The Ab Diet

Just kidding. There really is no such thing as an ab diet.

Remember what I said in the last post Abs: The Truth? You can't "spot train" your abs, meaning you can't target a certain muscle group or area of your body to lose weight or gain muscle without affecting other parts of your body. Just like you can't necessarily eat a certain way to target only a certain muscle group, it just doesn't work that way.

Your body changes overall, you don't get to pick and choose where.

While I know many of you were expecting a diet plan and there are many out there for just about anything, you'll notice they all have a common denominator: eating whole, minimally processed foods. 

That's really all it takes. But it's so much easier said than done. So I laid it out step by step for you:

Step 1: Go to the grocery store

• Put a variety of fruits and veggies in your cart that you actually like and enjoy eating
• Put a variety of healthy fats in your cart (e.g avocado, olive oil, butter etc.)
• Lastly, pick up some foods high in protein (e.g lean chicken, Greek yogurt, legumes, nuts and nut butters etc.)

Step 2: Prepare them and eat them in a way that you enjoy

• Buying the healthy ingredients is easy, actually preparing and eating them is where people often struggle
• Make healthy recipes with the ingredients you bought or eat them raw (e.g baby carrots, apples, peanut butter)
• Here are some awesome healthy recipe websites that I often refer to:
  • www.eatingwell.com
  • www.cookinglight.com (it provides the nutritional information for each recipe so that's an extra BONUS!)
  • www.skinnytaste.com
• If you're too lazy to do this and you're staring into your fridge not knowing what to do with the ingredients you have, simply go to Google, type in the food(s) you don't know what to do with, and add "healthy recipe". In most cases something will pop up!
• Remember, you can look for easy and quick recipes or more time consuming ones based on your preference and lifestyle. Eating healthy is only as complicated and difficult as you make it.

Step 3: Limit the amount of processed foods you consume

• This is probably the trickiest part. So instead of going to your cupboard and immediately dumping all the junk food you have, try limiting or reducing one thing at a time
• If you have a can of pop every day, reduce it to 5 days a week and slowly cut back. Once accomplished, move on to the next highly processed food you consume the most and slowly reduce that as well

For those of you still searching for that "diet plan". Here are some foods that help support your belly reduction and allow your abs to show more by fighting off body fat storage, lowering your levels of cortisol and keeping you feeling full longer. Again, it follows the same theme of whole, minimally processed foods:

• Bell peppers
• Brussel Sprouts
• Eggs
• Bananas
• Green tea
• Lean poultry
• Legumes
• Oatmeal
• Apples
• Sweet potatoes
• Blueberries
• Broccoli 

Doing a full body exercise program in addition to ab exercises will also help, check out my post if you missed it Abs: The Truth.

While this is not a quick solution (be wary of any that say there are), stick with these 3 steps and you'll see results within 1-3 months. Combine proper nutrition and exercise and you'll be in for some awesome abs and an awesome overall change in your body composition.