Weight Loss: The French Secret You Should Know

Yogurt is big business. That yogurt is both nutritious, and beginning to be appreciated as one of the solutions to the current US obesity crisis account for great deal of its marketability.

If you spend any time looking at the contents of the refrigerated dairy cases in your grocery store, you know that yogurt has now supplanted cottage cheese as the dieter's dairy snack. Fat-free; sugar-free; low-fat; full fat; fruit-sweetened; unsweetened; with additives ranging from extra cultures to chocolate, yogurt can be eaten, drunk, or frozen on a stick and licked like a popsicle.

And now, this food has been shown in studies to help with fat loss, when combined with a calorie reduced diet. Studies at the University of Tennessee have shown that three servings of yogurt a daycan help you to lose 22% more weight, 60% more body fat, than a restricted-calorie diet . In addition, 80% more abdominal fat was lost in the group with yogurt.

You can add yogurt to your morning cereal; pour it over a bowl of fresh fruit; throw it in the blender, add whatever you want, and make a smoothie; or simply spoon it from its store container and eat it like pudding.

What you may not know is that eating three 6 ounce (the standard single size container) servings of yogurt per day will provide you with about 1100 milligrams of dietary calcium. It will also give you high quality protein without loading up the calorie count. French women have long known that adding one or two servings of yogurt each day to their diets helps them keep their famously slim French profiles.

As admirable as having a slim profile may be, if you are female, and especially if you are a Baby Boomer, you are probably thinking more and more about getting dietary calcium. You know that osteoporosis is a real risk for postmenopausal women. The same calcium found in yogurt which helps your bones stay strong as been clinically shown to promote weight loss, reduce body fat while maintaining lean muscle mass, and most importantly, eliminate abdominal fat.

Abdominal fat has been linked to a number of serious conditions, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and stroke. When three 6-ounce servings of low-fat yogurt are included in a calorie-reduced diet, abdominal fat loss is shown to increase an average of 81% over the amount lost with a calorie-restricted diet alone.

How can you add yogurt to your weight loss diet?

Begin your day with a trio of super foods: prepare a half a cup of oatmeal (rolled oats, not instant), add a half a cup of wild blueberries, and mix in six ounces a cup of low-fat yogurt.

If you brown bag it to school or work, toss in a carton of yogurt along with your sandwich. Look for low-fat frozen yogurt instead of ice. Substitute plain yogurt for sour cream on your potato or in your vegetable dips.

Make yogurt cheese (simply pour plain yogurt into cheesecloth and let it drain into a bowl over night). Yogurt cheese, like tofu, picks up the flavor of anything you mix it with. So mix it with peanut butter, mayonnaise, or even ice cream and cut your fat and calories while getting all the nutritional and weight-loss benefits of yogurt!

Even if you use a sweet flavored yogurt like lemon or vanilla to make yogurt cheese, you will keep the sweet flavor but have a much richer texture. There is really no reason why yogurt cannot play a leading role in your weight loss diet!

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