4 Foods That Burn Belly Fat

Eat to beat belly fat
Believe it or not, your body actually doesn't want to store fat. And the secret to lasting weight loss does not come down to complicated calorie-counting and weight-loss gimmicks. Instead, it's about working with your body's natural hunger and sleep rhythms to curb cravings, burn fat and send your energy levels soaring. (In as little as 30 days, you can be a whole lot slimmer, way more energetic, and so much healthier just by following the simple, groundbreaking plan in The Thyroid Cure!)

Prevention's revolutionary Belly Melt Diet explains the science behind why getting a good night's sleep will help you lose while you snooze and how eating the right foods at the right times can satisfy your body's need for fuel and taste. What's more: Certain flat belly foods can actually help you sleep better and help you lose weight on their own. Research shows that our bodies' inner eat-and-sleep clocks have been thrown completely out of whack, thanks to cues we send it all day with the wrong foods—and too much artificial light at night. The result: You're caught in a "fat cycle": a constant flow of hunger hormones that makes your cravings all but impossible to resist. But if you tune into your body's natural eat and sleep schedules, you can actually—finally—say good-bye to your belly. Sounds good, right?

Another day, another study about the benefits of eating fish—and for good reason. We know from animal studies that when your diet is deficient in omega-3s, the natural rhythms of your pineal gland—the pea-size gland in the center of your brain—are thrown off, leading to alterations in the production of melatonin, your sleep hormone. Animals with an omega-3 deficit don't sleep during their usual rest periods—they're up and spinning in their wheels the same way that humans with insomnia do.

As if you needed another excuse to eat nuts, these fatty legumes are a great source of mood-boosting magnesium. Without enough magnesium in your body, the part of the brain that regulates melatonin is thrown off, disrupting your sleep. An uptick in magnesium is what tells animals it’s time to hibernate—for us, not having enough of it may play a role in seasonal affective disorder (SAD), the depression—and carb-craving—condition brought on by the low light of winter.

Around bedtime, munch on a few tart Montmorency cherries. These cherries are one of a number of plant-based sources of melatonin, the sleep hormone. (Bananas and corn have it, too.) While there's no evidence that they'll help you nod off, studies have found that foods like these can raise melatonin levels in the body. Not only does melatonin help you sleep, but it's a powerful antioxidant that can protect your cells from free radical damage, the kind that leads to cancer, Alzheimer's, and other diseases. That should help you sleep easy. How to get your dose: Eat them whole! If you're not a fan of cherries, drink the juice instead. In a recent study, people who drank 8 ounces of tart cherry juice in the morning and another 8 ounces in the evening for 2 weeks reported they slept more soundly.