Review: Flat Belly Diet Cook Book

Features 2 Weeks of On the Go Recipes for the Whole Family

Cook for the Whole Family instead of the Dieter 

 

  Belly fat is not only unsightly, it's deadly; it has been linked to a long list of adverse health conditions, including heart disease, diabetes, and breast cancer.

Prevention's Flat Belly Diet, a revolutionary plan that's already helped more than one million people lose weight around their middles, may help target dangerous belly fat with monounsaturated fats (better known as MUFAs)—found in delicious foods like nuts and seeds, vegetable oils, olives, avocados, and dark chocolate. 

  "The food...tastes so good, and there's so much of it!"

  On the Flat Belly Diet, it's important to enjoy these foods, in the right amounts, with every meal. The Flat Belly Diet! Cookbook makes that easy. All of the recipes were carefully developed to make sure every meal includes just the right amount of MUFAs and meets the plan's 400-calorie guideline, so readers can mix and match meals to suit their taste. And there's no need to count calories. All the work has already been done!

  "I had to get over all those years of denying myself.... I'm so excited by this diet."

  Packed with 200 dishes that feature these scrumptious fat-fighting MUFA-rich foods, as well as more than 50 lush photographs, this book gives readers plenty to whet their appetites:

-Great-to-wake-up-to dishes like Banana Pancakes with Walnut Honey and Eggs

Florentine with Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto

-International favorites like Thai Corn and Crab Soup and Caribbean Chicken Salad

-Cozy comfort food like Spaghetti with Roasted Cauliflower and Olives and Turkey Meat Loaf with Walnuts and Sage

-Quick, satisfying snacks like Tex-Mex Snack Mix, Peanut Butter Spirals, and Nutty Chicken Nuggets

-Sweet treats like Super-Rich Chocolate Cake with Maple Frosting and Peach and Blueberry Tart with Pecan Crust

This book is really good.

I like that it has all of the basic information about the Flat Belly Diet in the beginning, so if one were to want to do the flat belly diet they really only need the cookbook and can save money not buying the other book (which explains the diet but doesn't have any recipes).

I have tried several recipes and they have all been very good. I like that they are healthy recipes with flavor and for the most part fairly easy to make. For me, personally, sticking to the actual diet part is not easy because I think it is a little time consuming and can be a little expensive.

But I wanted this more to understand the diet and see how it could fit into my lifestyle of eating healthy. And it does!
I would recommend this book.

It offers recipes for: breakfast, soups & sandwiches, vegetarian, seafood, poultry, meats, snacks, and desserts. The other thing that is great about this book is that for each recipe it tells you how long it takes to make, how many servings, the nutrition info (calories, protein, carbs, fat, sat fat, cholesterol, sodium and fiber)and the MUFA (monounsaturated fats).
It also tells you for each recipe what to pair it with to make it a "complete" MUFA meal and then tells you the total caloric intake if you do pair it with the suggestion.

The other thing that I do like about this book is that it offers a planned out 14 day meal plan in the appendix and a MUFA serving chart (lists each MUFA, the serving size and the calories).

User friendly. Good recipes. Good information.
Click on the Picture to Go Look Inside.

Jo Isn't Winning her fight with Diabetes 2

Talked to Jo about a week ago.  Said she took her "sugar" and it was  100 just after she got up that morning.  Also said she was down to 168 pounds.

Bad news.  Another sister went to see her three days ago,  They did some grocery shopping at Publix which is near the house.  I'm mentioning Publix because their stores all have these scales where you can weigh yourself. 

Well Jo's 168 is acutally 184....a big difference for someone only 5ft 5 inches tall.

I have some pictures that were sent via iPhone...she doesn't look like she has lost any weight, actually looks heavier.  

She is beginning to develop circulation problems in her feet and legs...and complaining that her glasses don't work right anymore.  Guess that is what happens when you only use oral medication and insulin to work at controlling your diabetes instead of combining it with exercise, a good meal plan and scheduled meal times to control your sugar.

Diet and Exercise should always be your first line of defense.  The drugs and insulin help to bring control, but eventually without making an effort to change eating habits the drugs can't do their job.

Cararta

Review: Mika Make You Happy

I searched for Someone with lots of young followers to put on this site about Diabetes.  I found Mika and his brand new video.  Must be fate!

I listened and watch about ten videos.  The music is different and his own!
For some reason thoughts of Michael Jackson kept creeping in...don't know if it has to do with the carefully constructed presentations or the voice.  Enjoyable.
Here is his video, hope if you watch it here you scroll around and do some reading.
So many young people are developing type 2 Diabetes (formerly called Adult Onset Diabetes) mostly because of  "lifestyle"  eating the wrong food and not moving enough.  When Teens and preteens develop Diabetes2 they seem to have a much harder time coping with it, often not successfully.


Here Are Some Food Toys to Help with Your Dieting.

Fight Diabetes with Diet and Exercise

Fight Diabetes with Diet and Exercise

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The Glycemic Index: Good Carb, Bad Carb

If you’re one of those people who can’t stand all the counting and tracking and adding and charting that some diets require, you could find a refuge in one simple numerical scale: the glycemic index. On the other hand, you might find it another maddening way to complicate the simple act of eating.

The glycemic index is a measure of the quality of carbohydrate foods. It’s kind of a good carbs/bad carbs thing, based on how they affect your blood sugar. Though it’s not new, it did start getting a lot of press when the anti-carb movement took hold.

It works like this: in the glycemic index, pure glucose is arbitrarily assigned the score of 100; it doesn’t mean anything in particular; it’s just a set reference point for how it has affected the blood sugar by about two hours after eating. Then all other foods in the index are given a number relative to glucose and its affect on the blood sugar.

Foods with a low index typically break down slowly and don’t cause drastic fluctuations in blood sugar. Foods with a high index typically do. For instance, green peas have an index of 39, while corn flakes have an index of 92.

Originally developed to help folks—particularly diabetics—control their blood sugar, the index includes mainly carbohydrate foods, because protein and fat don’t have much immediate effect on blood sugar.

But assigning numbers to different foods based on their glycemic effect just happens to create a scaled list of foods that ends up being a very useful tool for people dealing with obesity and other health issues, as well. That’s because simply maintaining a low-glycemic index diet tends to guide people toward healthier eating and weight loss, even when that is not their specific goal.

Consider: Type II diabetes, as well as various cancers and cardiovascular disease, are all highly correlated with high index diets. There’s abundant research that shows that reducing the overall glycemic index also reduces the risks of those problems.

That’s because almost by default, a low-index diet will include more fresh fruits and vegetables, more fiber, more dairy, all foods that offer essential nutrients, that are more likely to be lower in calories and which tend to keep the body sated longer, holding off the next hunger spell. All that usually adds up to weight loss, no matter what the program.

Proponents of the index say it’s more helpful than counting calories or grams of fats or carbs, and actually offers a simplified approach to learning to eat better, but some experts caution that people shouldn’t get too wrapped up in worrying about the precise numbers. Instead, they urge that people pay attention to whether the foods they’re eating have a low, medium or high index.

That’s because, as with any rule, there are exceptions to the fairly consistent physiological rules that underlie the index. For instance, watermelon has a pretty high glycemic index, about 75, which is even higher than table sugar. Does that make it bad for you? No . Because in spite of its high index, watermelon actually has a pretty low glycemic load. That’s a measure based on the amount of food you’d actually consume, not just an arbitrary quantity used in testing, as with the index.

The glycemic load of a food can be determined using the glycemic index number for a food, divided by 100 and multiplied times the available carbohydrate you’d eat. With most foods, low index is consistent with low load, but there are the quirky exceptions. Of course , to find them, you’d be back to doing a bunch of math again, and that’s just not the way people normally eat.

That’s why doctors and nutritional experts encourage people who are trying to develop a healthy diet to avoid getting caught up in the numbers game and look more generally at the foods in the index, leaning toward those at the low end. Anything over 70 is considered high index, 55 through 69 is medium and below 55 are foods with a low glycemic index.

And look what’s in those groups: high index foods include most breakfast cereals, white breads and other processed baked goods, most potatoes, ice cream, candies and table sugar, your veritable Atkins nightmare.

Lower index foods include cherries, grapefruit, broccoli, legumes like lentils and beans, most whole grain baked goods and most dairy foods. So even without counting calories or keeping track of specific index numbers, you can see that steering your diet toward the low end of the index is bound to do you good.

We like to encourage patients to think of glycemic index and glycemic load as just two more tools that can be helpful in developing healthier thinking and planning about dietary habits.

A final thing to remember: there’s not one standardized glycemic index list and most indexes include brand-name items that people buy on a typical shopping trip, as well as the more generic items like vegetables and fruits. This is one of the more helpful aspects of the lists, but only if you get one that relates to where you live.

If your average Southwest Florida resident looked at an index created in Australia, it wouldn’t be much help, because really, when’s the last time you had a couple Golden Pikelets with a nice glass of Milo?

THROUGH THICK
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Fight Diabetes with Diet and Exercise

Dieting and Dieting and Don't Lose Weight

Jo called yesterday, haven't talked to her much lately.  She thinks I "fuss" toooo much about what she eats.
Last month I bought her another copy of the American Diabetes Associations  Food Exchange Lists for diabetics.  Very small, will fit in your purse so you can take it with you if you are new at having diabetes and trying to diet. 

Don't really think she pays much attention to the exchange book, the diet the doctor gave her or anything else related to her diabetes treatment other than getting those pills and Insulin shots.  Know for a fact that she doesn't take any of them on a schedule, just when she feels she needs them.

The problem is with diabetes, other than obvious things like always being thirsty and running to the bathroom all the time, maybe having a sore or fungus infection that you can't get rid of, or being overwhelmed with the urge to sleep if you over eat, there aren't many other Visible signs of diabetes until later......when it is almost to late.

I don't know what her criterior for Needing her medication is.  Don't know what yardstick she uses to  measure her  Need for Insulin or Metformin or glucophage.

Said she has started to lose weight, now down under 170 pounds.  Asked if she had been dieting and just got silence.....This time last year she weighed less than she does now, so the long term picture doesn't show improvement.

Guess just wait and see.  If you don't diet, you can't lose weight and if you continually eat the wrong diet you gain.  Simple.

GOOD NUTRITION IS KEY TO DIET CONTROL OF DIABETES



The Secret to Losing Belly Fat


Staying on a diet is hard work.  It takes a lot of planning, preparation and ENTHUSIASM!  Trying to Lose belly fat which seems to come with diabetes  is always  hindered by the mistakes made in how we try to lose the fat.

There is a lot of slipping and sliding involved in maintaining healthy eating habits that will promote good blood sugar control.   The same habits of eating that we have developed over the years, get us to where we are now, and because they are hard to break, they keep us there.

Good Eating habits along with Blood glucose readings that should be taken as often as our health care giver  prescribes are part of the plan for diet control of diabetes. .   If you are taking Insulin this can be very important.   I was listening to a TV programs yesterday and  one of the points made was that there is a huge gap between what care givers prescribe and what insulin users end up doing.  It seems that users don't always follow instructions, resulting in poor blood glucose control.  I wouldn't be surprised if there is the same neglect when it comes to following caregiver directions for nutrition and meal planning.

Look around and find a program you can really live with. 
Enroll friends!..Joella found a new book on diabetic nutrition and has several friends sitting around the club house pool reading it with her.  
If  only she can convert this new knowledge into action!!!  Dinty Moore beef stew (even with added water) isn't on any diabetic diet I've ever seen even though it was on one of Jo's lists of what she had for lunch!

Good nutrition is actually just applying common sense to what you need to eat to be healthy or become healthy.  The information is there.  Use it. 

Here is a link to a common sense program that has some of the best information I have ever seen to help you lose weight and integrate enough exercise into your routine to help you not only Feel Better but Look Better at the same time.  Skinny Belly!