Scott Sonnon: Born to Fail - Made to Succeed

16 Steps to the Flat-Tummy Diet

Yes, thousands email me about the “flat-tummy diet” which Circular Strength Training students thrive on. And if you follow even just one of these steps, you will have instant results. Follow them all, and your life will change. Discipline yourself to make them a lifestyle and in several months you’ll be in awe of your energy level, the spring in your step, and yes, how sexy you feel in the clothes you’ve dreamed of wearing.

1. Write it down! Journal your meals; when you have them and what you eat and drink. Include everything even to a handful of almonds, or that sneaky glorified candybar that supplement companies call “energy.” What you don’t realize will hurt you. But what you write down guarantees that you understand why your energy fluctuates, and empowers you to make specific and lasting changes!
2. 3-4-5: Eat 3 meals 4-5 hours apart with protein and complex carbs (greens and browns, no whites) at every meal. Front load your protein by eating more good stuff. If you eat more good stuff, you’ll displace the need for snacks which because of their fast-burn make you crave more sugars. That’s right. I’m telling you to eat more at your meals!
3. Stop the Belly at 7! After 7PM don’t take in anything but water or herbal tea. Filling makes for unfit sleeping habits, gives insomnia, and makes it harder for you to eat the right amount of food you need for breakfast - the most important meal of your day. You should be ravenous by morning, and that’s a good sign that you’re on track!
4. You are what you eat, regardless of whether you eat fast junk or if you eat sustainable quality. So, choose greens over browns and browns over whites. Choose whole, live, raw, local and organic over inert, mass-produced, foreign packaged and processed. If you want to feel like a million bucks, then you need to invest in the most important virtue of your success, your food!
5. No refined sugar, no sugar substitutes. No whites of any kind. Sure, if you use sugar, realize it, experience it and appreciate it. But sugar and its substitutes are the most insidious socially acceptible drug abuses. Just because 100 years ago, cocaine was socially acceptible, doesn’t mean it was healthy. It takes time for your taste to recover from refined sugar, but if you displace it with naturally occuring nutrient dense foods like dates (YUM!) you will not believe the difference not only in your energy, but how great you look and feel!
6. Kick the habit. These are just pale substitutes for the infinitely abundant vitality which lies concealed beneath their frazzled effects. Sure, moderation is fine, if you can handle it. But most people “crash” diet off of them and then fall “off the wagon.” So, it’s best to clear them totally out of your system for two years before you try to have that healthy glass of wine with your small evening meal, or that doppio espresso with your big breakfast.
7. Eat seasonally. Change your nutrition at least once every three months with the local produce and catch of the day. This guarantees the freshest aliveness of the food you’re ingesting. The closer the food is to being alive, the greater the nutritive density. Remember the purpose of food is to transfer its alive-energy to your energy. Life for life. This is why we must honor its sacrifice to us, and bless each bite for the energy it has chosen to give us.
8. Structure your exercise around your meals, not the other way around. Do the bulk of your “training” in the kitchen, because healthy nutrition precedes exercise. Basically, how you feel today is because of what you ate 12-48 hours ago.
9. Hunger is truth. Do you always feel content and never hungry? I’m not talking about feeling like you’re not full. I’m talking about rumbling, gurgling hunger. When’s the last time that you really felt that? Most people have conditioned themselves to eat when they feel less food digesting, rather than when they actually are hungry. This is why the kitchen is your best fitness equipment. You should be preparing or have prepared your meal by the time you hit actual hunger.
10. 1GPD: drink one gallon of water per day. We’re composed 90% of water. Most insufficient recovery, most headaches, most joint pains, most lack of concentration, most everything is due to chronic dehydration. Drinking coffee, soda, beer, “energy” drinks, all contribute to dehydration. It takes time to shift over to craving actual water again, because of the sugar, caffeine and alcohol cravings overriding that base-line need. Herbal tea - hot - will help you transition.
11. Wait 15 minutes after your meal to have any drink. Most of the bloated feeling comes from all of the drinking. If you need to drink because of the seasoning, then consider that your food has been seasoned to make you consume more.
12. First Burp. If you’re adequately chewing your food, and not drinking at your meal, then when you feel that first burp, your stomach just informed you that you’re done. Set the fork down, Sir, and push away from the table. Satiety reflex takes time to reclaim, because we’ve associated the absence of hunger to be “meal success” - when it’s actually based on certain cues that our body gives us like “first burp.”
13. Drink your food by chewing. You should chew your food until it’s liquified. If you don’t, you must eat more to get the same level of nutrition, and you’re usually “full” before you get adequate nutritive benefit from your meal because of gobbling and choking it down. Most people store fat because the body feels starved for nutritients… because they eat too fast. Slow down. This isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon. Savor each morsel.
14. Take a short walk immediately after your meal. This aids in digestion, and avoids the “fullness” feeling that plugs you and pushes you into “food coma.” It’s also the best time for a great talk with your loved ones. Or on your own, just experience the food as it becomes you.
15. Be in your process. Just because you’re learning discipline on your healthy nutrition doesn’t mean that you should fixate on doing everything perfectly. When you “fall off the wagon” jump back on without judging yourself. Appreciate your little tangent like you would any child-like distraction. You’re your own parent. Treat yourself like you would your darling little babe.
16. Honor elimination. What goes out and how is as important as what goes in. I know that most people don’t want to talk about elimination, because it’s viewed as “waste” because it’s not useful to you. But that’s just all perspective, and one of the fundamental beliefs leading to diseases like colon cancer. Be grateful for what has become you and what goes on to something else. The first 15 steps will help you cleanse out undigested food, so that you can more efficiently process the nutrition you ingest.

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