If you have been searching the net for tips to lose belly fat,
you most likely have come across masses of different sources, each
promising the best, most effective, and easiest ways to lose belly fat.
The sheer amount of information out there can make your search extremely
confusing to the seemingly simple question: how to lose my belly fat?
This article aims to cut through a lot of the hype out there by listing a
few but highly critical tips to lose belly fat:
1) Reduce stress in your life: This is one you may not have heard before, but is actually extremely vital, and relates to stopping stomach fat at its source, which is the hormone cortisol. Cortisol is a natural hormone produced by the body in response to stress. I don't mean physical stress only. This includes chronic emotional and other stresses such as work pressure. When the body is under stress, it activates its intrinsic "fight or flight response". When the body feels threatened, it responds by storing excess fat around the belly region, which could be later used in "emergencies". While this mechanism might have been extremely useful when humans were living in the forest as hunter gatherers, it can only lead to health problems in our modern society. Excess levels of cortisol, besides increasing fat around the abdominal region, also raise insulin levels, which all contribute to the increased chance of developing diabetes. While reducing stress in your life will not reduce your overall weight, it will reduce the tendency of fat to cluster around your belly, which represents the most dangerous kind of fat.
2) Lower your overall body fat content: Of course, no matter how much stress relief you practice, if your base level of body fat is still too high, there will be no substitute for aerobic exercise and diet modification to lower your overall body fat composition. Replacing fat cells with lean muscle cells through a targeted program of aerobics and light strength training is a surefire (but not necessarily easy) method to lose belly fat. As fat cells are pro-inflammatory as compared to lean muscle cells, and since chronic inflammation leads to a vicious cycle of more cortisol production, reducing the percentage of fat composition in your body is critical to losing belly fat.
3) Eat smaller portions at dinner: The final of these tips to lose belly fat is about simple scheduling. The simple truth is that given the average person's daily schedule, there isn't much activity to do after dinner. If you therefore consume most of your calories in the evening, and fail to engage in any meaningful activity afterwards in which to raise the metabolism and burn off those calories, all those extra pounds will go straight to fat storage, especially if you eat right before bed. Consider moving your largest meal of the day to lunch time, and replace dinner with a light snack.
A warnings about sit-ups: Although there are by far the most common lose belly fat exercises, be careful with excessively relying on sit-ups or crunches. Working out the abdominal muscles excessively without first losing overall body fat composition can actually make your stomach appear larger. All you will have achieved is building up ab muscle, however it will still be hidden by a layer of fat. Therefore, at least initially, the focus should be on overall cardiovascular conditioning and aerobic exercise rather than targeted ab muscle workouts for losing belly fat.
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1) Reduce stress in your life: This is one you may not have heard before, but is actually extremely vital, and relates to stopping stomach fat at its source, which is the hormone cortisol. Cortisol is a natural hormone produced by the body in response to stress. I don't mean physical stress only. This includes chronic emotional and other stresses such as work pressure. When the body is under stress, it activates its intrinsic "fight or flight response". When the body feels threatened, it responds by storing excess fat around the belly region, which could be later used in "emergencies". While this mechanism might have been extremely useful when humans were living in the forest as hunter gatherers, it can only lead to health problems in our modern society. Excess levels of cortisol, besides increasing fat around the abdominal region, also raise insulin levels, which all contribute to the increased chance of developing diabetes. While reducing stress in your life will not reduce your overall weight, it will reduce the tendency of fat to cluster around your belly, which represents the most dangerous kind of fat.
2) Lower your overall body fat content: Of course, no matter how much stress relief you practice, if your base level of body fat is still too high, there will be no substitute for aerobic exercise and diet modification to lower your overall body fat composition. Replacing fat cells with lean muscle cells through a targeted program of aerobics and light strength training is a surefire (but not necessarily easy) method to lose belly fat. As fat cells are pro-inflammatory as compared to lean muscle cells, and since chronic inflammation leads to a vicious cycle of more cortisol production, reducing the percentage of fat composition in your body is critical to losing belly fat.
3) Eat smaller portions at dinner: The final of these tips to lose belly fat is about simple scheduling. The simple truth is that given the average person's daily schedule, there isn't much activity to do after dinner. If you therefore consume most of your calories in the evening, and fail to engage in any meaningful activity afterwards in which to raise the metabolism and burn off those calories, all those extra pounds will go straight to fat storage, especially if you eat right before bed. Consider moving your largest meal of the day to lunch time, and replace dinner with a light snack.
A warnings about sit-ups: Although there are by far the most common lose belly fat exercises, be careful with excessively relying on sit-ups or crunches. Working out the abdominal muscles excessively without first losing overall body fat composition can actually make your stomach appear larger. All you will have achieved is building up ab muscle, however it will still be hidden by a layer of fat. Therefore, at least initially, the focus should be on overall cardiovascular conditioning and aerobic exercise rather than targeted ab muscle workouts for losing belly fat.