How To Get Rid Of Belly Fat Easily

Having a wide waistband makes you look unfit and indicates that you may be at risk for a host of health problems. If you measure more than 35 inches around at the belly as a woman, or 40 inches as a man, you have a greatly elevated risk of type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke and dementia, warns the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. Abdominal exercises will not help you lose belly fat, but will provide strength and tone for when you do lose weight. Spot reducing is not possible, but if you undertake strategies to help you lose weight in general, you will likely shrink your belly in the process.

Step 1

Lose weight by reducing portion sizes and choosing healthier foods. Trim your calorie intake so you eat fewer calories than you burn in a day. Make this easy by serving yourself smaller portions at meals, skipping discretionary calories found in sodas, alcohol and sweets, and by choosing fresh fruits, vegetables and lean proteins over processed snacks and fatty cuts of meat.

Step 2

Fit five low-fat servings of dairy into your daily low-calorie plan. Include foods such as low-fat cheese, yogurt and skim milk because, as shown by a study performed at Curtin University in Australia by lead researcher Wendy Chan She Ping Delfos in 2009, dieters eating five servings of these foods lost a greater percentage of abdominal fat than dieters eating just three servings. Have skim milk at breakfast, Greek yogurt as a snack, low-fat cheese on your lunch-time salad, a mid-afternoon snack of cottage cheese and stir milk into a soup at dinner to fit in your five servings.

Step 3

Switch to whole grain foods. Choose items such as brown rice, quinoa, steel-cut oatmeal and 100 percent whole wheat breads to help you lose weight and belly fat, rather than just weight, reports a study from The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2008. Researchers from Pennsylvania State University compared two sets of dieters--one following a low calorie diet with refined grains and the other following a low calorie diet in which refined grains were replaced with whole grains. While both groups lost weight, the whole grain group lost significantly more belly fat than the refined grain group.

Step 4

Cook with coconut oil. Consume about 30 ml of coconut oil daily by sauteing vegetables, blending it into smoothies or including it in homemade bread. This amount daily, consumed over the course of 12 weeks, helped women lose abdominal fat when combined with a low calorie diet and 50 minutes of walking daily, according to a study in the journal Lipids published in May 2009.

Step 5

Exercise more often than the 30 minutes, five days per week recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Do moderate intensity exercise such as jogging for about 45 to 60 minutes per day, five or six days a week, to lose abdominal fat according to a 2007 study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology. While the amount recommended by the CDC can prevent increases in visceral belly fat, modestly exceeding CDC guidelines results in belly fat reduction--even without changing diet.