Flat Belly Diet: Fact or Fiction? Do certain foods help you maintain a slim waist?

Fat develops on the body when “calories that are not utilized as energy become stored as fat.” These excess calories can come from any food; there is no one special food that is responsible.

• Monitor your caloric intake. Eating too many high-calorie foods can leave you with more calories than you need.
• Watch portion size. No foods are off limits, per se, but we need to consider portion size and frequency.
• Eat the right kind of fat. We need to limit our intake of saturated fats — found in foods such as red meat, cream, and butter — to less than 10 percent of our diet. Foods such as fish, olive oil, avocado, and walnuts are great sources of unsaturated fats, which can work to lower your levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, the “bad” kind.
• Exercise regularly. The study on physical activity also found good news for menopausal women: Women who exercise more gain less weight during menopause; and even women who exercise less can slow and reverse their weight gain by increasing their exercise frequency.