Introduction
My name is Gerald Smith and I have been a personal trainer for over 15 years and I have helped many people to lose weight over the last few years.
The information I am sharing with you in this article is the result of years of research from my studies at university and my own personal experiences. I have tried many diets over the years to ensure that my knowledge isn’t just theoretical.
I have tried the Vegan diet, the ketogenic diet as well as eliminating certain food groups to understand what type of diet will give the best aesthetic look to the body.
I am sharing my top 10 tips to get a flat stomach, based on information I have discovered throughout my career.
This article has two main sections. In the first section I will be sharing 10 easy lifestyle tips that you can use to get a flat stomach. In the second part of the article I will be sharing with you foods that may be causing you to store fat, and what foods you should be eating to help you lose weight faster, so lets dive in.
Ten Tips To Get The Most From These Crazy Abdominal Workouts
If you are trying to get a flat stomach a good guideline is to try to eat no more than 1500 calories for women and 1700 for men! Do not eat less than 1200 calories as this is the minimum calorie intake required to fuel your metabolism! If you eat less than this then any weight lost will be from water and muscle rather than from fat and although you may have a slimmer stomach, there is likely to still be fat that you can’t shift!
Eat small regular meals to help regulate your blood sugar levels and insulin production. Regulating insulin production is the major concern when it comes to weight management. Eating regular meals in the right proportion of protein/carbohydrates/fats, is the way to make real changes in body composition (see no. 8 for the correct proportions!).
Every time you eat your body requires calories to digest the food! This is called the Thermal Effect of Food (TEF). Eating more often (every few hours) will burn off more calories from the TEF. However, DO NOT OVEREAT! Aim for around 1500 (women) for weight loss and 2000 calories for weight maintenance!
Keep a food diary for one week and rank how you feel at the end of each meal. You may be shocked into how many takeaways you eat, or how many units of alcohol you consume, or how little fruit and veg you eat! A poor diet will quickly become obvious during exercise when fatigue, poor recovery, and even injury occur.
Aim to drink at least 2 litres of water a day, more if you are exercising. Your body’s ability to utilise fat as a fuel is restricted when you are in a dehydrated state!
If you are feeling hungry, drink a glass of water (speeds up metabolism) and wait 10 minutes; if you’re still feeling hungry, eat! Your body cannot distinguish between hunger and thirst so you may be taking in extra calories when your body just needs a drink!
Chew your food and eat slowly! By eating slowly, you will consume fewer calories, enough to lose 20 pounds without doing anything! This is because it takes approx. 20 minutes for your brain to register you are full. If you eat fast you continue eating past the point where you are full, taking in extra calories.
Eat a higher amount of protein. Protein has a greater thermal effect on the body, which means that it takes more calories to burn protein then it does to burn carbohydrates or fats. Also, it will help you to maintain your muscle mass, which is essential to improve metabolism. It has been shown that the rate of which you lose weight on a high protein diet is faster compared to if you eat a lower protein diet. However, this does not mean that you stop eating carbohydrates like in the Atkins diet. You can eat carbohydrates as long as they are from brown whole grain products, or oats. So eat things like brown bread, porridge, use brown flour instead of white. You want to eat a ratio of 1 to 1 of protein to carbohydrates, and 30% fat.
Download a calorie counting app like my fitness pal on android or apple. It will surprise you how many calories you are eating. Also, it will allow you to track your macro nutrient intake. Macro nutrient intake is the percentage of fats, carbohydrates and protein you consume from foods in your daily diet.
10. Try Cutting Out These Food Groups
Cut out wheat (breads, biscuits, cereals) and cow’s products for 14 days. Some people have wheat and/or lactose intolerance (the ability to breakdown milk sugars in the stomach) The result of this is that the food causes stress and intolerances in the intestines and stomach area. The result of any stress is inflammation, and guess where?? Yep, the stomach! Not only will you lose a lot of weight if you cut these out for 14 days, you’ll find you stomach and love handles will reduce significantly. Slowly, introduce some wheat or dairy back in after the 14 days, but if you notice any stomach pains, gas, nausea etc then you know you have an intolerance to that “food” source
21 Foods That Will MELT AWAY Stomach Fat!
You will struggle to get a flat stomach if you are earing the wrong foods.
For example, you may have lost some weight around your body but still have a pocket of fat around your stomach that you can’t get rid of.
This may be because you’re intolerant to wheat, milk, or even chicken.
How to Test for food intolerances
We all can’t eat the same foods. Some of us can have foods that are acidic like orange juice, while other people will have a bad reaction to acidic foods.
For this reason try to avoid foods which you are intolerant too.
Food intolerances can cause you to suffer from headaches, fatigue, mouth ulcers, wind, depression, stomach ulcers, make you bloated, or can add to weight gain.
Food intolerance is when your immune system responds to foods which are eaten regularly like wheat or milk over a long period of time.
A higher amount of these foods are needed to build up in your system and you can be intolerant to any food. Food intolerance must not be mistaken for a food allergy as the two are different.
If someone is allergic to nuts only a small amount is needed to cause a reaction.
It can cause their tongue to swell and eyes to bulge and the affect is immediate, while with food intolerance the foods you are intolerant to takes a longer time for the body to react to the foods, and the symptoms can vary in severity.
Some people try to test for food intolerance by doing finger prick tests, but these tests are rarely accurate, in my opinion, and don’t work.
The best way to find out whether you are intolerant to foods is to complete an elimination diet. There are two phases to this, and it lasts 2 months in total.
Keep a diary to record how you feel on a day to day basis.
Stage 1: Food Exclusion Diet (4 Weeks long)
Allowed | Not allowed |
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Foods you are allowed to eat
- Wholemeal bread
- Milk
- Butter
- Most types of cheese
- Shredded or puffed wheat
- Cereals that have no sugar or colouring
- Any fresh, unprocessed meat
- Any fresh, unprocessed fish
- Potatoes
- Rice
- Beans
- Lentils
- Green leafy vegetables and salads
- Any fresh fruit, except pineapple and papaya
- Pastry – if homemade
- Unsweetened fruit juice
- Herb teas, except mate’ and redbush
Not allowed
- Alcoholic drinks, including alcohol free beers and wine
- Food cooked in beer, wine, etc
- Coffee
- Tea, including green tea, jasmine tea etc
- Cola drinks
- Chocolate
- Sugar and all sugar containing foods (read food labels to determine which foods don’t have sugar, things like low fat yogurt and even baked beans have sugar contained)
- Artificial sweeteners
- Vinegar and pickles (except in small quantities)
- Margarine
- All food additives
- Smoked fish or meat
- Bacon and ham
- Continental sausages
- Very ripe cheeses
- Take away food
- Restaurant food (except very occasionally once a fortnight)
- Bran
- Any very salty food
- Aspirin and related drugs
- Curries and other spicy foods
What may happen next
It’s possible that you feel worse after the first few days, but don’t stop. This is just a side effect like having withdrawal symptoms, remember that it will get better if you hang in there.
If you feel a lot better after stage 1, then you may not need to go onto phase 2, but as most people are intolerant to wheat it is worth giving it a shot.
However if you don’t go onto phase two then try reintroducing the foods one week at a time to see which ones could be causing problems.
Stage 2: food exclusion diet (3 Weeks Long)
Allowed | Not allowed |
· Lamb, turkey, pork, duck, goose, rabbit (all fresh and unprocessed) |
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Any fresh vegetables |
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You should still be eating the stage one diet and should have completed at least one month of it before moving on to this stage.
Foods which you are allowed
- Lamb, turkey, pork, duck, goose, rabbit (all fresh and unprocessed)
- Chickpeas: also beans and lentils (but not if you have bowel symptoms)
- Any nuts that you do not normally eat very often
- Pure vegetable oil
Not allowed
- Bread
- Wheat, rye, barley, oats, maize (corn, sweet corn etc)
- Rice (if you eat this regular
- Beef and chicken
- Milk, butter, yoghurt and cheese (if you find that you are sensitive to milk, you can substitute this with goats milk at the end of the exclusion phase)
- Margarine
- Eggs
- Soya
- Pineapple and Papaya
- Oranges, lemons, grapefruit etc.
- Marmite and other yeast extracts
- OXO cubes, other stock cubes Bovril, etc
- Mushrooms
- Peanuts
- Anything you normally eat everyday and crave
- Any suspect food
- Coffee, chocolate, tea all varieties, cola drinks
- Sugar and all sugar containing foods (read food labels to determine which foods don’t have sugar, things like low fat yogurt and even baked beans have sugar contained)
- All additives
- All alcoholic drinks, and their derivatives
- Vinegar and pickles
- Bacon, ham, corned beef and all other smoked or process meats
- Curries and other very spicy foods
- Aspirin and related drugs
- If you feel worse then get better, stop the diet after 3 to four days of feeling better by starting the reintroduction phase.
- IF your symptoms are slightly worse then go back to the first stage of the diet for a couple of months and take some supplementation, because it may mean that you were undernourished.
- If you feel much worse, then hang in there, after the first week it should get better
- If you feel better right away then start the reintroduction phase
- If you feel worse, much better, then you get worst again then this means that something is terribly wrong. It may be that we have introduced a new food that you have become intolerant to. Look at your food diary and see if you can work out what this may be. Try to cut out the foods you suspect are causing the problem and if you then feel better for 3 to 4 days consistently then start the reintroduction phase
Reintroduction phase
If you do not move on to Stage 2, do the following: Reintroduce one item each week that you have been excluding. Here is an example schedule:
- Week 1. Bacon and Ham
- Week 2. Salty food
- Week 3. Chocolate
- Week 4. Cola
- Week 5. Beers
- Week 6. Artificial sweeteners
- Week 7. Red wine
- Week 8. Food containing additives
If you react to any of these foods then stop taking them immediately, wait till you are feeling well again, and then try the next item on your list. At the end of the testing period you can reintroduce all the foods to your diet that you had no reaction to.
If you do move on to Stage 2, do the following reintroduction schedule:
- Week 1. Milk and cheese should be tested separately. It should be fresh milk, and not evaporated milk. If you react to milk there is a strong possibility you will react to butter and cheese. Although some people can eat butter if they are intolerant to milk.
- Week 2. Citrus fruit, test orange and then lemon towards the end of the week. You won’t need to test the others if you can eat both these fruits.
- Week 4. Test for wheat. If you react to milk then don’t eat shreddies or other cereals. Don’t test with bread either as this may have other ingredients that you still haven’t tested for. Use brown pasta to test for wheat, but check the ingredients on the food labels.
- Week 5. Test for rye using rye crisp bread. Check that it is pure rye by reading the ingredients. Reintroduce barley towards the end of this week by using pearl barley which you will have to boil by using two or three tablespoons.
- Week 6. Test for oats by eating porridge. Towards the end of the week reintroduce maize as corn flour or sweet corn.
- Week 7. Reintroduce yeast and mushroom. Eat yeast first before you eat mushrooms. Try using marmite or yeast vitamin tablets and then eat mushrooms towards the end of the week
- Week 8. Test all the other items that are remaining. This should be eggs, beef, chicken, and Anything you normally eat everyday and crave (rice, peanuts, etc)
At the end of the eight week reintroduction phase
If you are trying 2 foods in one week and react to any of the foods during the week you are reintroducing it, then stop for at least 5 days. At the ends of the 8 weeks you can reintroduce any of the foods that you feel you reacted to following the previous procedure, by reintroducing them one at a time each week. Once you have completed this phase and aren’t reacting to anything you are eating, you can then reintroduce all the items you excluded in stage 1 by following the reintroduction phase for stage 1.