Introduction
People put on belly fat for a variety of reasons, the most common of which are a bad diet, a lack of exercise, and stress. Changing your diet, getting more exercise, and making other adjustments to your lifestyle may all be helpful ways to reduce belly fat.
An increase in belly fat does not only make it difficult or seem impossible to fit into your shirt, zip up your jeans, and so on; research has shown that it also causes serious health dangers. But not to worry, there are various ways to reduce belly fat. In this article, we’ll look at some of the dietary and lifestyle changes as possible ways to reduce belly fat for good.
What exactly is behind belly fat?
The term “belly fat” is often used to refer to excess fat stored in the abdomen. In the abdominal region, fat may be divided into two categories:
- The visceral fat is the fat that surrounds the internal organs.
- Subcutaneous fat is fat that is just below the surface of the skin.
Visceral fat poses more health risks than subcutaneous fat does. Among the greatest causes of death in the developed world today is obesity. Extra weight around the midsection has been linked to an increased risk of:
- Coronary illness
- heart attack
- hypertension
- stroke
- Type 2 Diabetes
- disease of the breast
- memory loss after colon cancer
Therefore, it is essential for everyone to put a stop to the accumulation of extra fat in the body and explore the many possible ways to reduce belly fat.
Causes of Belly Fat
Your body weight is significantly influenced by three main factors:
1. The number of calories you consume in a day.
2. The number of calories you can burn in a day during a workout.
3. How old you are.
It’s common for the following to be the root causes of belly fat:
Bad diet
Consuming a lot of sugary foods puts you on the path to accumulating unwanted weight and abdominal fat. Soda and fruit juice are high in sugar, which may slow down a person’s metabolism and metabolic rate, and hence their ability to burn fat. The weight may also be affected by low-protein, high-carb diets. As a result, individuals who don’t consume enough lean protein tend to eat more than they need to in order to feel full.
Age
The expansion or enlargement of one’s waistline is a telltale sign of aging. When body fat shifts into the abdomen, as it often does after menopause, it becomes all the more important to discover strategies to minimize it. Even when there is no weight gain, many women also notice their belly fat increasing as they age. This increase in belly fat occurs due to lower estrogen levels in the body, influencing fat distribution.
In addition, as you age, the size of your muscles reduces while the fat in your body increases. The loss of muscle size also reduces the level at which your body uses calories, making it harder to prevent overweight and belly fat.
Lack of exercise
A person will put on weight if they eat more calories than they burn off during the day via physical activity. If a person leads a sedentary lifestyle, it will be difficult for them to lose extra fat, especially in the abdominal region.
Stress
Cortisol is a steroid hormone that aids in stress management and stress regulation. When a person is in a risky or stressful situation, their body produces cortisol, which might reduce their metabolism. When under pressure, many people turn to food for solace. The stress hormone cortisol ensures that all of those extra calories are stored as fat in the abdomen and elsewhere.
Too much alcohol
A greater amount of fat around the abdominal region may be caused by consuming an excessive number of calories overall, regardless of where those calories come from. Because a typical beer may contain more than 150 calories, it doesn’t take long for the calories (and the belly) to pile up when drinking beer. Beer can also interfere with fat burn, because your liver will preferentially burn alcohol instead of fat when it is consumed.
Unhealthy Sleep Patterns
A good night’s rest is critical to a person’s overall health. Insufficient sleep has been related to obesity for a variety of reasons. One meta-analysis that included the results of many research indicated that not getting enough sleep was associated with elevated levels of the hormone ghrelin (which makes you feel hungry) and lower levels of the hormone leptin (which suppresses hunger).
This often results in an increase in the amount of food consumed and a reduction in the amount of activity done. It should come as no surprise that this is a perfect storm for gaining weight. However, not getting enough sleep might also cause you to put on belly fat especially.
When a person is attempting to lose weight, particularly belly fat, it is crucial for them to get sufficient amounts of quality sleep.
Ways to reduce Belly
When dieting or exercising, it is hard to reduce belly fat in a targeted manner. Weight loss in general will assist in reducing the circumference of your waist, and more critically, it will assist in reducing the potentially harmful layer of visceral fat that surrounds your organs.
Abdominal muscles can become firm with planks and several other exercises targeted at the abdomen. In addition to exercise, a holistic approach targeting various ways to reduce belly fat should be considered. Below are a few lifestyle changes that may help to reduce belly fat:
A person’s ability to lose weight, as well as their general health, is likely to benefit by following a diet that is both nutritious and well-balanced.
People should probably stay away from sweets, meals high in fat, and processed carbs since these things have a poor nutritional value. Eat more foods sourced from plants that include whole grains, vegetables, and fruits; also, choose dairy products that are low in fat and, foods with lean protein.
Reduce your intake of saturated fatty foods, added sugar, and dairy products with excess fat, such as meat, butter, and cheese. Instead, eat polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats in moderate quantities, fats like nuts, vegetable oil, and fish.
2. Take a walk every day
Taking long walks every day is an effective way to reduce belly fat, especially if you do not have a stable workout routine. In the Journal of Biochemistry & healthy exercise, it is recorded that a 50 to 80 minutes walking program for three days every week vividly reduced the visceral fat in obese women after 12 weeks of engaging in the walking program.
3. Limit your stress eating
Stress eating can also increase the fat around your waistline when you go overboard with eating each time stress comes calling. Yet, binging on junk foods or any other class of foods doesn’t eliminate stress.
Everyone gets stressed at some point, but what matters most is how you handle it. Meditating, relaxing with family and friends, listening to calming music, going for counseling, and exercising are some of the most result-driven ways to blow off steam. They can make you healthier, happier, and alive to make greater decisions for your life.
Having the proper amount of sleep goes a long way in making you healthy and agile. In a recent study, people who had up to 6 or 7 hours of sleep every night acquired minimal visceral fat over 6 years in contrast to people who had 8 or more hours of sleep or only 4 or fewer hours of sleep every night. Good sleep is not the only thing that matters in reducing belly fat, but it is one thing you must prioritize.
5. Take it easy on the alcohol
You need to cut down the calories you consume if you want to lose weight, and alcohol is one of them. Alcohol is part of the empty calories that do not meet any nutritional requirements in your body, rather, it inflates your stomach. Other empty calories to avoid include drinks with high sugar levels, like soda, beverages, but the biggest on the list is alcohol.
6. Learn to cook your own food
Many researchers have explained that those who eat meals cooked by themselves tend to create self-developing habits like working out more and eating healthily. Nevertheless, they added that residential and indoor cooks ate a larger variety of foods, like vegetables and fruits. They gush less on foods with high amounts of sugar and calories because they have healthier methods of preparing their food. Also, cooking at home helps you avoid fast foods that supply more calories to your body and increase your body weight. You can get a cookbook for healthy foods and get started in your kitchen.
Burning more calories than you consume is one of the most fundamental weight loss approaches. For example, for seven days a week, you can decide to burn 500 calories every day. At the end of the week, you may have burnt 3,500 calories, and that is equal to one pound of fat gone. Recording your progress in losing weight with a book and pen or a weight loss app will help you want to do more every day, and before you know it, all that body and belly fat is gone.
8. Start training your strength
Training your full body strength is important not only to lose belly fat but also if you are trying to keep fit for the long run. You should add strength training to your everyday workout plan. This is because strength training aids in building muscle, which will, in turn, replace your body fat. When your muscle is active metabolically, you begin to burn more calories per day during workouts, reducing not just your belly fat, but your overall body fat.
Note: An increase in the speed of your metabolism due to muscle growth will provide more room in your diet plan if you are worried about that.
9. Do more crunches
It would be best if you aimed at doing some ab workout three or four days non-consecutively in a week with a rest in between your session for 24 hours at least. During your workout, you can begin with easy moves like planks, crunches, and bicycle crunches. Apart from targeting your abs directly for three or four days a week, it is also necessary to activate your core in every workout or exercise, which includes tightening the muscle in your abs.
10. Accept that you can adjust
Simply being aware of your decision to shed some weight is a big step and a critical part of losing weight. For instance, when having fun with friends, you may forget to monitor what you eat and drink. You can correct yourself when you are conscious you are on a weight loss journey. Don’t start feeling bad about it or think you can never achieve your desired body shape. Believe and accept that you can and you will.
Conclusion
Living a healthy life free from excess body weight and all the attached health challenges is possible. If not all, we should at least explore some of the ways to reduce belly fat as discussed in this article as a way forward to a healthier you. Health is wealth and there is no better time than now to make those relevant sacrifices like exercising more, cooking your own food, monitoring your calories, and other integral lifestyles reviewed in this article.
