The 5 tastiest belly-flattening snacks

I've got another awesome new article from well-respected nutritionist, Dr Jonny Bowden today, and I think you'll like these ideas that can help you flatten your stomach by utilizing the right snacks --that are also tasty!

Enjoy!
-Mike

The 5 Tastiest Belly-Flattening Snacks
By Dr. Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS - author:  Unleash Your Thin

Let’s start with the bad news. You can do 1,000 sit ups every day and it won’t give you a six pack. What it will do is give you abs of steel; but whether anyone will actually see those rock-hard abs, well that’s a completely different question.

Whether anyone actually notices those new ab muscles of yours depends on one thing only—how much belly fat you've got in front of them. Sumo wrestlers have some of the hardest abs in the world but you'll never see those abs because they’re surrounded by fat.

Losing Ab Fat: A Simple 2-step Process...

Losing belly fat is a simple two-step process.

Step number one: Figure out what you’re doing to put the belly fat on in the first place.
Step number two: stop doing that.

One of the main hormones responsible for the accumulation of ab fat, for most people, is the hormone insulin, which rises in direct response to your blood sugar. Shoot your blood sugar up with a nice gazllion-calorie “low-fat” bran muffin and a mocca latte, and your insulin will shoot up faster than the Challenger with a tail wind.

And when insulin is high, fat storage is in overdrive. Not only that, but high levels of insulin prevent your fat-burning switch—a hormone called glucagon—from doing its job. On top of that, insulin locks the doors to the fat cells, making fat loss extremely difficult.

Solution: Eat in a way that doesn’t drive blood sugar (and insulin) skyward.

Five Belly-Flattening Snacks

The following five snacks are favorites of mine not just because they’re tasty, convenient, and easy to make, but because the combination of fiber, fat, and protein is unlikely to send your blood sugar on a trajectory that feels like the roller coaster at the New York, New York Hotel in Vegas .

#1 “With a Smear”

This is one of my favorite snacks, period. I take some hearts of celery and fill in the groove with some organic almond butter or peanut butter.

This snack travels well in tuperware, and makes a terrific pre-workout snack.

Why?

The celery has fiber and nutrients (including calcium and vitamin A) and a ridiculously low 6 calories per medium stalk. The nut butter has protein and fat. The overall calories are low and this really fills you up without slowing you down. Great for “slow-release” energy.

#2 “The Double A”

An apple with almonds.

The apple is the perfect food for a snack especially if coupled with some fat and or protein (i.e. string cheese). It’s sugar load is very moderate, it contains valuable pectin fiber which slows the entrance of that sugar into the bloodstream, and it’s a nutritional powerhouse containing vitamins and minerals and antioxidants.

Try combining it with about a dozen almonds, which adds some fat and protein, further slows the entrance of the sugar into the bloodstream for sustained energy, and keeps hunger away.

#3 “Whey to Go”

Whey protein (grass-fed raw whey ) is my favorite kind of protein powder. Not only is it extremely high-quality, bioavailable protein, but it supports the immune system by providing the body with the building blocks for glutathione, arguably the body’s most important antioxidant.

And studies indicate that whey protein may boost fat loss efforts.

According to one French study, consuming whey before exercise supports fat burning and may help with gaining or maintaining lean body mass. I suggest a whey protein shake made with either water alone or with frozen berries. The berries add fiber, nutrients, some extra carbohydrates, and make for a more delicious drink.

#4 “Berry Cheesy”

Here’s a little tidbit of info for you that you might enjoy: In my book, The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth I asked 16 of the best known experts in the country to contribute their personal “top ten” list of favorite healthy foods. Berries—especially blueberries—made the list of more experts than any other food.

Berries are loaded with phytonutrients, antioxidants and fiber, and are low in sugar. Mix a bowl of berries with a piece of organic string cheese for the perfect pre-workout snack. The string cheese has 8 grams of protein, some fat to keep hunger at bay, and only about 80 calories. Plus it’s an excellent source of calcium.

#5 “TG/ Too Good”

The initials of this snack stand for turkey and grapes. It’s a perfectly matched trifecta of protein, carbs and low-calories to take the edge off your hunger.

Four small slices of deli packaged turkey contain only 87 calories but give you more than 14 grams of protein, plus some of the cancer-fighting mineral selenium to boot. A cup of grapes adds some carbs to the mix together with all the health-giving phytochemicals grapes are known for.

Suggestion: Go for fresh turkey whenever possible as the packaged kind is high in sodium and nitrates, and go for red or purple grapes as they have a higher antioxidant content.

By keeping blood sugar even, and insulin levels in the ideal “zone”, you’ll be turning your body from a fat storage machine into fat-burning machine!

Naturally yours,
Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS

P.S. The key to burning ugly and dangerous belly fat is not just about what you DO eat; it has even more to do with what you DON’T eat.

There are 2 specific types of food that you should avoid at all costs – that is, unless you want to be sick, fat, depressed, tired and stressed. These foods are everywhere and you probably eat them every single day without even knowing it.

I get asked about this a lot so I put together a funny little presentation that explains it all .  You’ll discover exactly what foods to eat and which ones to avoid so you can turn yourself from a fat storing machine into a fat burning machine.

I am not sure how much longer I’ll have this presentation up, so please go watch it now.

==> See how to turn on your fat burning switch here

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Thanks Jonny!  More great advice as usual.

Also, make sure to see my article on my top picks for healthy lean body snacks:

13 delicious flat-belly snacks


Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer

This food increases AGING -- minimize this

If you've been keeping up with these newsletters, it may seem as if I'm in a war against sugar lately...  and today, I'm going to show you one more reason to avoid sugar that we didn't talk about in other recent articles...

Sugar actually speeds up AGING due to a biochemical reaction in your body from high blood sugar levels.  Not good!

Here's the deal...

If you eat/drink too much sugar from sweetened drinks, soda, cakes, cookies, candies, ice cream, etc, you consistently shoot your blood sugar levels through the roof and require your body to pump out more insulin to dispose of that blood sugar in the liver, muscle cells, and also as body fat. 

As we've talked about before, abusing this blood sugar control system (controlled by your pancreas) for years and years eventually can wear out your insulin sensitivity and your pancreas and type 2 diabetes can develop.

No surprise there right... I'm sure you understand that process.  But here's something most people don't understand...

Consistently raising your blood sugar through all of these daily sugary foods and drinks also causes a reaction in your body that creates molecules called Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs).  Having elevated levels of AGEs in your body can cause accelerated aging of your skin, as well as your organs.

If you know somebody that eats/drinks a LOT of sugar daily, you might notice they also are not aging well and have more wrinkles... this can be seen sometimes with type 2 diabetics as well.  Of course, this can vary greatly based on skin tone, and other lifestyle factors too.

This is yet another reason why minimizing sugar intake (particularly processed sugars and HFCS) as well as minimizing other foods that spike your blood sugar (such as breads, pasta, cereals, muffins, bagels, etc) can help reduce the amount of AGEs that are produced in your body and slow down the aging process! 

Yes, a paleolithic nutrition plan that is moderately low-carb and low-sugar (the type we always talk about in this newsletter) where you focus mostly on healthy meats, veggies, berries, nuts, eggs, etc while minimizing sugar and grains not only makes you leaner, but helps keep you YOUNG!

But remember, staying youthful is not only about the types of food you eat, but also about the types of exercise you do...

Make sure to read this article below to see why certain types of exercise that you might be doing can accelerate aging in your body (you'll want to avoid this!)

This "type" of exercise can accelerate AGING (avoid this, and look 10 years younger!)


If you liked this article about sugar and advanced glycation end products, please fwd this to any of your friends and family that would enjoy it.

Also, make sure to read (and bookmark) this article of mine below as it's the most comprehensive article I've written on nutrition:

The top 20 food RULES to keep you lean for life


Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer

If we're so smart, why are we so fat?

I've got a killer new article today that will get you thinking below. 

But first, I just want to make sure you didn't miss the brand new article I published over the weekend that is quickly becoming one of the most popular on the site: The top 20 food rules to get a flat stomach, boost metabolism, and prevent diseases such as heart disease and diabetes.

Alright, let's get going on today's new article below by one of my favorite authors, Dr. Jonny Bowden...


If We're So Smart, Why are We So Fat? 
by Dr. Jonny Bowden - PhD, CNS, author: Unleash Your Thin

If we’re all so smart, then why are we so fat?  Good question.

Maybe not every individual, but as a society, we are definitely fat, as 70% of the adult population is currently obese or overweight.

 Let’s cut to the executive summary: it’s not because we don’t know what to do.

Take hormones, for example. You’ve probably heard a thousand times how important hormones are for weight loss.

You probably already know that insulin—aka “the fat storage hormone”—is produced by the body in response to elevations in blood sugar.

Elevations in blood sugar are produced whenever you scarf down carbohydrates—particularly the high-sugar, high-glycemic processed carbs we Americans love so much.

So the solution is easy, right? Cut out the carbs!

Not so Fast...

If it’s so easy, then why do so many of us have so much trouble doing that?

Why, in the face of the massive amount of information showing that high-glycemic (high-sugar) carbohydrates contribute to weight gain, heart disease and even cancer, do so many of us continue to binge on the very foods that make us sick, tired, depressed and fat?

Why do we continue to overindulge in pasta, cookies, chips, candies, ice cream, cereal and donuts, while ignoring what we know to be true about them?

Why do we continue to find these foods irresistible?

And why do we ignore what we already know about them, much as a cigarette smoker ignores the connection between tobacco and lung cancer?

It’s Because Your Brain has Been Hijacked...

The “pleasure centers” in our brains have literally been hijacked.

We’ve lost control of a primitive biological switch buried deep in our brain that controls what we pay attention to, how we act and most importantly, what we eat.

I call this the “impulse control switch” and for most of us, it’s gone completely haywire and we find ourselves eating precisely the things we know we shouldn’t.

At a recent workshop I conducted in Southern California, one woman described her struggles with junk food.

“I’d find myself obsessing about Haagen-Dazs,” she said. “I wasn’t hungry. I didn’t even want the ice cream. But I got excited about driving to the supermarket and buying it. The anticipation turned me on. The ice cream was almost an afterthought.”

This woman illustrates an important point: eating and the desire to eat are two different things and involve separate mechanisms in your brain.

How does this happen? Simple.

It’s all controlled by a brain chemical called dopamine. Dopamine controls pleasure and contributes to your brain’s “reward circuitry” for food or anything else desirable.

How Your Impulse Control Switch Gets Flipped in the Wrong Direction...

Dopamine’s role is to keep you totally focused on getting things that are critical for the survival of the species – like food, shelter or sex.

When we go after those things, we feel intense pleasure – something that is fueled entirely by dopamine.

The only problem is that we’ve discovered a few sneaky ways to trick our brains into releasing dopamine to get a fake chemical “high”... for example, with drugs, alcohol and cigarettes.

The “rush” you get from these things is also fueled entirely by dopamine. It’s the biological reason you get hooked.

And, as it turns out, the dopamine factories that ignite when you chug a beer or inject heroin are the exact same ones that fire up when you eat sugar or high-sugar foods!

In fact, some studies have shown that sugar is MORE addicting than cocaine —a startling fact that Dr. Oz recently discussed on his show.

And in today’s world with super-addicting food everywhere, our dopamine factories light up like Christmas trees, our brains get hijacked and we become utterly helpless to resist that mouth-watering bowl of buttery pasta that’s calling our name!

Have You Been Attacked by a Dopamine Bomb?

Addiction specialists refer to things that create these “dopamine bombs” as “super-stimuli”.

Think drugs, alcohol, skydiving, the internet, "adult" videos, and sugar. These are literally super-sized versions of everyday experiences. They flood your brain with feel-good dopamine.

Do them often enough and eventually you become desensitized to anything that doesn’t produce the same massive dopamine rush.

This re-programs your brain in a very bad way, leaving you wanting – in fact, needing – more and more of these dopamine-spiking substances to get the same effect.

Translation: your cravings for refined carbs, for sugar and all of the other things that make you sick and fat go through the roof and become almost impossible to resist!

And here’s the catch – for or nearly everyone, repeated exposure disables the behavior control switch that says “enough!”

That means that even if you don’t consider yourself an “addict” with an addictive personality, you can and will still suffer the consequences of being attacked by dopamine bombs, whether from drugs, alcohol and most importantly, food.

Can You Really Be Addicted to Food?

The same impulse control switch that drives some people to cocaine addiction also works to make you obsess over rewarding foods.

IMPORTANT:  Don’t think for a second that this doesn’t apply to you because you are not an “addict”.  This applies to every single one of you without you even knowing it!

And that’s why so many people can’t figure out why they can’t keep the weight off for good.

The more delicious and pleasurable a food, the more attention you give it. The more attention you give it, the more passionately you seek it out.

Unfortunately, these rewarding foods are exactly the ones that spike your blood sugar, cause your insulin to soar, and ultimately flip off your fat-burning hormonal switch.

That's when you become sick and fat.

Dopamine fuels your drive to go out and get Haagen-Dazs or a Cinnabon and it’s responsible for making you feel like nothing else will satisfy you.

That's one powerful brain chemical ...

Pair that delicious, palatable food with a powerful emotional stimuli—say, that wonderful memory of eating your grandmother’s apple pie—and those powerful associations release so much dopamine that your reward circuits become hijacked.

Willpower doesn’t have a chance.

Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS aka “the Rogue Nutritionist”

PS – When I do my lectures on this “impulse control switch,” I get overwhelmed with additional questions about how exactly someone can take back control over their impulses … to avoid eating the foods they know they shouldn’t and to avoid the other behaviors that force them to become sick, fat, tired and depressed.

So, I put together an entertaining presentation that will show you exactly how to do it yourself, how to activate your impulse control switch and get you on a path to a slimmer waist, a better mood and more vibrant health.

Remember, most of us KNOW exactly what to do to lose fat; but unless and until you get control over your impulses, that knowledge will be useless.

So please enjoy this entertaining presentation in which I explain exactly how to get control of your impulses, protect yourself again these dopamine bombs and unleash the slim, sexy and healthy person that’s been hiding inside you all along.

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Make sure to check out Jonny's site... he's one of the true nutrition experts out there that I trust these days, and he always puts out great information.

Good luck!

Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer

My top 20 food RULES to get lean and healthy for life

This is going to be one of your favorite articles of all time... and could quite literally SAVE YOUR LIFE if you follow these food rules.

These top 20 food rules are also the key to fixing your metabolism, boosting your immune system, helping to fight off diseases like heart disease, diabetes, etc, and keeping you lean for life, all while enjoying food MORE:

The top 20 food RULES - to get lean, prevent disease, fix your metabolism, feel younger, and have a better quality of life.

Every topic about nutrition is covered on that page... protein, carbs, fat, probiotics, vitamin D, egg whites vs whole eggs, butter vs margarine, the effects of sugar and grains on your body, and much more.

Please share this page with all of your friends and family to improve everyone's quality of life.  The information is that powerful!

Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer

A trick to BOOST your workout performance, strength, energy

If you're into working out hard and maximizing your workout performance, strength, endurance, recovery, and energy, then today's topic will be for you...

If you're like most people, you might have tried performance enhancing supplements in the past such as creatine, ribose, nitric oxide boosters, or other supps.  But the vast majority of people end up being "non-responders" to a lot of these supplements, even though there is some good scientific evidence that they do work nicely for some people.

Check out this new video by Dr Walsh showing why you might not respond to certain performance supplements and what you can do about it to increase performance:

Why performance boosters didn't work for you (and what you can do)


I just found out recently about a brand new performance boosting workout supplement called PR7 that works in a totally different way than creatine, nitric oxide boosters, caffeine, or other performance enhancers.

You can see the science of how this new performance enhancing supplement works here, along with the unique ingredients that are totally different than most strength, endurance, or energy supplements.

If you want to try out this new performance booster, they are encouraging you to try it out by giving you a steep discount of 30% on your order. 

The benefits of PR7 include:

1.  Less fatigue during workouts
2.  Increased strength output
3.  Improved endurance
4.  Faster recovery between workout sets and between workouts
5.  Less soreness after workouts
6.  Allows you to train more frequently without burnout

The 30%-off coupon code is expiring in a couple days, so try this out now if you're interested in increasing your workout performance, strength, and energy...

Try PR7 Workout Booster and boost your strength and energy  

Wishing you new personal records in your workouts!

Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer

Are these sinister ingredients lurking in your food?

I have a brand new article for you today that you absolutely must see... most people simply don't think about the health consequences of what the food you eat does to your body internally.

Remember that the government and giant food companies are not going to take care of your health... only YOU can respect your health and care about what you eat and what you feed your family.  Read today's article to see about some scary ingredients that are in a large portion of the food that you might be eating:

These sinister ingredients are lurking in YOUR food

Please share this page with all of your friends and family, as it's so vitally important to our health, and our environment. 

As you can see in that article, the ramifications of eating GM foods are still unknown to scientists, so letting yourself ingest these foods means you are allowing yourself to be a guinea pig in a giant uncontrolled health study that nobody knows if serious long term health effects will occur.

Speaking of most people not thinking the internal effects of the types of food they eat, make sure you've also check out this article/video:

This ONE food is internally damaging to you (and you probably eat it every day)

Have a healthy day,

Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer