Some people find it challenging to lose abdominal fat, but it is actually a straightforward process if you follow the right plan. That’s not to say it’ll be easy however: removing stomach fat does take a bit of effort and commitment, especially if you want permanent results and avoid the faddy ‘quick fixes’. But it’s all worth it when you get that flat stomach to be proud of!
Five Tips For Removing Belly Fat & Keeping It Off
Cut Out The Junk Food
Highly processed junk foods are loaded with fat, sugar, preservatives – and excess calories. Unfortunately junk foods are loaded with flavour enhancers, and are also nutritionally empty for the most part. These factors combine to make you crave more and more – and so you eat more than you burn off, and those calories that end up being stored as fat around your middle.
Cut out these empty foods and replacing them with healthy wholefoods that are as close to their natural state as possible (think fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, wholegrains, beans, pulses, lean protein etc), and you’ve taken a major step towards eliminating that excess fat.
Eat Little And Often
Some people try to lose weight rapidly by crash dieting or missing meals. This is a major mistake, as your body perceives the lack of food as a famine situation, and slows down your metabolism, making it even harder to lose fat.
Eating four to six smaller meals each day (or three main meals plus healthy snacks in between) on the other hand, has the effect of speeding up your metabolic rate, boosting your fat burning efforts. So resist the temptation to starve yourself, and eat more often – it might feel counterintuitive, but so long as you’re not eating too much, you’ll most likely lose fat more rapidly.
Do Regular Cardio Exercise
Cardiovascular exercise helps to raise your metabolism, so you burn off more body fat not only while you’re exercising, but for hours afterwards too. If you’re serious about losing stomach fat, make time for at least three cardio session each week, and choose something you’ll enjoy, so you stick with it. Running, brisk walking, cycling, swimming, aerobics classes, trampolining, skipping and dancing are all good choices.
Cut Out Alcohol
They’re not called beer bellies for nothing! Alcohol is very high in calories, and because it’s drunk rather than eaten, you can easily take in too much. And if you get drunk, it’s all too easy to let your fat loss resolutions go out of the window. So do your waistline, your health and your willpower a favour, and cut out or at least cut right back on the amount of alcohol you drink.
Stand Up Straight
Ok, this isn’t really a fat loss tip, but it can help you to get a much flatter stomach within seconds. Many people habitually slouch both when sitting and when standing, and over time this causes the abdominal muscles to become weak and flabby, and the gut to stick out in an unattractive manner, even in slim people. Make a deliberate effort to pull your stomach in, hold your head up, and keep your shoulders back – you’ll look better now, and over time just holding your abs in the correct position will help to strengthen them somewhat.
You might wonder why abdominal exercises such as stomach crunches aren’t mentioned here. It’s true that they play a key role in toning up your midsection, and are a must if you want six pack abs. But they won’t spot reduce fat, and you can have the most toned stomach muscles in the world but you won’t see them if you don’t lose the excess fat covering them up first. So follow the above steps for losing stomach fat, and do the ab exercises to tone up what lies underneath.
So if you want to lose a fat belly and – most importantly – keep it off too, forget about crash dieting and the latest fads, and follow these simple but effective steps.
Find out more information about losing fat from the stomach, and if you want an easy, healthy and effective eating plan that will help you to lose the weight and keep it off for life, check out Strip That Fat – read my detailed review of the Strip That Fat diet here.
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