The Flat Belly Diet & Grocery List

The flat belly diet, billed by creators as the secret to flattening your midsection, in many ways, promotes a healthful eating plan that resembles the Mediterranean diet. However, the diet does not emphasize exercise, which DietsInReview.com lists as a drawback. The flat belly diet was created by "Prevention" magazine editor, Liz Vaccariello, and nutrition director at "Prevention," Cynthia Sass, a registered dietician. You'll need to modify your grocery list to follow the diet's rules. Never start a new diet without consulting a health care provider.

Features

The flat belly diet advances three main rules: Do not go more than four hours without eating, limit each meal to 400 calories and consume a monounsaturated fatty acid at every meal. Monounsaturated fats, or MUFAS, are a key part of this diet plan because diet creators assert they target your belly fat. At the grocery store, pick up olives, dark chocolate, nuts, peanut butter, seeds and avocados. With nuts, either buy the shelled variety or those that are unsalted and roasted without oil or raw.

Identification

When you create a meal or eat a snack, stick to this ratio: 35 percent of calories from MUFAs, 45 percent from carbohydrates and 20 percent from lean protein. In "The Flat Belly Diet Picket Guide," diet author Liz Vaccariello says this is actually easy to do without math by selecting your MUFA, then adding the lean protein, grains, fruits and veggies to your plate. For example, if you choose olive oil, you would eat 4 oz. grilled fish, 1 cup steamed green beans and roasted red potatoes with olive oil instead of butter, notes DietsInReview.com.

Effects

When you choose grains at the store, pick up the whole grain variety such as steel cut oats, brown or wild rice, whole wheat breads like pitas or rolls and whole-grain crackers. Eating whole grains as opposed to refined ones helps you lose abdominal fat, says Heather I Katcher, lead author for a 2008 study published in the "American Journal of Clinical Nutrition." You also can swap a starch vegetable for the whole-grain choice. Buy potatoes, corn, beans or peas, for example.

Expert Insight

When you shop for cooking oils skip the partially hydrogenated vegetable oils and instead buy olive oil, canola oil, peanut oil, high-oleic sesame oil and high oleic sunflower oil. Buy your oils in small amounts because they can go rancid if kept too long, Vaccariello advises. You won't always use these when you cook, however. Diet authors frequently recommend you steam your veggies or consume them raw. Authors also advocate grilling your meats.

Considerations

If you want to buy packaged foods, you'll have to become a label reader, Vaccariello says. Seek foods with either small amounts or no saturated fat and zero trans fat. The diet's top limit for saturated fat is 4 g per 400-calorie meal, and trans fat is disallowed. Look at sodium contents because the diet limits intake to 2,300 mg daily. Also find foods that contain MUFAs. These won't be listed as such on the label, so you'll have to know what to look for: choose dark chocolate over milk chocolate and olive oil as opposed to shortening. You also must choose foods free of artificial flavorings and sweeteners and preservatives. Also take serving size into account when you decide how much of a packaged food to eat, Vaccariello advises. Pesto and guacamole are great premade foods to choose at the grocery store.