Five Foods You Should Never Eat if You Want to Lose Belly Fat?

Hey Shank,

I am thirty pounds overweight.  My Superstar Online Trainer told me that there are five foods you should never eat if you want to lose belly fat.  They are:

Whole Wheat Bread, Artificial Sweetners, Orange Juice, Butter Substitutes and Soy Milk.

I know with his advice I am going to be ripped in time for summer.  This will be the year the girls finally notice me.  Once I take my shirt off they won’t be able to help themselves!

What do you think about that!

Signed,

Empty on the Inside

Dear Empty,

I think you and your trainer should seriously consider couples therapy.

Why?

Because you are both INSANE!  And I don’t mean insane in a good way like how the Cookie Monster acts when you give him his daily fix of dough.

I mean insane like in you both are delusional and need help.  Let me explain.

Stumbling Block #1:  Belly Fat B.S.

When I say Belly Fat B.S. I don’t mean a Bachelor of Science Degree in having a fat belly which you might receive if you spend enough time at KFC.  No, the B.S. that I am talking about comes from the potty hole of a Bull and it is expressed here in the notion that you can specifically target fat that forms around your belly.

Let me put it this way.  Unless your Dr. is Hannibal Lecter, when you go to donate blood they don’t stick one needle in your chin, one needle in your arm, one in your leg and another one in your knee.  Why?  Because you don’t have knee blood, chin blood, leg blood or arm blood.  You just have good old systemic blood.  The same goes for body fat.

(If this guy is your Primary Care Physician you had better change your HMO Stat!)

Now maybe once you lose twenty or thirty pounds if you still have a predominance of your body fat remaining around your belly that might tell us something (like you have a problem tolerating carbohydrates) but you are just generally sloppy and out of shape. 

Stumbling Block #2:  Forbidden Foods

Let’s get this out of the way right now.  There are no bad foods.  Only the wrong foods, eaten by the wrong person at the wrong time (Thanks to Dr. John Berardi for that one).  The second your start forbidding stuff you begin to set up a mystique and an aura around it and when you eventually do fall off the wagon you wind up going nuts and rubbing cookie dough all over yourself and sticking Pizza down your pants.

(F@#king Chuck Norris)

You need to knock that crap off!  There is really only one food you really “can’t” eat when you are trying to lose weight but that food is different for each person and the rule in general doesn’t apply to everybody (this will be the title of a later blog called “Trigger Foods, The Trigger Finger that shoots your diet in the foot”).

So let’s quickly address your “Forbidden Foods”:

1.  Whole Wheat Bread:  I cannot possibly see how having a couple slices of whole wheat bread on your Turkey Sandwich for lunch or a couple of slices of whole wheat toast with a little bit of jelly along with your morning eggs is going to make you fat.

Now if you throw in a bag of chips or cheetos along with that sandwich and then down it with a 32 oz soda and a case of tasty-cakes, sure it’s a good time, but you aren’t going to lose weight that way.  Just don’t blame the whole wheat bread for crying out loud.

I have seen the diets of hundreds of fat people and I can tell you without a doubt that not one of them was getting jacked up on Whole Wheat Bread.

2.  Artificial Sweeteners:  Let’s get this one out of the way quickly.  Here is how artificial sweetners make people fat

Exhibit A:  I want a whole cornbeef sandwich with extra meat, a side of chips, an extra large coleslaw and a diet coke because you know every little bit helps.

Exhibit B:  I will have four slices of pepperoni pizza and a diet coke because you know that sugar will kill you.

Exhibit C:  I drink diet coke, now I can eat whatever I want all day.

Exhibit D:  I cut out diet sodas and artificial sweeteners and lost ten pounds.  I also stopped eating doughnuts, cookies, pizza and began an exercise routine five days a week but I know it was the diet soda that holding me back that entire time.

3.  Orange Juice:  One of the thinnest guys I know drinks orange juice every day.  The secret:  He drinks only one four ounce glass a day.  Now while a four ouncer might be impressive as Lindsay Lohans shot glass it is not a whole lot of calories.

(She used to be so pretty.  Seriously kids:  Don’t Do Drugs.  But if you do, don’t do a lot of them.)

You ever hear the saying “The Customer is Always Right”?  It’s Wrong.  The Customer is insane.  When hotels and restaurants used to serve us orange juice in that little glass the universal response was “Hey, You are Ripping Us Off”!  So then came the eight then the twelve ounce glass which was just the cherry on top the United States “We are Fat because we eat too freakin much of everything” Sundae.  

4.  Butter Substitutes:  Put a pat or two of a butter substitute on a slice of wheat toast or a pat or two on a plain baked potato and you should be o.k.  Slather a couple pounds of it on a 500 calorie bagel and your Tucchis is guaranteed to grow.

Perfect case in point; One time gave this fat guy came to me with a list of snacks his Doctor gave him.  One of the snacks was half a bagel.  He was completely enraged saying “Who Eats Half a Bagel”.  My answer:  Thin People.

5.  Soy Milk:  This one I kind of understand.  To my logic if you don’t have boobies, you can’t have milk and I ain’t never seen no boobies on no soy bean.  Soy Milk is a joke but you know what?  It beats convulsing on the toilet if you can’t tolerate dairy on your cornflakes.

Once again, I have looked at the diets of hundreds of fat people and what I noticed was a lot of ice cream, fast food, air sandwiches for breakfast, cream cheese bagels and an excessive amount of alcohol.  Soy Milk doesn’t even make the list.

(I was looking for a good milk on the toilet shot and then I saw this on google images and was fascinated by it.  I have no idea what is going on here, maybe he is lactose intolerant too.  I just think he should pull his pants down before he takes a poo.  What he is doing kind of defeats the purpose)

Conclusion

There will be no conclusion here.  This damn blog post was already too long to begin with.

Good night.

Yours in Chocolate Chip Cookies (I just won’t dip them in milk)

Mike