8 Ways to Lose Belly Fat and Healthier Life
Keeping your stomach trim can extend your life in addition to making you look fantastic. Increased risk of diabetes, cancer, and heart disease is associated with larger waistlines. Reducing weight—particularly adipose tissue—also enhances blood vessel health and elevates the quality of sleep.
Dieting cannot be used to precisely target abdominal fat. But losing weight overall will help shrink your waistline; more importantly, it will help reduce the dangerous layer of visceral fat, a type of fat within the abdominal cavity that you can’t see but that heightens health risks, says Kerry Stewart, Ed.D. , director of Clinical and Research Physiology at Johns Hopkins.
Here's how to focus on the areas that really matter.
Try curbing carbs instead of fats
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University examined the effects of a low-carbohydrate diet versus a low-fat diet on the heart over the course of six months. Both diets contained the same number of calories, but the low-carb group lost an average of 10 pounds more than the low-fat group (18.7 pounds versus 28.9 pounds). According to Stewart, one additional advantage of the low-carb diet was that it resulted in weight loss of a higher caliber. Although fat is decreased after weight loss, it is also common to lose lean tissue, or muscle, which is undesirable. Along with the fat, there was a loss of 2 to 3 pounds of healthy lean tissue on both diets, indicating a significantly larger percentage of fat loss on the low-carb diet.Think eating plan, not diet
In the end, Stewart advises choosing a healthy eating regimen you can follow. A low-carb strategy has the advantage that it only requires making better food choices; calorie counting is not required. Generally speaking, adopting a low-carb diet means consuming more high-fiber or high-protein meals like vegetables, legumes, and lean meats rather than issue items like bread, bagels, and sodas, which are rich in carbohydrates, sugar, and little fiber.
Keep moving
Exercising aids in the burning of belly fat. The fact that you receive a lot of body composition for your money is one of the main advantages of exercise, according to Stewart. Exercise seems to work off belly fat in particular because it reduces circulating levels of insulin —which would otherwise encourage the body to cling on to fat—and causes the liver to use up fatty acids, especially those close visceral fat deposits, he says.
Your goals will determine how much activity you need to lose weight. This can include 30 to 60 minutes of moderate-to-intense activity almost every day for the majority of people.
Lift weights
Even a small amount of strength training combined with aerobic activity can help you gain lean muscle mass, which increases your daily caloric expenditure during exercise and at rest.
Become a label reader.
Compare and contrast brands. Some yogurts, for example, boast that
they’re low in fat, but they’re higher in carbs and added sugars than others,
Stewart says. Foods like gravy, mayonnaise, sauces and salad dressings often
contain high amounts of fat and lots of calories.
Move away from processed foods
The contents in packaged goods and snack meals are generally heavy on trans fats, added sugar and extra salt or sodium—three elements that make it harder to lose weight.
Focus on the way your clothes fit more than reading a scale
Your jeans will fit better even when the number on your bathroom scale doesn't change much as you gain muscle mass and reduce fat. That represents growth more effectively. To lower your risk of heart disease and diabetes, your waistline should measure less than 35 inches for women and less than 40 inches for men.
Hang out with health-focused friends
Studies indicate that if your friends and family follow a healthy diet and exercise regimen, you're more likely to do the same.
