Belly fat has a well-deserved bad reputation. It pulls on your clothing, distorts your profile, strains your back and releases health-threatening chemicals such as hormones and fatty acids that affect surrounding organ systems, including your liver. Belly fat places you at greater risk for a slew of health problems, including metabolic syndrome, diabetes, heart disease, gallbladder problems and high blood pressure. You can look better, feel better and live longer by making simple changes in your life style.
Overall Strategy
It may seem obvious, but the best overall strategy to lose belly fat is simply to lose weight. When you lose weight, it is drawn proportionately from wherever it is stored on your body. If you carry extra weight in your belly, when you drop pounds, your belly will shrink. As you lose weight, both subcutaneous fat -- the fat that lies directly beneath your skin -- and visceral or belly fat that is tucked away within your abdominal cavity, will slowly disappear.
Reduce Sugar and Starches
The surest way to trim your belly fat is to eliminate empty calories from your diet. Empty calories are calories that provide energy in the form of simple sugars but provide little nutrition. Eliminate or replace snack food, fried food, cookies, candy and processed food. Replace full-sugar soda with tea or water and replace sweets with fruit. Fruit can satisfy your sweet tooth, but it contains vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients that your body needs and that keep your metabolism humming. Replace white bread and white rice with whole grain bread and brown rice. The fiber in these foods slow digestion, stabilize your blood sugar and stave your appetite, helping you to resist the temptation to reach for high-calorie between meal snacks.
Drop Fatty Foods
Avoid fried and fatty foods. Replace fatty meats with lean, skinless turkey or chicken breast. Dairy products have calories but provide nutrition such as protein and calcium. Benefit from the nutrition but drop the fat by including only low- or non-fat dairy in your diet. Eat low-fat yogurt and drink skim milk.
Kick-Start Your Metabolism
Eat a nutritious, balanced breakfast within an hour of waking. Include protein with complex carbohydrates, which can be something as simple as a whole-grain cereal with fruit and skim milk. This boosts your metabolism, gives you energy to get through the morning and stabilizes your blood sugar, again, bolstering your ability resist unhealthy snacks.
Avoid Calorie Deprivation
When you use diets that call for drastic calorie-deprivation your body goes into starvation mode and reduces your metabolism to conserve calories. Most people have trouble maintaining extreme diets and end up falling back into unhealthy eating patterns once they abandon the strict diet. Yo-yo dieting promotes gallbladder disease and doesn't help you reach and maintain weight loss goals. Instead, guide yourself into slowly and steadily adopting a healthy life style that you can maintain for the rest of your life.
Do Cardio
Despite whatever you may read in the Internet, spot exercises like sit-ups and crunches won't eliminate belly fat. These exercises do build lean muscles, which help to elevate your metabolism so you burn calories more efficiently, but they don't directly burn belly fat. When you make cardio exercise a part of your routine, however, you burn calories during the exercise and increase your metabolism so you burn more calories even when you're just sitting around. Daily, moderately-intense cardio exercise that lasts at least 30 minutes helps you lose subcutaneous and visceral fat according to Harvard Health Publications. If you want toned abs, however, don't give up on tummy exercises. Cardio provides broad health benefits and reduces fat, but it won't build lean muscle in your abdomen.
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