The Belly Fat Diet takes all of the current research and all of the new findings about losing belly fat and incorporates them into one, effective and easy-to-follow plan.

The plan addresses:

How cortisol controls the storage and disposal of belly fat and how you can break the cortisol cycle.

How and why the hormones leptin and ghrelin can work for or against belly fat loss.

The role insulin plays in both storing excess belly fat and regulating cravings and energy levels.

The connection between stress and excess belly fat and how to break it.

The role of vitamin C and Omega 3 fats in losing belly fat.

How to boost your metabolism to burn more fat all day long.

The most effective exercise method for losing weight and belly fat.

Tool # 1: Breaking the Cortisol Cycle

There's been so much information in the media and in diet books about the role that cortisol plays in the storage and disposal, or burning, of belly fat. If you haven't read the research or done much investigating on your own, you may not understand what cortisol is, what it does and how to break the cortisol cycle.

Cortisol is one of the stress hormones naturally produced and secreted in the body. Cortisol's specific job is to react to stress signals by storing fat in the abdominal area. The reason this system exists is because, in ages past, stress often indicated a chance of famine in the near future. Back when people moved from place to place to find food and were often considered food themselves by other predators, stress was a signal that we were on the run and food was going to be in short supply.

Very few of us are in danger of famine from the stress we're under today, but the body's system for storing fat in times of stress remains in place. To our bodies, stress is stress, whether it's from a shortage of food, a lion who thinks we look like dinner, or a boss who wants us to work long hours.

This is where the cortisol cycle comes in. We're more stressed today than people have ever been before. We have financial problems, busy schedules, demanding jobs and families to take care of in between. That stress triggers the release of cortisol into our bloodstreams, which causes our bodies to direct fat to the abdomen to be used in case of famine. The problem is, there is no famine. We continue to eat more than enough food, so that fat is never used as an energy source.

We'll tell you more in depth what you need to know about cortisol in the next few pages, but the Belly Fat Diet will break the cortisol cycle and reset your system so that your body uses dietary fat properly but also gets rid of the fat it already has stored up on your abdomen.

Tool #2: Reversing Insulin Resistance

Your hormones are at it again! Like cortisol, insulin is a hormone produced by your body, although it is not a stress hormone. The role of insulin is to regulate the amount of sugar in your bloodstream and to allow glucose (created from the foods you eat) to be used by cells as energy.

You may have heard about insulin resistance, which is a situation where your body's cells become resistant to insulin and glucose cannot pass through the cell membrane to be used as energy. When this occurs, two things happen:

1... your blood sugar levels spike and drop repeatedly, causing a fatigue/energy boost/fatigue cycle.

2... all of that unused glucose is stored as fat, mainly around your belly.

Like the situation with stress, cortisol and belly fat, insulin resistance is cyclical. The cycle goes something like this:

Excess belly fat makes your body resistant to insulin.

Insulin resistance causes your body to store more belly fat.