“I can’t do this. I can’t face another diet.” My friend Kimberly was making yet another series of desperate New Year’s resolutions. “Every year, I starve myself for months, I lose maybe five pounds, and by springtime it all comes back,” she complained. “What’s the point? I’m just destined to be overweight.”

I understood how she felt. Obesity shortened my own father’s life, and for most of my childhood I struggled with an extra 25 pounds as well. I figured it was my genetic destiny to be fat, too. But then I got sick and tired of being sick and tired, and I’ve made it my life’s work to learn everything there is to know about belly fat. But nothing in my 20 years of health journalism has prepared me for the groundbreaking research that has emerged in just the last year—new science that shows exactly how we can turn off our fat genes and lose weight almost automatically.

“What would you say if I told you that you didn’t need to go on a diet for months or even weeks?” I asked Kim. “What if you could lose much of that belly in just 14 days?”

That’s exactly what happened when last summer I shared Zero Belly Diet with a test panel of more than 500 people, some of whom lost as much as 16 pounds in just 14 days, and up to three inches off their waist. The secret to Zero Belly Diet is the new science of nutritional genetics, the study of how our genes are turned on and off by the foods we eat. Simply making a handful of tweaks to your diet and lifestyle can help improve your gut health, dampen inflammation, turn off your fat genes and start your body shedding fat—in particular, belly fat—almost automatically.

Start with these simple day-by-day changes to your daily routine, and check out Zero Belly Diet now to start losing weight while eating the foods you love!

1. TAKE A BRISK WALK BEFORE BREAKFAST

2. START WITH SOME OATMEAL

3. CHOOSE RED FRUIT OVER GREEN

4. MAKE SOME GUACAMOLE

5. MIX UP A PLANT-PROTEIN SMOOTHIE

6. POWER UP WITH EGGS

7. MIX UP A MAGIC ELIXIR