Exercise/Fitness
Flat Belly Diet Frenzy After 'Good Morning America' Plug
By Ann Turner

Jan 3, 2008

Every week a new diet plan hits the news in America's endless quest for the holy grail of weight loss. This week's diet media frenzy was sparked by the appearance of a 55-year-old woman on Good Morning America proclaiming the miracle of the Flat Belly Diet!, created by Prevention magazine's Editor in Chief Liz Vaccariello and Nutrition Editor Cynthia Sass.  

Mary Anne Speshok, a resident of Bethlehem, NJ, was selected along with several other dieters to be featured on a segment of Good Morning America on Wednesday. Speshok claims she lost a whopping 46 pounds after following the instructions of the Flat Belly Diet! book and speed walking six days a week. She dropped from a size 16 to a size 8.  

Speshok was originally chosen as one of 13 women who participated in a Prevention test panel as part of the development of the Flat Belly Diet! program. The FlatBellyDiet.com web site claims participants can "loose up to 15 pounds in 32 days, eat delicious foods and never feel hungry, conquer emotional eating, never do a single crunch and mostly importantly [so they say], flatten your belly."  

The diet's core principle revolves around the idea of "a MUFA at every meal." MUFA is a term that stands for monounsaturated fatty acid, so-called "good fats" thought to reduce LDL cholesterol and boost HDL, reducing the risk of heart disease and providing other beneficial effects to the body.  

The featuring of the Flat Belly Diet! on Good Morning America spurred an Internet frenzy Wednesday morning of searchers eager to find out more about the weight loss plan—launching "flat belly diet" into the number one spot for hot search terms on Google.com.  

Whether or not this newest diet plan will prove to be the next great weight loss strategy in America remains to be seen. One thing is a given though, the national exposure for the plan provided by Good Morning America and Mary Anne Speshok have certainly given the Flat Belly Diet! a step up on the competition.