The New Weapon To Blast Belly Fat
If you want to lose your belly as quickly as possible in the New Year—and who doesn’t?—it pays to know about the new gold standard for measuring both your fitness level and health risks. Recent studies suggest a new technique called A Body Shape Index, or ABSI, can reveal more about your chances of death and disease than body weight or BMI ever could.
Unlike BMI—which was invented in the 1800s and often seems like it, since it doesn’t take into account abdominal fat, which more and more studies are showing to be the critical factor in your risk of diabetes, stroke and heart disease—ABSI factors in a critical component: waist circumference. If weight and BMI measure “bigness,” then ABSI measures “roundness”—and better identifies whether your belly puts you at risk.
This knowledge is absolutely essential. In my new weight-loss book, appropriately named Zero Belly Diet, I show how the one simple goal of trying to shrink your middle in six short weeks can change your life dramatically by reducing your risk of everything from heart disease to diabetes to Alzheimer’s. Study after study has shown that people with large waists die sooner than those with flat bellies, even if their BMI is normal. Fortunately, there’s a new weapon in town.
How ABSI works
The ABSI formula was discovered in 2012 by researchers at the City College of New York’s School of Engineering. They analyzed body measurements and death rates in more than fourteen thousand adults who had participated in two surveys in the 1980s and 1990s. By comparing survey results with death and cancer diagnosis records, they discovered a positive correlation between big bellies and high chances of death: for each standard deviation from the average in ABSI (a score of 1), the chance of death increased by 1.13 times. People with ABSI in the top 20 percent were found to have death rates 61 percent higher than those with ABSI in the bottom 20 percent.
When I launched the Zero Belly Diet test panel in spring of 2014, I paid special attention to targeting belly fat, and to monitoring how the diet changed the health profiles of panelists. Take the example of Katrina Bridges from Bethalto, Illinois, who signed up for the Zero Belly test panel “to de-bloat and lose some belly fat.” She had tried Atkins, Shakeology, even the Jillian Michaels Body Revolution. Each had helped to a certain extent, but weight was still a battle. Katrina weighed 237 pounds, but the bigger health issue—which she really didn’t even know about—wasn’t her weight but her waist.
Katrina’s waist circumference was 50 inches. Katrina is only 5′5″, so her waist size put her in imminent danger. At just 30 years of age, she had an ABSI relative risk of 1.9. What does that mean? Katrina’s risk of dying from heart disease or diabetes was 90 percent greater than that of someone with a more modest waist measurement. This mother of three was nearly twice as likely to pass away prematurely.
But after just three days on Zero Belly, Katrina noted her stomach had started to shrink. Within just five weeks, Katrina’s waist was down to 45 inches, and her ABSI relative risk was down to 1.1. That means her risk of death was just 10 percent greater than that of the average person—an enormous change, and one that can give her children the gift of seeing their mom live a longer, happier life.
To help you quickly figure out your risk, I’ve put an easy-to-use calculator on ZeroBelly.com. What’s great is that as you go through the Zero Belly program, you’ll be able to plug in your numbers and watch as your ABSI—and your risk of diabetes, heart disease, and more—actually shrinks right along with your waist.
Strip away belly fat and lose up to 16 pounds in just 14 days—while eating the foods you love—with Zero Belly Diet—available right on time for a post-holiday detox!
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