Weight

Trim your torso with Bookish suggestions. (Photo: bookish)

With summer upon us and pools and beaches beckoning, many of us would like to rid ourselves of extraneous wintertime glut. Whether you're looking to shed a few pounds to perfect your beach bod or you're aiming to improve your health, these weight-loss guides pave the way to a paunch-free physique.

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1. Inches Off! Your Tummy

Cruise's forthcoming book offers readers a gut-obliterating exercise plan that's tough to beat. By focusing on "compound exercises to hit virtually every muscle in the body with each rep," he busts the myth that a tight tummy requires long hours at the gym. Throughout, he sheds light on how to avoid foods with hidden sugars-one of the biggest dietary contributors to excess stomach flab.

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2. The Belly Fat Cure

Jorge Cruise was overweight when young, so he knows the cost of carrying extra pounds. His five best-selling books focus on keeping metabolism rates high and eating smaller, more frequent meals. In The Belly Fat Cure, he advocates a low-carb/low-sugar diet as the way to shed pounds above the belt.

3. Flat Belly Diet!

According to the editors at Prevention magazine, if monounsaturated fatty acids are not your friend, you need to make them so. That's because they help you lose and keep off belly fat, all without having to do crunches and starve yourself.

4. The Lean Belly PrescriptionTravis Stork worked in the E.R. at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, TN, and also cohosted the hit TV show, The Doctors (he was also The Bachelor, though he's now engaged to someone else). One of the things he looked for when someone came into his emergency room was how much stomach fat they were displaying--it's a key marker for how well a patient will recover. His Lean Belly Prescription builds on that experience, and lays out a plan for small adjustments to one's diet that can lead to big abdominal changes.

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5. The Belly Off! Diet

Both Men's Health and Women's Health instigated online "Belly Off! Clubs," where readers shared stories and advice. A book was sure to follow, and The Belly Off! Diet offers a 7-day quick start, a no gym-fitness plan, shopping lists, recipes and enough stories of weight loss to inspire the laziest among us.

6. From Belly Fat to Belly Flat

C.W. Randolph argues in From Belly Fat to Belly Flat that when women develop the dreaded spread, it's all down to 'estrogen dominance,' and that with an "anti-estrogenic" diet, pounds can be shed and stomachs can shrink (though you're going to have to work on improving your sleep, upping your amount of exercise and lowering your stress levels, too).

7. The New Abs Diet for Women

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The good news is, once you've lost the pounds, getting a set of sexy abs is a real possibility. Editor-in-chief of Men's Health David Zinczenko is also the best-selling author of the Eat This, Not That! franchise. He wrote The New Abs Diet for Women, which was recently updated with 40 percent new research, though it still focuses on the Power 12 foods such as beans, eggs and peanut butter.

8. Wheat Belly

According to Dr. William Davis, a Wisconsin-based "preventative cardiologist", one food to avoid for the flattest abdomen is wheat. In fact, he attributes the obesity epidemic almost entirely to modern wheat products (they increase blood sugar more than any other food among other things). It's a tough ask for some, but findings point to promising results. His book, Wheat Belly, details his work and how to go about eliminating the starchy culprit from your diet.

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This article was originally posted on Bookish.com.