How Can I Get Rid Of Belly Fat
Here’s the deal, you can get a flat belly by doing hundreds of situps and crunches, hours of cardio exercises, controlling how much you eat and counting endless calories. The way people have been trying to get rid of belly fat hanging around their middle since day one usually involves a calorie restricting diet.
This works, but usually, it is a short term fix. I have come to the conclusion that a calorie restricting diet may not be the way to go. Think about it, if you restrict your calorie intake, your body is going to say “I am hungry, feed me!” As a result, your metabolism will slow down, go into survival mode, and make it harder to lose weight, especially around your belly. There has to be a better way to eat less without suffering from hunger.
What if you could eat more (I don’t mean stuffing yourself), and live a more normal life while you were working to get rid of belly fat for good. That would be wonderful, and it is entirely possible, with a little self control on your part. Are you ready for this?
The first thing is to make a goal. Everybody needs something to work for to make the effort worthwhile. Go ahead, make your goal. Just say “I will (and add what you want)”
Lose two dress sizes?
Get into my favorite jeans again?
Look better on the beach?
Impress your friends?
How did that feel?
The end result has to be something you can see to make the journey worth the effort. While you are thinking about your goal, I want you to be thinking about having a good meal, drinking a glass of wine with your dinner, eating carbohydrates and spending a lot less time working out.
Then consider these six fat-busting strategies that will help you melt away the pounds so that you can say goodbye to belly fat for good.
1. Have a Glass of Wine with Dinner
Everyone knows that having a glass of red wine with dinner is good for your heart. But, did you know that a recent study from the Harvard School of Public Health found that women who drank one or two alcoholic beverages a day, regardless of type, gained less weight compared to their non-drinking friends.
The fact is that you will not lose weight drinking, but women tend to eat less when they drink, and there’s evidence that a woman’s body breaks down alcohol inefficiently and that may cause your body to burn a few more calories.
I am not saying that you should take up drinking to lose weight. That never works, however, a light drink at dinner might help you remove some of that stubborn belly fat. As with most things, moderation is the key. This is where the self control really comes in.
2. Skip Those Sit-ups and Crunches
If you are reluctant to do hundreds of sit-ups, don’t sweat it. Studies have confirmed that hundreds of sit-ups aren’t getting you any closer to a flat stomach because they only work a small portion of your core muscles.
An April 2010 article in the Journal of Orthopedic and Sports Physical Therapy concluded that the Swiss-ball rollout and the Swiss-ball pike were the most effective exercises in activating and exercising abdominal muscles.
These exercises will strengthen and tone up those stomach muscles, but they will not do much to decrease your waist size. You still have to help remove that layer of belly fat with a good diet before you can show off your new smoking hot midsection.
How do you remove that layer of belly fat? Unfortunately, it also takes exercise. You must make your body use up more calories than you take in on your normal diet. And studies have shown that resistance training, yep, pumping iron, is more effective at breaking up fat than cardio. So, you might consider hitting the weight room to do some resistance training to help reduce that layer of fat and strengthen your whole body at the same time. Why, according to a Penn State study, 22 percent of weight loss comes from losing muscle when dieters don’t pump iron. So, if you lose 20 pounds on your diet, 4.4 pounds will be muscle loss.
I know you are thinking, “But I don’t want to build muscles.” But never fear, you will not become muscle bound or lose your feminine shape. It takes a tremendous amount of exercise with heavy weights to lose your figure. There are several exercise programs that I recommend that offer different levels of intensity.
But, not just any resistance training will do. Get some help to develop and plan your exercise sessions. It might be necessary to go to a gym or fitness center to get advice and equipment to use. Unfortunately, this option is not usually free. If you have been following my articles, you will recall that I had my most successful fitness training at a local community college. Another option is to go online, find a resistance training program you like and make a plan. There are several programs with belly-busting routines for women and men. At any rate, resistance training will melt the fat off your body a lot faster than cardio exercise and dieting alone.
3. Shorten Your Cardio (or Warmup time) Workout
Most of us want to warm up slowly before we hit the mats and do any kind of serious exercise. The problem is, warming up slowly, or doing a cardio exercise at a moderate pace, does not burn up much fat.
Exercising at a faster pace will burn calories faster in a shorter period of time. It is kind of like driving a car. The faster you drive the more fuel it burns. After a more intense workout, your body will continue to burn energy for some time, since stressed muscles need more fuel to repair and replenish.
So, shorten your cardio workout and make the rest of your workout more intense. You don’t have to kill yourself on a stationary bike or treadmill to get the the belly busting benefits of a high-intensity workout, just increase the pace. You still able to talk to your neighbors while you are exercising and burning up that excess fat.
4. Try to Get More Sleep
Most people are always sleep deprived. It is the nature of our culture to try to burn the candle at both ends. We are simply trying to do more everyday and the only thing that we can scrimp on to get more time is our sleep. Several years ago, Canadian researchers looked at the relationship between sleep and weight gain over a 6 year period of time and found that people who slept 5 to 6 hours a night gained about 4.5 pounds more than those who rested for 7 to 8 hours. Probably, because if we sleep more, we have less time to eat, and don’t snack during the day to get that extra energy we need to keep going.
5. Eat More Dairy Products Every Day
Dairy products have gotten a bad rap as a diet food. After all, milk products are fatty and many dieticians recommend avoiding dairy products. But an International Journal of Obesity study found that eating yogurt, milk, and cheese, may help you lose that stubborn spare tire. It reported that people on a reduced-calorie diet who ate about 3 cups of yogurt a day for 12 weeks lost more weight than those who just cut calories and took calcium pill supplements. What is even more interesting is that the extra flab was whittled primarily from their stomachs: Yogurt eaters lost about an inch and a half from their waists, while the calcium pill poppers lost less than a quarter of an inch.
I can see that, after all, if you eat a cup of yogurt three times a day, you definitely will fill up faster and will not eat as many calories.
6. Lastly but not Leastly, Eat Those Carbohydrates (But Choose Them Wisely)
There are three building blocks that your body needs, protein, carbohydrates and fats. A lot of diets restrict one or the other to make the body lose weight. The problem is that eliminating or restricting one or the other for extended periods of time can cause other problems with your body or be hazardous to your health. A diet higher in protein with the proper amounts of carbohydrates and fats will help destroy the fat and restore your muscles.
Studies have shown that an all-Atkins diet is not necessary to lose your gut. A 2009 Journal of Nutrition study found that loading up on the right carbohydrates can actually help you lose weight. The study found that people who ate a lot of whole grains (the type found in dark bread, brown rice, popcorn) and whole cereal fiber tended to have less overall body fat and belly fat than those who ate less of the stuff.
So it appears that adding more whole grains to your diet may fill you up faster and help you cut back on other foods that have more calories. You will be able to eat more but without adding more calories. You’ll feel fuller, longer and they are loaded with fiber, which is harder to digest and that in turn will cause your body to burn more fat for energy. Talk about win-win.
Get started now. Make your statement “I will (you add the rest)” and then, in your minds eye, see yourself pounds thinner.