DIETABS ? AND WHY NOW?

EARLIER IN THIS BOOK, I OUTLINED
half a dozen ways the Abs
Diet will improve your life.
And I told you about the
unique and scientifically
proven promise of the Abs Diet, how it can strip off up to
20 pounds of fat in 6 weeks—starting with your belly.
But the next steps are up to you.
If you’re simply not interested in improving your
life—if the idea of becoming a slimmer, fitter, healthier,
pain-free, more successful, more sexually vital person
doesn’t appeal to you—then close this book right now,
and return it. (After you wipe off the Cheetos grease
stains, of course.) If you’re not interested in achieving the
 greatest possible results with the least possible effort, this
 article is not for you.

But if you do want to make a change—one you can see, one you
can feel, one that will last a lifetime—then this book is for you.
The only one for you.
The Abs Diet is a simple plan built around 12 nutrient-packed
foods that, when moved to the head of your dietary table, will
 give you all the vitamins, minerals, and fiber you need for optimum
health while triggering muscle growth and firing up your body’s
natural fat burners. I’ll tell you more about these foods in an
upcoming chapter, but here’s a quick overview. (Tell me this isn’t a
meal plan you can stick to!)

Almonds and other nuts
Beans and legumes
Spinach and other green vegetables
Dairy (fat-free or low-fat milk, yogurt, cheese)
Instant oatmeal (unsweetened, unflavored)

Eggs
Turkey and other lean meats
Peanut butter
Olive oil
Whole-grain breads and cereals
Extra-protein (whey) powder
Raspberries and other berries 12!

I’ve chosen these foods both for their nutritional content and
for their simplicity. See, every day, new diet books and weightloss
advice shuffle across my desk. (In fact, if you plug “diet” in
to Amazon.com’s search engine, you’ll turn up more than 80,000
titles.) Some of these diet schemes are a little wacky: grapefruit
diets, cabbage soup diets, cottage cheese diets, raw-egg-and-Slim-
Jim diets. Some of them sound good—low-fat diets, low-carb
diets, low-salt diets. But most of them have one thing in common:

They are actually designed to make you fail in the long run.
That’s because even the diet plans that are based on sound
principles sometimes fail to acknowledge the realities of life—that
you’re too busy to whip up intricate meals like mango-flavored
shrimp kebabs. That you enjoy food too much to swear off pasta
and potatoes all the time. That eating is supposed to be a pleasure,
not a chore. That’s why I based the Abs Diet on common foods that
are easy to prepare and enjoy. The way I see it, most other diet
plans are too complicated and invite failure in three major ways.

1. They reduce calories too severely. With a strict—or
drastic—calorie reduction, you may lose weight at first,
but you’re left hungry. When you’re hungry, you’ve increased
the chances that you’ll gorge at some point during
the day. When you gorge, you feel as if you failed, then feel
guilty for failing, then drop off the plan and resume your
cold-pizza-for-breakfast habits. With the Abs Diet, however,
you’ll never go hungry—in fact, you’ll find yourself
eating much more often than you do now: six times a day!

2. They restrict too many foods. It would be easy to
build a plan that didn’t include cheeseburgers, pizza, or
beer. But if I did that, you’d ditch the plan on the first
Monday night of football season. Even though changing
your eating habits is a fundamental part of this program, I
think there’s a greater chance you’ll stick to the plan if you
don’t have to give up everything you like. It’s normal to
have steaks with clients, to have hot dogs at a barbecue, to
share a pitcher of beer after work. If you deprive yourself
of every food that tastes good, there’s not much incentive
for even the most motivated person to stick to the plan for
longer than a few weeks. The Abs Diet is about eating the
foods you enjoy—and indulging yourself when need be.

3. They don’t take into account lifestyle. If we all had
a chef to prepare our meals—or even more than a few
minutes to do it ourselves—losing weight would be much
simpler. But when was the last time you had 2 hours to
prepare a meal? We’re all busy. We eat in restaurants. We
order in. We hit drive-throughs. We wish we had time to
tally fat-gram totals, or measure every ounce of food, or
prepare elaborate good-for-you dishes. But the reality is
that most of us won’t, no matter how much weight we
need to lose. We have commitments to jobs and families,
and we spend so much time doing everything from commuting
to fixing our home that a mango-shrimp masterpiece
is what slips down on our priority list. The Abs Diet
is what you need: a low-maintenance program, with lowmaintenance
foods and even lower-maintenance recipes.
Let’s take a look at a handful of today’s most popular diets, and
I’ll show you why many of them are designed to offer short-term
weight loss and long-term weight gain.
The Atkins Diet:

Limiting Food, Limiting Nutrition
THE ATKINS DIET eliminates practically all carbohydrates for the
first part of the plan, leaving you with only foods that contain protein
and fat: no bread, no pasta, no fruit, no vegetables, no juice—
no fun. The Atkins diet, no question, helps people lose weight. I’ve
seen men lose 10, 20, even 30 pounds on Atkins—all of them
feasting on steak, cheese, and bacon while doing so, and I’ve seen
the studies that support the plan’s effectiveness in helping people
lose weight, at least in the short term. Emphasizing protein is
smart, but eliminating many other foods that are important to
maintaining good health isn’t. But here’s my real issue with this
kind of diet, one that often gets overlooked in the whole no-
carbohydrate debate. I could restrict you to any couple of foods—
let’s say chips, ice cream, and burgers. Go on a diet eating just those
things, and chances are that you’d lose weight—because you
simply can’t force yourself to eat the same stuff over and over
again. By simply restricting the foods you eat to only a handful of
them, you’ll automatically drop pounds because you’ve dramatically
reduced your total calories. But you’ve also dramatically reduced
your intake of vitamins, minerals, and fiber, while upping
your intake of artery-clogging saturated fats. Even more important,
you just couldn’t stay on such a diet long-term, no matter
how much you liked it, because your lifestyle (and taste buds)
demand a more flexible, more enjoyable eating plan—and because
your body is programmed to crave fruits and grains and juices
just as much as it craves burgers and chips.
Well, as crazy as it sounds, that super-restrictive, low-nutrient
diet is exactly what you get with Atkins. You eat a limited number
of foods—the vast majority containing protein and saturated fat.
You’ll drop pounds because you’ve eliminated carbohydrates, but
you’ve also put yourself at risk for a number of health problems.
For one, the foods on Atkins have high amounts of saturated fats,
and there’s overwhelming evidence that societies with diets high
in saturated fats face a greater prevalence of heart disease.
Second, by eliminating most carbohydrates from your diet, you’re
eliminating some important nutrients, like vitamin B and fiber
and phytonutrients that help your immune system. Worst of all,
even though Atkins does introduce carbohydrates later in the
plan, few people can stick to the limited number of foods that
Atkins allows. So that short-term weight loss leads to long-term
weight gain and, potentially, long-term health problems.
Weight Watchers:

Too Much Math, Too Little Food
WEIGHT WATCHERS—a popular point-tallying system that enforces
portion control by having you log the amount of food you eat every
day—works for many people. Those who overeat can benefit by
tracking what they consume and being conscious of reducing calories.
But this program has its flaws. First, I don’t know many
people who have the time or long-term discipline to measure foods
and count calories on a daily basis. Second, Weight Watchers
doesn’t guarantee nutritional balance. You could count your points
so that you eat nothing but junk if you skimped during other parts
of the day. In theory, you could eat your day’s worth of points at one
or two meals—and that would slow down your metabolism and
might actually make you gain weight. Calorie counting, as I’ll explain
in the next few sections, is only one component of a successful
weight-control program. Third, and most important, a lot of people
don’t like the support group atmosphere of Weight Watchers.

The Zone: A Too-Delicate Balancing Act
THE ZONE DIET, by Dr. Barry Sears, involves balancing the kinds
of food that you eat with the goal of putting you “in the Zone.” The
basic premise is that at every meal you should have carbs, protein,
and a little bit of monounsaturated fat in the precise ratio
that Sears recommends. Carbs are divided into desirable carbs,
such as vegetables and some fruit, and undesirable carbs, such as
bread, juice, beer, and sweets. Proteins and fats are divided similarly.
This gives you freedom to eat what you want, but when
choosing undesirable foods, you must eat less of them and they
must be accompanied by other foods. For example, you can indulge
in “bad” carbs, but only in moderation, and you must accompany
them with protein and some fat. So if you’re planning to have a
beer, plan on a side of cottage cheese and a few olives to balance
it out. This is why many people complain about the Zone—some
of the food combos can be out of the ordinary, and measuring how
much of each group you can and should eat can be overly complicated.
Sears provides formulas to determine how much of which
foods you should eat based on how much you exercise and your
level of body fat. This number can be converted to how many
“blocks” of each food you should have in a day. You can distribute
them throughout the day but not let 5 hours pass between meals.
The business of measuring, dividing, and combining can get pretty
complex to manage; even though the balance of food is pretty sensible,
you’d have to be an air traffic controller to keep everything
straight. The diet is so reliant on its central gimmick that almost
no one has the time or energy to follow it for very long.
Sugar Busters: Making Sweets a Sin
THE SUGAR BUSTERS DIET philosophy centers around eliminating
foods high in sugar as well as foods that spike your blood sugar
and make you hungry (like some carbohydrates such as pasta,
corn, beer, and potatoes). The benefit, proponents say, is that if
you follow the plan, you’ll be able to enjoy steak, eggs, and
cheese—and still lose weight. But simply eating less sugar won’t
help you lose weight. Without nutritional balance, you can still
consume a lot of high-calorie foods that are low in sugar and end
up gaining weight. And as with other diets, you’ve done nothing
to change the way your body processes foods to achieve the
highest calorie burn that you can.
Dr. Phil: Just a Little Too Emotional
DR. PHIL MCGRAW, the pop psychologist who made it big as the
tough-love guru on Oprah’s talk show, has a hugely popular diet
program whose main emphasis is on stripping food of its emotional
power. McGraw’s book, The Ultimate Weight Solution: The
7 Keys to Weight Loss Freedom, stresses the notion that we’ve allowed
food to have too much power in our lives and that, in
order to quit binge eating, we need to (a) limit our access to junk
food, (b) select foods that take a long time to prepare and chew
so that it’s harder for us to eat, and (c) stop eating to satisfy
cravings and feelings of stress. Sounds good, except that in
today’s world, Antarctica is about the only place that doesn’t
have convenient access to junk food. I agree that we should stop
eating to satisfy cravings and stress, and I applaud Dr. Phil for
recognizing the psychological aspects of our eating habits. What
the Abs Diet does is show you how to eat to prevent cravings
and stress. The Abs Diet makes it easy to snack smartly
throughout the day, so you’ll never go hungry. It also helps you
take control of your food intake, your body, and your life, so you
can beat back stress. The best reason the Abs Diet is superior to
Dr. Phil? No moustache!
The South Beach Diet:

Eating Right Is Just the Start
IN THE SOUTH BEACH DIET, Arthur Agatston, M.D.,
emphasizes balanced eating, relying on lean protein, good fats,
and good carbohydrates.
As you’ll see, some of South Beach’s nutritional principles
are similar to those of the Abs Diet. Agatston focuses
heavily on the role of insulin and how spikes in blood sugar
make you hungry. While his diet focuses on how food works in
relation to losing weight, it doesn’t show you how to tune up
your metabolism, your body’s natural fat burner. The Abs Diet,
on the other hand, incorporates factors like exercise that can
have a profound impact on not only the amount of fat you can
lose but also the rate at which you lose it. By revving up your
body’s fat-burning mechanism, you can take control over not
only the calories coming into your body but also the calories
being burned away by it.
• • •
As I said at the beginning of this book, most diets are about
losing. The Abs Diet is about gaining. The Abs Diet is based on the
simple notion that your body is a living, breathing, calorieburning
machine, and that by keeping your body’s fat furnace constantly
stoked with lots and lots of the right foods—and this is
important—at the right time, you can teach it to start burning off
your belly in no time. In fact, this diet can help you burn up to 12
pounds of fat—from your belly first—in 2 weeks or less. And just
look at what you’ll gain in return.
You’ll gain meals. Americans have huge appetites.We hunger
for success, we hunger for freedom, and yeah, we hunger for food.
Traditional calorie- or food-restricting diets run counter to this
uniquely American appetite. They leave us hungry, miserable, and
one snap away from going psycho in the chips aisle. But not the Abs
Diet. You will eat on this program—and eat often. In fact, you’ll be
refueling constantly, and with every delicious meal or snack, you’ll
be stoking your body’s natural fat burners. Imagine that: Every
time you eat, you help your body lose weight and turn flab into abs.
You’ll gain muscle. With the Abs Diet and the Abs Diet
Workout, the more you eat, the more muscle you’ll build, and the
more fat you’ll lose. This program converts the food you eat into
muscle. The more lean muscle mass you have, the more energy it
takes to fuel it—meaning that calories go to your muscles to sustain
them rather than convert to fat. In fact, research shows that
adding lean muscle mass acts as a built-in fat burner. Again, for
every pound of muscle you gain, your resting metabolic rate goes
up as much as 50 calories a day. The strength-training component
can put several pounds of muscle onto your body. You won’t beef
up like a bodybuilder, but you will build enough muscle to shrink
and tighten your gut—and, depending on your starting point,
show off your abs. When you add exercise into the mix, you can
think of it as a simple equation:
MORE FOOD MORE MUSCLE LESS FLAB
Now, consider the alternative:
LESS FOOD LESS MUSCLE MORE FLAB
Isn’t it incredible that most diets focus on the “less food” equation?
And isn’t it time we changed that? (Sure, some studies have
shown that you’ll live longer on a super-restrictive diet of less
than 1,400 calories a day. But given how such a plan would make
you feel, you probably wouldn’t want to.)
You’ll gain freedom. Most diets deprive you of something—
whether it’s carbs, fat, or your manhood. (Tofu? No thanks.) In this
plan, you will not feel deprived. You’ll stay full. You’ll eat crunchy
food. You’ll eat sweet food. You’ll eat protein, carbs, and fat. In fact,
there’s even one meal during the week when you can eat anything

“I WENT FROM BRANDO TO RAMBO!”
Name: Bill Stanton
Age: 40
Height: 5'8"
Starting weight: 220
Six weeks later: 190
Bill Stanton, a security consultant, had been pumping iron since he was 15.
But even with his rigorous weight training, he kept getting fatter: By the
time he reached 40, he had ballooned to 220 pounds on his 5-foot-8 frame.
Why? Because Stanton’s diet and exercise routine consisted of doing bench
presses and squats and then finishing the night with chicken wings and booze.
“My pants were fitting me like a tourniquet, and it was like I was in a bad
marriage—I was living comfortably uncomfortable,” Stanton says. “The Abs
Diet challenged me to get on the program, step up to the plate, and step
away from the plate.”

you want. Anything. During the bulk of the week, you’ll focus on foods
that will charge your metabolism and control your temptations, but
you’ll also have the freedom and flexibility to stray just enough to
keep you satisfied without ruining all the work you’ve already put in.
You’ll gain time. On some diets, it seems like it would take less
time to organize a hunting party and stalk a woolly mammoth than
it would take to plan and cook the recipes they tout. On this diet, all
of the meals and recipes are low-maintenance. For planning purposes,
all I want you to do is take this program 2 days at a time. Since
mindless noshing is the nation’s number one diet buster, your best
defense is to plot out a simple strategy for how and what you’re going
to eat each day. Every night, take 5 minutes to sketch out what and
when you’ll eat the next day, and you’ll have deflated temptation
and gained control. After reading the principles, you’ll see that the
Abs Diet establishes a new paradigm for weight control. Simply:
MORE FOOD= MORE MUSCLE = LESS FLAB
After following the Abs Diet for 6 weeks, Stanton lost 30 pounds—and has cut
his body fat from 30 percent to 15 percent. “I looked pregnant. I looked like a
power lifter—big arms, a big chest, and a big gut. Now I look like Rambo.”
Stanton appreciated the diversity of the Abs Diet meals and the plan’s totalbody
approach to working out, though he admits that eating six times a day
took some getting used to. “What I had to do was learn to eat to live, not live
to eat,” he says. And then, he says, everything just rolled from there. Once his
mental approach changed—being committed to the plan, limiting the number
of times he partied at night, and eliminating late-night meals—he was able to
turn everything around. “You wake up attacking the day rather than waiting
for the day to end,” he says.
Now, everything just feels better. He’s always in a good mood. He walks taller.
He has more energy. And now he’s a model for others.
“I work out at Sports Club L.A., where people are really focused on looking great,“
he says. “Even there, guys and girls all come up to me.One guy said, ‘You are
kicking butt. Everybody sees that transformation. You’re inspiring a lot of people.’”
Stanton has changed his physique so dramatically that he’s even been accused
of taking steroids. “I take that as a compliment,” he laughs.
WHAT THE HECK IS . . . HIGH CHOLESTEROL?
Cholesterol is a soft, waxy substance found among the lipids (fats) in the
bloodstream and in all your body’s cells. For all the bad press it gets, the fact
is that you need cholesterol, because your body uses it to form cell membranes,
create hormones, and perform several other crucial maintenance operations.
But a high level of cholesterol in the blood—hypercholesterolemia—
is a major risk factor for coronary heart disease, which leads to heart attack.
You get cholesterol in two ways. The body—mainly the liver—produces
varying amounts, usually about 1,000 milligrams a day. But when you consume
foods high in saturated fats—particularly trans fats—your body goes cholesterol
crazy, pumping out more than you could ever use. (Some foods also contain
cholesterol, especially egg yolks, meat, poultry, fish, seafood, and
whole-milk dairy products. But the majority of it, and the stuff I want you to
focus on, is made by your own body.)
Some of the excess cholesterol in your bloodstream is removed from the
body through the liver. But some of it winds up exactly where you don’t
want it—along the walls of your arteries, where it combines with other substances
to form plaque. Plaque is wack for several reasons: First, it raises
blood pressure by making your heart work harder to get blood through your
suddenly narrower vessels, which can eventually wear out your ticker.
Second, plaque can break off its little perch and tumble through your bloodstream,
eventually forming a clot that can lead to stroke, paralysis, death,
and other annoyances.
Inside your body, a war is raging right now between two factions of specialized
sherpas called lipoproteins that are moving cholesterol around your insides
according to their own specialized agendas. There are several kinds,
but the ones to focus on are the Jekyll and Hyde of health, HDL (highdensity
or “helpful” lipoprotein) and LDL (low-density or “lazy” lipoprotein)
cholesterol.
The good guy: HDL cholesterol. About one-fourth to one-third of blood
cholesterol is carried by helpful HDL. HDL wants to help you out by picking
up cholesterol and getting it the hell out of your bloodstream by carrying it
back to the liver, where it’s passed from the body. That’s good. Some experts
believe that HDL removes excess cholesterol from plaques and thus
slows their growth. That’s really good. A high HDL level seems to protect
against heart attack. The opposite is also true: A low HDL level (less than
40 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) indicates a greater risk. A low HDL cholesterol
level may also raise stroke risk.
The bad guy: LDL cholesterol. Lazy LDL has no interest at all in helping you
out. LDL just wants to stick cholesterol in the most convenient place it can
find, meaning your arteries. LDL doesn’t care that too much cholesterol lining
your arteries causes a buildup of plaque, a condition known as atherosclerosis.
A high level of LDL cholesterol (160 mg/dL and above) reflects an increased
risk of heart disease. Lower levels of LDL cholesterol reflect a lower risk of
heart disease.
Simply put, HDL is trying to come to your aid, but LDL is just sitting there,
laughing at you. (I also heard it said something bad ‘bout your momma.) So
whose side are you on? If you want to give HDL a hand, start stocking up on
the Abs Diet Powerfoods, and follow the guidelines of the Abs Diet Workout.
Here are some more quick ideas on beating the bad guy for good.
Butt out. Tobacco smoking is one of the six major risk factors of heart disease
that you can change or treat. Smoking lowers HDL (good) cholesterol levels.
Drink up. In some studies, moderate use of alcohol is linked with higher HDL
(good) cholesterol levels. But take it easy there, Dino. People who consume
moderate amounts of alcohol (an average of one to two drinks per day for
men and one drink per day for women) have a lower risk of heart disease, but
increased consumption of alcohol can bring other health dangers, such as alcoholism,
high blood pressure, obesity, and cancer.
Johnny B good. A B vitamin called niacin reduces LDL (bad) cholesterol at the
same time it raises beneficial HDL. In fact, niacin can be more effective at
treating these things than popular cholesterol-busting drugs, which tend to
act more generally on total cholesterol and gross LDL. (Be careful, though.
While the niacin you get from foods and over-the-counter vitamins is fine,
super-high doses of niacin can have serious side effects and should be taken
only under a doctor’s supervision.)
Tea it up. Three recent studies confirm that drinking green tea can help lower
your cholesterol level and reduce your risk of developing cancer. In a 12-week
trial of 240 men and women, researchers at Vanderbilt University found that
drinking the equivalent of 7 cups of green tea a day can help lower LDL (bad)
cholesterol levels by 16 percent. Seven cups a day is a lot of tea, but even 1 or
2 cups a day could have a beneficial impact. Meanwhile, researchers at the
University of Rochester recently determined that green tea extract can help
prevent the growth of cancer cells, and Medical College of Ohio researchers
found that a compound called EGCG in green tea may help slow or stop the
progression of bladder cancer.
Go for the grapefruit. If you want to make one simple dietary change for
better health, the best thing you can do is eat a single white or ruby grapefruit
WHAT THE HECK IS . . . HIGH CHOLESTEROL?
(CONT.)
every day. Grapefruit is gaining ground as a power food. New research shows
that it can fight heart disease and cancer, trigger your body to lose weight,
and even help you get a better night’s sleep. A grapefruit a day can lower
your total cholesterol and LDL (bad) cholesterol levels by 8 and 11 percent,
respectively.
Cram in the cranberry. Researchers at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania
found that men who drank three glasses of cranberry juice daily raised
their HDL (good) cholesterol levels by 10 percent, which in turn lowered their
risk of heart disease by 40 percent. Plant compounds called polyphenols are
believed to be responsible for the effect. (Note: Cranberry juice often comes
diluted, so make sure the label says that it contains at least 27 percent cranberry
juice.)
Spread some on. Instead of butter or margarine, try Benecol spread. It contains
stanol ester, a plant substance that inhibits cholesterol absorption. A
study at the Mayo Clinic found that people eating 41⁄2 tablespoons of Benecol
daily lowered their LDL (bad) cholesterol by 14 percent in 8 weeks. When they
stopped using it, their LDL returned to previous levels. Benecol can also be
used for cooking.
Gain with grains and beans. Researchers at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto
had people add several servings of foods like whole grains, nuts, and beans to
their diets each day. One month later, the test subjects’ LDL (bad) cholesterol
levels were nearly 30 percent lower than when the trial began. In another
study, this one at Tulane University, researchers found that people who ate
four or more servings a week had a 22 percent lower risk of developing heart
disease (and 75 percent fewer camping companions) than less-than-once-aweek
bean eaters.
Don’t let your tank hit empty. A study in the British Medical Journal found
that people who eat six or more small meals a day have 5 percent lower cholesterol
levels than those who eat one or two large meals. That’s enough to
shrink your risk of heart disease by 10 to 20 percent.
Refrain from fries. In a study published in the New England Journal
of Medicine, the exercise and nutritional habits of 80,000 women were
recorded for 14 years. The researchers found that the most important
correlate of heart disease was the women’s dietary intake of foods containing
trans fatty acids, mutated forms of fat that lower HDL (good)
and increase LDL (bad) cholesterol. Some of the worst offenders are
french fries.
Sow your oats. In a University of Connecticut study, men with high cholesterol
who ate oat bran cookies daily for 8 weeks dropped their levels of LDL
cholesterol by more than 20 percent. So eat more oat bran fiber, such as oatmeal
or Cheerios. A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reports
that two servings of whole-grain cereal (Cheerios count) a day can reduce a
man’s risk of dying of heart disease by nearly 20 percent.
Rise and dine. In a study of 3,900 people, Harvard researchers found that
men who ate breakfast every day were 44 percent less likely to be overweight
and 41 percent less likely to develop insulin resistance, both risk factors for
heart disease.
Fortify with folic acid. A study published in the British Medical Journal found
that people who consume the recommended amount of folic acid each day
have a 16 percent lower risk of heart disease than those whose diets are
lacking in this B vitamin. Good sources of folic acid include asparagus, broccoli,
and fortified cereal.
Order a chef’s salad. Leafy greens and egg yolks are both good sources of
lutein, a phytochemical that carries heart disease–fighting antioxidants to your
cells and tissues.
Be a sponge. Loma Linda University researchers found that drinking five or
more 8-ounce glasses of water a day could help lower your risk of heart disease
by up to 60 percent—exactly the same drop you get from stopping
smoking, lowering your LDL (bad) cholesterol numbers, exercising, or losing a
little weight.
Give yourself bad breath. In addition to lowering cholesterol and helping to
fight off infection, eating garlic may help limit damage to your heart after a
heart attack or heart surgery. Researchers in India found that animals who
were fed garlic regularly had more heart-protecting antioxidants in their blood
than animals that weren’t.
Crank up the chromium. According to new research from Harvard, men with
low levels of chromium in their systems are significantly more likely to develop
heart problems. You need between 200 and 400 micrograms of chromium per
day—more than you’re likely to get from your regular diet. Look for a supplement
labeled chromium picolinate; it’s the most easily absorbed by the body.
Snack on nuts. Harvard researchers found that men who replaced 127 calories
of carbohydrates—that’s about 14 Baked Lay’s potato chips—with 1 ounce
of nuts decreased their risk of heart disease by 30 percent. For more info: here