Losing weight is no easy job, but when it comes to belly fat, it seems particularly harder. But if you think something’s wrong with you, it isn’t! As Chris DiVecchio says, “It’s essentially impossible to tell one specific region of your body to accelerate the fat metabolism.”
Well, he’s a NASM-certified personal trainer, so he must know what he’s talking about. Even so, losing belly fat is one of the biggest achievements, because storing fat in that area can also harm your health.
The belly fat is also known as visceral fat or the deep abdominal fat that surrounds your organs. But because of that, it circulates in the bloodstream, therefore is more likely to raise the amount of fat in your blood. If you want to know how to get rid of it, here’s a list of how to lose belly fat:
- First, you work on your behaviors – An important aspect of weight loss is being aware of what decisions you make. If you’re out with your friends at dinner, you might lose track of how much you’re eating or drinking.
- Then, you track your calories – The general rule of weight loss is to burn more than you consume. If 3,500 calories mean one pound of fat, you can later know how much you need to burn to meet your goals. If you don’t like measuring your calories like that, it’s completely understandable (only a few people do anyway). As an alternative, try splitting your usual lunch sandwich in half: you eat one half at lunch and the other half a few hours later.
- You’ll have to add more fiber to your diet – If you eat a lot of foods that are high in refined carbs and sugar, you won’t satisfy your hunger. What you need o do is to eat more fibrous foods, such as vegetables, fruits, beans, legumes, and chia seeds.
- & Walk every day – You might not have any kind of exercising routine at the moment, so taking a daily walk might be a great alternative. There’s a study published in “The Journal of Exercise Nutrition & Biochemistry” that shows how obese women who walked 70 minutes three days a week for 12 weeks lost a significant amount of fat, compared to a sedentary control group.
- Embrace strength training – If you want to get rid of that belly fat, you’ll need to try full-body strength training. Why? Because it helps you build muscle, which will replace the fat. And it gets even better: because muscles are metabolically active, you’ll continue to burn calories even after you finish your workout, which only makes you lose even more weight.
- Eat more healthy fats – Funnily enough, if you want to lose fat, you’ll have to eat the right kind of fat. And by that, we mean monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, which will make you feel more satisfied with your meals. Try eating more nuts, avocados, fatty fish, and eggs.
- Load up on protein – Eating more proteins has many benefits: it keeps you full, and it helps you recover from an exhausting workout session. If you want to avoid feeling hungry after any workout, try eating a snack that has at least 12 grams of protein.
- And then you do some crunches – Unfortunately, there is no other way to do this but to put in your schedule some abs work. Try some exercises that are destined for that area at least three or four times a week, with at least 24 hours of rest in between sessions.
- Reduce the amount of stress – You have no idea what stress can do to your weight loss process. If you make a lot of effort by working out, and then you self sabotage the process by eating a hamburger because someone pissed you off at work, then you’re basically delaying the reward.
- Your sleep is the most important – Sleep is another essential factor when it comes to weight loss success. If you don’t sleep enough, you won’t have the necessary energy to exercise, or your body won’t rest.
- Drink less alcohol – You might be having a hard time consuming fewer calories. Maybe you don’t want to give up on that slice of cheesecake, or maybe you want to keep on having the occasional burger. That’s alright, and it’s perfectly understandable. If so, consider eliminating other empty calories from your diet: soda, sugar, but mostly…alcohol.
- Cook more often – There’s a 2017 study that shows how spending more time in the kitchen can actually help you reduce belly fat. The researchers basically explained how people who cook their own meals might be prone to having other good-for-you habits as well, such as exercising more.
