Part I The Basics of the 10-Day Belly Slimdown Are you ready to go from hiding your belly to showing it off? Here's how my 10-Day Belly Slimdown is going to transform your belly from fat and bloated to flat and beautiful. 1 How I'm Going to Blast Your Belly Fat . . . Fast Are you sick and tired of your belly fat? Frustrated with diets that don't take it off? Angry that you don't look the way you want to look and can't wear the clothes you want to wear? Then you're in the right place, because I'm going to free you from that fat, and I'm going to do it fast. I've spent over twenty years showing people how to do the impossible: take off stubborn belly fat. That's a long time, and I know what works. What's more, as a specialist, I put my entire focus on weight loss and delaying aging. So unlike your regular doctor--who may well assume that 90% of patients will fail at losing weight, and is totally resigned to that--I need to maintain a success rate of virtually 100%. Otherwise, I'm out of a job. Moreover, as I said earlier, I work with world-famous celebrities who can't take a gamble on a diet that might not work. These celebs have millions of dollars on the line, and they need to know that they'll be camera-ready. This means that for me, failure simply isn't an option. So I don't kid around--and I don't waste time with anything that's ineffective. That's why this diet is different--and why it's going to work. How I take the pounds off the stars . . . and how I'll take them off your belly, too Right now, I'm going to introduce you to the three powerful core strategies of my 10-Day Belly Slimdown. Separately, each of these strategies will melt pounds off you. Put them all together, and you're going to nuke your belly fat so fast your head will spin. I've used this diet to take pounds and inches off everyone from Grammy Award-winning singers and New York celebs to regular folks who want to turn heads at a wedding or class reunion. It works, it works fast, and it leaves you healthier and younger-looking from head to toe. What's more, this is an appetite-control diet. It's designed to minimize your cravings, so you'll maximize your results. After guiding thousands of transformations over my career, I've targeted the three most powerful ways to take fat off your belly incredibly fast. Here they are: *A compressed eating window (think mini-mini-mini fasting)--the number-one biggest secret to rapid belly-blasting *Bone broth "burning" and bone broth "loading"--to quench your cravings and melt off pounds *Beautifying, fat-melting, gut-healing collagen and other "SLIM-gestion" foods, herbs, and spices--superfoods that will optimize your digestion and kick your metabolism into overdrive Separately, each of these strategies is dynamite. On the 10-Day Belly Slimdown, we're going to combine them into a triple punch to achieve incredible results in just ten days. Here's a closer look at how we're going to melt that fat off your body. Strategy #1: We're going to shrink your eating window Right now, I'm guessing that you don't give much thought to the timing of your breakfast, lunch, and dinner. After all, what matters isn't when you eat but what you eat, right? Well, surprise: As it turns out, the timing of your meals may actually matter more than the foods you choose. In fact, as you're about to discover, simply shortening your eating window is the most powerful weapon you have against belly fat. We've known for years, of course, that fasting is a magical way to burn fat off fast. In fact, people who fast intermittently lose weight much more quickly than people who diet but don't fast. Now, however, we're discovering something even more remarkable. It turns out that you don't need to fast for long periods to get results. Simply moving your daily meals a few hours closer together will help keep those extra pounds off--and that's true no matter what you eat. This idea sounds crazy, but there's hard science behind it. In 2012,1 scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California compared mice that had access to food all day long to mice that ate only during an eight-hour window. Both groups of mice ate a high-fat diet, with about 60% of their calories coming from fat. (One note here: Soon I'm going to tell you why you need to include several servings of healthy fats in your diet each day to stay slim. This method is not comparable at all to the high-fat diet used in this study. Studies like this one load up animals with tons and tons of unhealthy fats. That would be like me telling you to eat a two-pound tub of margarine at each meal, rather than a few teaspoons of olive oil.) So . . . what happened in this experiment? Over one hundred days, the mice that ate all day got fat and developed high cholesterol, high blood sugar, and liver damage. But how about the little guys that ate for only eight hours each day? They weighed 28% less than the other mice and were still healthy. Megumi Hatori, a coauthor of the study, said, "For the last fifty years, we have been told to reduce our calories from fat and to eat smaller meals and snacks throughout the day. We found, however, that fasting time is important. By eating in a time-restricted fashion, you can still resist the damaging effects of a high-fat diet, and we did not find any adverse effects of time-restricted eating when eating healthy food." In a follow-up study,2 the same researchers fed mice one of four diets: high-fat, high-fructose, high-fat plus high-sucrose, and regular mouse chow. Some mice in each group got to eat all day; others had to eat during a nine-, twelve-, or fifteen-hour window. All of them ate the same number of calories, no matter what their eating window was. This time, the study lasted thirty-eight weeks. At the end, the mice that ate the bad diets within a nine- or twelve-hour window still had their slinky little bodies (even though the researchers let some of them "cheat" on the weekends). The other mice, however, were pudgy little sickos. Moreover, mice that got fat on the unrestricted schedule lost weight when the researchers began restricting their eating window. Satchidananda Panda, who led both studies, said, "Time-restricted eating didn't just prevent but also reversed obesity. That was exciting to see." Shortening your eating window won't just help you stay slim; it'll help you get slim. In a more recent study, Panda and his team asked eight overweight participants who normally ate for more than fourteen hours each day to reduce their eating windows. The researchers report that when these people shrank their eating windows to ten to eleven hours daily for sixteen weeks, "they reduced body weight, reported being energetic, and [experienced] improved sleep."3 Want more evidence of the powerful effects of reducing your eating window? Here's what other researchers are reporting: *A 2017 study involving overweight men and women found that time-restricted eating--in this case, eating only between 8:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m.--increased fat burning and reduced hunger swings. It also improved metabolic flexibility (more on this on page 000), which is the body's ability to switch between burning sugar and burning fats.4 *In an eight-week study testing the effects of a short eating window on athletes, researchers assigned thirty-four men who did resistance training to a restricted-eating-window group or a nonrestricted group. They found that even though time-restricted eaters ate the same number of calories as participants with longer eating windows, they decreased their fat mass while their lean muscle mass stayed the same. In addition, their blood glucose, insulin concentrations, and markers for inflammation dropped.5 *In a study using a mouse model of postmenopausal obesity, researchers found that despite eating the same high-fat diet as mice with unlimited access to food, mice on a restricted-eating schedule experienced rapid weight loss and exhibited less insulin resistance over time. Time-restricted eating also reduced the severity of fatty liver (a dangerous problem that's currently epidemic in the United States).6 *Another study tested the effects of time-restricted eating on "middle-aged" mice. They found that time-restricted eating without any calorie restriction helped alleviate the negative effects of an unhealthy diet on body weight and glucose tolerance.7 What's more, the benefits of giving your body a break from food go well beyond weight loss. Science shows that fasting helps keep your brain healthy, improves your insulin sensitivity, lowers your stress, helps you sleep better, improves your hormone production, enhances the function of your mitochondria (the energy factories in your cells), and even helps you live longer. Recent research also indicates that restricting your eating window to fewer hours in the day can lower your risk for breast cancer.8 All this makes perfect sense when you think about it. Our genes are nearly identical to the genes of our early ancestors, and they ate only during daylight hours--not at night. (It's hard to find that leftover mastodon leg in the dark when you don't have candles or lightbulbs!) Our bodies are biologically wired for long food-free stretches, and they need this time to metabolize our food and clean out toxins. When we cheat them out of this fasting phase, we get fat and sick. The take-home lesson here is simple: When you eat truly is as important as what you eat. This is a revolutionary finding that is transforming the way experts think about weight loss, health, and food. And it's why in this diet, you're going to shorten your eating window dramatically. Basically, you're going to eat two daily meals--lunch and dinner--within a seven-hour window. Now, before you panic, let me tell you this: You won't be hungry. Let me repeat this: YOU WON'T BE HUNGRY. That's because during both your fasting window and your eating window, you're going to be loading up on luscious bone broth. And that's what we'll talk about next. Strategy #2: We're going to add the power of bone broth "burning" and bone broth "loading" Bone broth is the secret I've used to slim down tens of thousands of people on my Bone Broth Diet--and now it's going to do the same thing for you. That's why I call it my "liquid gold." In the morning and between your two meals, you're going to drink cups and cups of this gorgeous broth. Here's a basic overview (I'll give you the details in the next chapter): *In the morning, you'll drink bone broth enriched with fat-burning herbs and spices. This is the broth "burning" phase, and it will melt the fat off you like magic. This is where most of your belly-blasting will happen. *In the afternoon, between your meals, you'll drink bone broth loaded with detoxifying, fiber-rich vegetables. This is the broth "loading" phase, and it will cleanse your body and load you up with satisfying fiber to keep you regular, eliminate cravings, and banish the bloat. Now, let's talk about this bone broth--because it's awesome. I'm betting that you know a little about bone broth already. Maybe you heard Laura Prepon calling it "the fountain of youth" or saw Salma Hayek extolling it as "the Botox alternative." Maybe you heard Gwyneth Paltrow and Kourtney Kardashian singing its praises or caught Shailene Woodley saying that it's "everything." If you live in a big city, you've probably even passed pricey cafés selling it for nine or ten dollars a mug. Well, guess what. I was doing bone broth before bone broth was cool. In fact, I've been prescribing it to my patients for decades, because it's the biggest key to rapid weight loss. If you haven't tried bone broth, it's nothing like that thin, boring broth in a can. Bone broth simmers for hours and hours, releasing deep nutrition that satisfies your hunger on the cellular level. As a result, you can go for hours between meals without ever feeling deprived. That's why you'll be able to effortlessly reduce your eating window on this diet. But bone broth does much, much more than simply quench your cravings. Here are three more reasons it's weight-loss magic: *It's loaded with gelatin that soothes and heals your gut. Later, I'll tell you how an inflamed, leaky gut ages and sickens your belly, packing pounds onto it. When you soothe that leaky gut with gelatin--I compare it to rubbing aloe vera on a sunburn--you help it heal, making it healthy and strong again. *It's rich in the amino acid glycine, a powerful inflammation fighter that also flushes fat-promoting toxins from your body. *It's mostly water, so it keeps you hydrated, boosting your body's ability to burn fat. A study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism found that drinking 500 milliliters of water--equivalent to about 17 ounces--increases the metabolic rate by 30% in healthy men and women.11 So when you drink bone broth, you satisfy your cravings, heal your gut, fight inflammation, burn fat faster, take years off your inner belly, and cleanse toxins from your body. How's that for belly-fat-blasting magic? It's easy to see why bone broth is a centerpiece of both my 21-Day Bone Broth Diet and my turbocharged 10-Day Belly Slimdown. And guess what: This fabulous food doesn't just make you lose weight like crazy. You'll also get these bonuses: *Bone broth is loaded with the building blocks of skin-smoothing collagen--so while you're shrinking your belly, you'll be erasing lines and wrinkles, as well. (You'll also get a big dose of wrinkle-blasting collagen elsewhere in this diet--more on that shortly.) *The glucosamine and chondroitin in bone broth are the same nutrients many doctors use to treat arthritis. One of the most frequent comments I hear from people drinking bone broth is, "My joints feel so much better!" *The magnesium and glycine in bone broth are calming and relaxing, so you'll sleep better and feel less stressed during the day. All this is why I tell my patients to drink bone broth every day forever. You can't do anything--anything--better for your health and your waistline. And right now, it's going to strip that fat off you fast. So now you know two of my potent belly-blasting strategies. Now let's look at number three. Strategy #3: We're going to load you up with slimming, beautifying collagen and other "SLIM-gestion" foods For the next ten days, you're going to eat the most powerful belly-fat-burning foods on the planet. These foods are going to slim, cleanse, and heal your gut. At the end of ten days, you're going to feel like a whole new you, with a flat, beautiful belly. Excerpted from The 10-Day Belly Slimdown: Lose Your Belly, Heal Your Gut, Enjoy a Lighter, Younger You by Kellyann Petrucci All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
