A new year, a new body and maybe a new attitude towards food?

In December, I was invited to participate in Prevention Magazine’s Flat Belly Diet. I was thrilled! I was selected to receive a free Flat Belly Diet book from Prevention magazine and become part of the Flat Belly Diet online blogging community.

I was intrigued by the name of the diet because after having two kids, I have a flabby belly. The “pooch” that seems impossible to get rid of after being pregnant and ballooning up and down twice in four years.

I gained over 50 pounds with both of my kids. Yes, you heard right. That’s half of a Nicole Ritchie. I can’t give an exact number because I was frightened to step on a scale after reaching that point. Honestly! I stopped weighing myself after I passed the 50-pound mark. I remember asking the secretary at the OB-GYN’s office to NOT tell me what the scale said after my weigh-ins.

I struggled with losing weight after my two kids. After my first son, the pounds melted off in the beginning thanks to breastfeeding. I hit a few plateaus but happily, most of the weight came off. My body almost returned to a somewhat pre-pregnancy state, although my waist never quite slimmed down to the way it was before.

But all that went out the window with my second. My skin’s elasticity was long gone the second time around and I got a real slap in the face when I thought I had escaped stretch marks.

I bought an elliptical trainer which is sadly collecting dust in my bedroom. I am the proud owner of the Billy Blanks Boot Camp DVD pack. Every time I would attempt to work out at home, either my kids would come storming in the room asking to watch their show or they’d exercise with me and we’d all bump into each other as they mimicked my kickboxing moves. My youngest would sit on my stomach while I’d try to do a proper ab crunch. That didn’t quite work out so I finally join a gym.

I’ve been working out for months now and I’ve lost some weight. I haven’t felt this healthy and energized since before I got married. My legs are toned, my butt is much firmer and I have some good definition in my arms. But the biggest problem of all, the only area that I have not seen a huge improvement, is my BELLY.

I do cardio, I lift weights, I do group fitness classes, crunches and ab exercises with weights… but those muffin tops are still there. Those “rolls”, you know, that more-than-an-inch (or two or three) of fat around the mid-section that you could easily make a pizza dough with. I can see my ab muscles trying to peak out from under the fat, but not quite enough.

I don’t believe the scale matters all that much, nor does the BMI (body mass index) measurements. What is important though, not for looks but for health, is the waist-to-hip ratio.

I decided to try the FBD diet because of the science behind the diet – that eating monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA’s) can target belly fat. The National Institutes of Health stated that a waist measurement of over 35 inches for women and 40 inches for men in an unhealthy sign of excess visceral fat (fat around internal organs in the abdomen).

Measure the narrowest part of your waist to the broadest area of your hips and divide the two numbers. This number should not exceed 0.8 for women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

My waist-to-hip ratio is just above the healthy level. Even though I don’t look like I need to lose weight, it’s simply important for my health to do so. High blood pressure and heart disease runs in my family. Too much visceral fat increases the risk for heart disease and diabetes. You can be slim everywhere but if you wear a large pant size, you can still run into health issues.

This was enough for me to want to try this diet.

And the fact that I can still enjoy peanut butter and dark chocolate on this diet was a win-win for me!

To read more about the diet and book, visit http://www.flatbellydiet.com/