I mentioned last week in my post I Finally Got My Groove Back that I am making some big changes in my business and in my life.  One of those changes is getting my body back to what it was before I had two babies 17 months apart.

I am lucky that I have never really been overweight. Even after having my kids I was back in my pre-pregnancy jeans within a few weeks.

But (or should I say butt) things never went back to where they should be. 

Drooping, sagging, extra fat where no fat should be. NOT attractive to say the least.  And something I have been self conscious about for a while.

So a few days after my 33rd birthday in March I decided to do something about this once and for all. I talked my friend and husband in to starting the Prevention Magazine Flat Belly Diet with me and I haven’t looked back!

The basis of this diet is controlling your calories and heating healthy fats instead of unhealthy fats.  These good fats are called MUFAs (mono-unsaturated fatty acids) and are found in foods such as avacadoes, nuts, seeds, olives, certain oils and dark chocolate.

Here are the Flat Belly rules:

1. Start with a 4-day anti-bloat jumpstart. The food is rather bland during the jumpstart but definitely gets you off on the right foot. I am actually redoing the jumpstart this week because I am straying too much from the rules.

2. Drinks lots of water (and nothing but water). The book includes a recipe for Sassy Water which is a great alternative to boring plain water.

3. After the jumpstart, eat 1600 calories a day spread over 4 meals. To make this easy to do in a household with children, I modified our favorite recipes to fit the rules. We eat breakfast, lunch, dinner and save our fourth meal for an evening snack.

4. Eat a MUFA with every meal.  We try to find a way to work the MUFA in to the meal like adding nuts to our salad, sauteeing in canola oil, putting flax seed in our muffins.  Sometimes though we just eat a tablespoon of nuts after our meal.

5. Never go more than 4 hours between meals. This rule I find difficult because in our house it would mean eating dinner at 4pm.  So we usually go 5 – 5 1/2 hours between lunch and dinner.

6. Avoid overly processed foods like white flour, refined sugars and fatty foods like fried anything and full fat dairy. For us, we have been able to modify our favorites so we don’t even miss them.  We now make pizza on wholegrain tortilla shells with just a little cheese.  A favorite is fajitas on the grill with  guacamole as the MUFA.  It is easier than you might think to make healthier choices.

Overall I have found this diet really easy to stick to.  It certainly helps that my husband is on board with it (and has already lost 25 lbs!) and that my friend lives right across the street so we make each other meals on days when we feel we might cheat.

What I like best is that I feel we have changed our eating habits so there will be no end to the diet where we start eating our favorites again and put all of the weight back on. 

As of when I am writing this I would still like to lose about 7 more pounds and get my belly truly flat.  We’ll see how my second “jumpstart” goes.  I’ll keep you posted!