Although losing weight can be challenging, experts claim there is one easy method that can help you get started and help you lose excess belly fat and feel better in a matter of days.

There’s only one catch: the easy solution is to give up a certain food type that Americans are addicted to, frequently out of need, as a result of their hectic schedules, which rarely provide time for spending at home cooking recipes from the Mediterranean Diet cookbook.

But if you make the effort to reduce your intake of this specific fattening agent and replace it with healthier options, you’ll be surprised at the results, especially in the notoriously difficult belly region, where fat tends to accumulate and stays there far longer than any of us would like, says a weight loss expert.

Lucy Jones works as the chief clinical officer and dietitian at Oviva, a weight management company in the UK. She clarified that cutting back on “refined carbs” can help you much in the battle of the bulge. This is a war worth fighting because stomach fat can seriously harm your internal organs and increase your chances of diabetes, heart disease, and other conditions.

“Targeting particular body areas is hard, but there is some evidence from studies like the Framlingham Heart Study, that eating less sugar and refined carbs — and instead replacing these with wholegrain foods — can help to reduce more abdominal fat,” Jones said.

This entails forgoing the dish of standard spaghetti or the Italian sandwich on a white roll in favor of wholegrain alternatives, such as whole wheat pasta and dark sourdough bread. Sure, they’re healthy, but they can also help with weight loss.

A study that compared those who ate wholegrains to those who didn’t revealed that although people who ate refined carbohydrates lost a little bit more weight, people who ate wholegrains were able to melt “significantly more” belly fat. The study was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.