily available at the grocery store or produce market. Most canned or frozen fruits and vegetables are not raw, and some are even coated in sugary syrup. Try a breakfast rich with apples, grapefruits, tomatoes and broccoli in the morning and you will notice a difference in your energy and your calories burned.

Foods to Include

• Saturated fat, the type most often from animals, has given fat a bad name for a long time. Recently, one of the other fats, monounsaturated fat, has become widely known for helping to fight fat. Foods with this type of fat have even been given a nickname, MUFAs (Monounsaturated Fatty Acids). Almonds and walnuts (which can also be eaten raw) are MUFAs that are quite easy to fit into any eating plan. They can be sprinkled on a salad or packed in a Ziploc bag. Some other MUFAs that should be incorporated in a diet are olive and flaxseed oil and avocados. Whole grains such as brown rice have also been shown to cut more belly fat than more refined grains. The calcium in low-fat milk and yogurt has a fat-burning effect, while the full-feeling from lean protein and eggs can satisfy your appetite more than a typical carbohydrate-centered meal.

How to Eat Them

• Eating five to six smaller meals will help speed up your metabolism as compared with the usual three-meals-a-day plan. The best ideas for these meals will combine several different belly fat burning foods all at the same time. A breakfast of raw fruit and a whole-grain-rich cereal might be followed by a second meal of low-fat yogurt with a handful of walnuts. For lunch, you could have a bowl of brown rice with carrots and a glass of milk on the side followed by a small salad and a grapefruit for the fourth meal. Lastly, your dinner might be a lean piece of garlic chicken with some guacamole on the side. How you want to combine these foods is completely up to you.

Foods to Avoid

• Extra carbohydrates that your body can't process will turn into fat. This goes for processed carbohydrates (like white bread), sugar snacks and cereals, excess alcohol, chocolate bars, and anything else that seems to be quite far away from natural. Also, the concept of five to six meals per day means smaller meals; it is not an excuse to have three dinners. If you can add in a lot of the aforementioned foods and eat them in moderation, you will burn belly fat at a much higher rate than you could have before.