The only men who have flat stomachs are those who monitor their health and nutrition. If a man has a flat stomach, he is less prone to developing many different types of chronic diseases, he is typically more successful in having sex, he has a strong back, he suffers from fewer joint problems than other men and he typically has excellent sleep at night. The ABS diet helps men forget about their belly fat. David Zinchenko, a former editor of the famous Men’s Health magazine, created this diet. The name of the diet is an abbreviation for the English words almonds, beans and spinach. Nuts, legumes and greens are three important food groups in the Zinchenko diet.

At the beginning of your transition into this diet, you should stock up on healthy products. Zinchenko identified 12 superfoods in his diet:

1. Nuts (almonds)
2. Legumes
3. Greens (spinach)
4. Dairy products: skimmed or low-fat milk, cheese and low-fat yogurt, which is used to prepare smoothies
5. Instant oatmeal
6. Eggs
7. Lean meat (turkey and fish)
8. Peanut and olive oil, canola and sesame oil
9. Whole grain bread and cereals
10. Protein whey powder
11. Berries (raspberries)

Eat 6 times per day and don’t count calories. Here is the principle of this diet:

1. more food –> more muscle –> less flabbiness

If you eat frequently and feel full, you’ll be less likely to give up and quit the diet.

The main meals on the Zinchenko diet alternate with small snacks. You usually have a snack two hours before lunch and two hours before dinner as well as an hour or two after dinner.

Approximate meal plan:

1. 8 am – breakfast
2. 11 am – snack
3. 1 pm – lunch
4. 4 pm – snack
5. 6 pm – dinner
6. 8 pm – snack

Calorie counting is important for any diet, but it can get so boring that people will actually quit dieting. On the ABS diet, you don’t need to count calories. This doesn’t mean that you can and should consume huge portions of food. If you eat superfoods with every meal, you’ll get full pretty quickly, but you need to monitor the saturation process. Besides from that, when getting started, you should avoid eating large portions of rice and bread and you need to limit your portions of fat. For instance, avoid consuming more than a spoonful of peanut butter at a time.

Food should contain fiber, protein, healthy fats and calcium. Each of your main meals includes protein and at least two superfoods from this diet. Snacks include at least one such product type.

Whole-grain products are the basis of nutrition. You can eat whole-grain bread or toast for breakfast or a sandwich for lunch. It’s good to eat oatmeal for breakfast. Oatmeal (ie: porridge) should not be sweet — but you can flavor it with cinnamon or a handful of berries. You can eat sprouted grains for breakfast as well. A variety of legumes are also recommended on the Zinchenko diet. It’s good to supplement breakfast with fruit. For lunch, you can eat potatoes, brown rice or quinoa.

For dinner, eat dishes made of vegetables — but not starchy ones and not roots.

You can eat nonfat or low-fat (1%) dairy products and stay away from very high fat content in your cheeses.

Almonds are suitable for snacking, as they make you feel full. For a snack outside the house, you can also take a hard-boiled egg, seeds, avocado and olives.

You can add olive oil to a salad or mix it with garlic and pour it over lean chicken meat.

On a diet, it is recommended to regularly consume smoothies. For example, you can make them with raspberries, nut paste and protein powder or skimmed milk. Therefore, the blender is a necessary gadget for the ABS diet. A glass of a smoothie can replace a meal as well as serve as a snack before or after a workout. A thick drink is actually better because it makes you feel full. At the next meal, you’ll be less hungry and will eat about 100 kcal less. Researchers from the University of Tennessee showed that men who ate 3 servings of yogurt per day lost 81% more fat than those who did not eat yogurt.

You can eat almonds for a snack – they make you feel full. An example of a good snack is peanut butter with celery slices.

Zinchenko recommends using whey protein powder — but doctors are still debating it.

Processed and refined carbohydrates are prohibited on the ABS diet. For instance, it’s sugar, white bread, white rice, pasta, sweet cereals, factory-packaged lunches, crackers, dry toasts, trans fats, saturated fats and sugary drinks. It is best to drink water.

Once per week, you are allowed to arrange a meal that includes everything you want. Eat a piece of pizza, fried chicken wings or a cake. If you want a carrot then a carrot is what you most likely will want. In fact, such a departure from the diet can even speed up your metabolism.

Small portions better control insulin levels and have the ability to cut fat accumulation in half with the same caloric intake. A large percentage of protein in the diet makes it easier to comply with it. Eating your favorite food once per week also makes following the diet more enjoyable.

The diet suggests having three strength workout sessions per week and two ab workouts. Aerobic workouts are not mandatory. But, you can practice walking the rest of the days during the week – about 45 minutes of fast walking is recommended. Roughly 48 hours should pass between workouts that have to do with the same parts of the body so that the muscles have time to recover. Feel free to take a day off from training one day per week.

Limiting carbohydrates causes the body to burn fat. Carbohydrates aren’t excluded from the diet, but reducing the glycemic load equalizes blood sugar levels. Fat in food is calculated as approximately 0.5 g per 1 kg of body weight.

Protein is digested not as fast as carbohydrates. It increases fat burning and stimulates muscle development.

Physical exercise is an integral part of this diet. Calories are burned during workouts. At the same time, strength exercises are more helpful than aerobic ones. Aerobic exercises can actually burn calories specifically during the workout session. Strength exercises keep doing so for a long time after the session is over. However, aerobic exercises come in handy, too. They make high blood pressure go down, decrease stress, enhance the condition of the heart and blood vessels as well as improve the cholesterol profile.

In general, fast, short, and intense exercises are better for weight loss than long workouts that go to exhaustion.

People who have tried the ABS diet on themselves say it’s a plan that they’d love to stick to unlike other diets that they tried previously.