Losing and trying to burn belly fat quickly is often a primary goal when we consider Diets and Weight Loss. After all, is not the purpose of a diet to look good? The 6 Best Tips to Burn Belly Fat will help with you achieving your fat loss and weight loss goals.
However, more importantly, than above, carrying an excess of belly fat can increase your risk of chronic health conditions. So, by doing all you can, even if a diet is not part of your agenda, reducing belly fat will improve your overall health.
The Challenge here, if we just look at the Weight loss element, is often, if you are combining a gym routine with a diet, building muscle mass will put weight on. Further, as we get older, the thought and image of vigorous gym and exercise routines fills us with dread.
My 6 Best Tips to Burn Belly Fat are simple steps that with a bit of discipline can be incorporated and built into your lifestyle and routine.
Before we start, we need to understand:
What is Belly Fat
Belly fat, is a layer of fat that sits below the muscles of your abdomen. Belly fat is the common name for Visceral fat. Belly Fat is not to be confused with the other fat, subcutaneous fat this fat is the one that you can you can pinch with your fingers.
As belly fat sits around vital organ areas, despite supplying constant sources of energy, this fat can expose your body to compounds that could have negative impacts and can increase your risk of chronic health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
For this reason, it is important, for your overall health to get control and reduce your belly fat
With that in mind here are my 6 Best Tips to Burn Belly Fat
Moderate Your Alcohol Intake
Yep, we are starting with the big one, the Elephant in the room, and that is Alcohol.
Alcohol can stop your body from burning fat. Alcohol which is high in kilojoules also leads to greater feelings of hunger and decreases the feeling of being full. This means we snack; we binge eat, or eat the wrong things. I am sure (like me) you have come in from a night out to hit the snacks, the rubbish food, the Dodgy Kebab (This might be an English saying, but let me know)
Further, engaging in alcohol excess can slow down and affect a person’s fat metabolism. The body considers alcohol a toxin/waste, therefore when someone drinks, it metabolizes it, and other nutrients such as fat will be pushed aside whilst the body deals with the alcohol.
If you were to give up drinking alcohol for, say 2 weeks you will find, like others, that they begin to effortlessly lose weight during this time, thanks to removing the excess calories associated with alcoholic beverages.
How much weight loss? well that will depend on various factors such as age, starting weight, diet/exercise but people find that by cutting out the drink, they lost between 6 and 12 pounds.
Also, as well as the fat burning implications your body can now carry out, you will also experience benefits such as better sleep, better memory function, more energy, and better mental health. There are other far reaching implications and benefits to cutting back or cutting out alcohol but they are beyond the scope of this article, however if you are keen to know more have a look at the Priory Group
Reduce Your Stress Levels
There is no other way of putting it, it Stress, and being stressed can have a major impact on overall health, and our body weight and fat burning ability.
Stress management and weight loss are linked in 3 key ways
- When stressed we eat more, often the junk and unhealthy foods. We are looking for that comfort hit and release that often something sugary will (temporarily) give us
- Being stressed our bodies release hormones such as cortisol and betatrophin. These two hormones increase abdominal fat and slow metabolism respectively.
- Often when stressed we suffer broken and irregular sleep patterns. Lack of quality sleep is a factor in our bodies not burning fat, more of which below.
If you are under stress or suffering from stress, I would urge you to seek medical and professional help. Also, you might want to check my article on Balancing Work Life Stress link here. For ideas and tips to help with balancing your life
Get Plenty of Restful Sleep
Studies suggest that sleep plays a role in weight loss, and specifically fat loss. Sleep plays an important role in regulating hormones, including those that control your hunger and appetite. A lack of sleep is also linked to poor food choices, an increased hunger and calorie intake, plus associated decreased physical activity, which all combined leads to fat and weight gain.
A study led by Naima Covassin, Ph.D., a cardiovascular medicine researcher at Mayo Clinic, showed that lack of sufficient sleep led to a 9% increase in total abdominal fat area and an 11% increase in abdominal visceral fat.
Further to this, in a study of people with sleep deprivation, there was noticeable reduction in leptin (a hormone that helps regulate the energy balance by suppressing hunger, resulting in decreased fat mass) and increased ghrelin (ghrelin is made in your stomach and signals your brain when you’re hungry). The changes in these hormones after shorter sleep durations are likely to increase appetite and could also be a possible explanation for the increased BMI.
Basically, poor sleep messes with the hormones that control our hunger and full feelings therefore if you want to burn fat, get a good nights’ sleep.
Eat A High Protein Diet
Now a word of caution here. Whilst studies show that absorbing more protein than the recommended allowance can reduce body weight and enhance body composition by decreasing fat mass, too much protein, especially through processed food and meats is not good for you.
Also, an excess of protein will eventually store as fats (especially if you do not exercise) and on over intake of proteins can lead to Bone, liver, and long-term kidney damage.
A low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet may be good at helping you lose weight rapidly, but after this initial loss, you will need to balance the ‘seesaw’ of protein intake with other foods.
A high-protein diet can help to reduce hunger and cravings, which in turn leads to lower calorie intake overall (as you feel fuller)
To get the best from a high protein diet intake you will need to combine this with exercise.
Exercises that Burn Belly Fat
For me, I started with Walking. Around my local neighbourhood, with the Often the answer to the question What is the fastest way to burn belly fat will be Exercise. There is no getting away from it but if you are serious about burning your belly fat away you are going to have to incorporate some form of exercise into your routine.
But which Exercises. A lot of it is dependent on you, that is your age, current weight, how long since you last exercised and what exercise type would you like to do.
This is important as finding something you enjoy will keep you doing it, and if you can encourage, cajole, blackmail a friend to join you, so much the better. We need support here, and doing something with someone else is easier than going it alone.
kids to school, I even would walk up the stairs twice in the House, instead of just going up once. (daft, I know, but it works)
So, as you are probably dreading and know that exercise burns most belly fat you need to look at anything that increases your aerobic rate such as:
- Walking: Fast walk for 30 seconds, slow the pace for 30 seconds, then fast walk again etc
- Jogging: Try to do this in a field or specific track if possible. Pavement pounding damages the knees
- Swimming: Great Exercise if you have a pool close by.
- Cardio Exercise at Home: Simple crunches or sit ups, how about Marching on the spot whilst watching a half hour TV Show
You want to do something that gets your heart rate into the work zone, so why not, for the price of a meal out, invest in one of those wrist watch style heart beat and step counters. It will help.
Don’t Eat A Lot Of Sugary Foods
Common sense really. Sugar will increase belly fat and fibre reduces belly fat. Sugar is a major contributor to an excess calorie intake, so by cutting down on sugar intake, or even cutting it out completely you will cut calories, lose weight, and assist in burning fat.
However, even small steps such as cutting out sugar in tea or coffee can have a benefit and reducing or cutting out sugary drinks and sodas will pay dividends in the long run.
Now, I want you to re-read the first sentence in this section…’fibre reduces belly fat’
You may substitute sugary drinks and sodas with fresh pressed and squeezed fruit juices but be careful here, as the pressing or juicing process often removes the ‘pulp’ (the fibre) and leaves just sugar. Also be aware of shop bought juices. How much added sugar do they have?
Another point to consider, is that if your blood sugar level is on the high side you will not be able to burn fat. If you continually expose your body to too much sugar, then the constant insulin release that occurs, will lead to increased insulin resistance. Your Pancreas keeps pumping insulin to get blood sugar into cells. When the cells stop responding (insulin resistant phase) your liver now sends excess blood sugar to fat cells, which is now stored as body fat, leading to weight gain. More worryingly there is real danger in developing pre diabetes and type 2 diabetes.
So, in conclusion my 6 Best Tips to Burn Belly Fat are:
Moderate Alcohol intake
Manage Your Stress Levels
Get a good Nights Sleep
Look at a Higher Protein Diet alongside…
Starting an Exercise Routine
Watching and cutting Down (or out) Sugar Intake.
I hope that the above is something that you found of interest. There are of course other things that you will find out there that burn fat, such as drink Green Tea, or drink more Water, etc so I would be keen to know if you have had success in other methods in reducing and burning body fat, let me know in the comments below.
Best Regards
Del
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