How to Lose Belly Fat – The Truth Behind a Flatter Stomach

Belly Fat -- The Final Frontier?

Nerdy references aside it would appear that when losing weight belly fat is the last thing to disappear. You could have shed XX pounds of weight during your diet and have a nice figure but still have that little bit of overhang around the stomach area. What can you do about it? Well that is what we are here to discuss.

I am not going to be giving you any supposed ‘miracle diets’ or kid you into believing doing a certain exercise twice a day will rid you of your belly fat. I am not going to lie to you, burning fat is not easy and as belly fat has proven to be one of the most stubborn areas of fat on the body it is going to take hard work and perseverance in order to finally rid yourself of it and get that flatter stomach you’ve always wanted.

Do me (and your friends) a favor as well if you have the chance. If you like this article on “How to Lose Belly Fat“, click the ‘Like’ button on the left hand side of this post to share it with your friends.

Belly Fat Myths

There is an absolute wealth of information online, in magazines, on the tv etc. about belly fat and how to lose belly fat. In fact a google search for the term ‘Belly Fat’ returns over 20 million results. That’s 20 million people telling you about belly fat and how to lose it. The problem is a lot of this information contradicts itself while some of it is just completely unfounded and not true. So for the casual web surfer it can be really difficult to know what is true and what isn’t.

Here are some of the bigger myths that get tossed around about losing belly fat:

1: Lose Belly Fat by performing Exercise X or by following Workout Plan Y -- Generally speaking when someone gives you this tip they will normally tell you to perform Planks or Leg Raises or some other Ab targeted exercise in order to burn your belly fat. This is the most common misconception in the whole weight loss industry. You cannot spot remove fat from a certain area. Fat is generally disposed of in a genetically determined way. Jack might burn fat off his abs first before all other fat areas while Jill will lose her stomach fat last. Therefore performing Ab/Stomach targeted exercises will not burn the fat off these areas.

2: Eat X because it makes the body burn belly fat quicker -- This is my favorite myth because throughout my years I’ve seen people promoting nearly every single healthy food as being able to ‘target stubborn belly fat’. The truth is there is no food that will specifically target the fat around your belly in preference to the rest of the fat in your body. It just doesn’t happen, sorry.

While these foods are healthy for you and will help with losing fat, they will not target the stomach area specifically!

Dress the Part

Now this isn’t a fashion blog so I will make this brief. If you are self-conscious about your belly fat then there are clothes that you can wear to make you look a lot slimmer or to just plain hide your stomach area. As I said I am definitely no expert on fashion so I found this video that should give you some ideas on hiding your belly fat. This is aimed at the ladies so guys just skip past this video.

What ever you do people don’t watch this video and think ‘They’re good ideas, now I don’t need to lose this belly fat because people can’t see it’. Just imagine the type of clothing you can wear when you have a nice firm flat stomach, you can hit the beach in a skimpy bikini (speedos for the men?) and not feel out of place or embarrassed.

How To Lose Belly Fat

So far we have talked about how hard it is to lose belly fat. We have also looked at some of the widely touted misconceptions that people believe when it comes to burning off belly fat and then we even saw a video on how we can hide belly fat while we are working towards eliminating it.

So now I can probably guess what you are thinking “This is all well and good but tell me how to lose my belly fat goddammit!”

Well this is the time that I should release the ‘big secret that the weight loss companies have been hiding from you all these years’

But the truth is there is no ‘big secret’ or ‘magic cure’ to burning off the fat around your stomach. The true answer is as simple as could be; diet and exercise. Sure belly fat is often the last place that fat gets burnt from (especially in women, less so for men) but it still will get burnt off eventually. All you need is a healthy diet, a decent fat loss workout program and perserverance.

While there is no ‘magic cure’ to losing belly fat, there are some things that you can do to speed things along. Just remember that you’re body burns fat all over so it is impossible to just target your belly. If you want to lose belly fat you will have to lose fat all over your body.

Diet

I like to keep things really simple when it comes to dieting. When things become overly complex is when people’s motivation starts to dwindle. If you need to keep a calculator in your back pocket to figure out if you are allowed to have a banana in case you go over your allowed potassium level for the day then there is a much higher chance you will be quitting that diet and pigging out on junk food pretty soon.

However if you just take a simple approach to dieting were you are eating healthily without overdoing it then you are much more likely to stay the course and lose weight. I think we all know what is and what isn’t healthy when it comes to food. Cut out all fast food, crisps, soda, cakes, ice cream, fried food, heavily processed food. Pretty much anything you know is bad for you cut down on it, or find a way to make it healthier like this incredible recipe for Chocolate Pudding that actually promotes Fat Burning.

To lose fat you need to create a calorie deficit, this means you need to eat less calories than your body burns. When you create a calorie deficit your body needs to turn to your fat deposits for energy, thus you lose fat from your body. The best way I have found to do this is through Intermittent Fasting, which is basically not eating for a period of time. It sounds crazy at first but the science behind it is pretty solid, check out EatStopEat for more information about how Intermittent Fasting works.

When you fast for a period of 24 hours, not only are you not taking in as many calories (less calories = more fat burned) but studies have shown that intermittent fasting can have the following benefits:

• Reduced blood glucose and insulin levels (markers of improved health)
• Increased Metabolism
• Maintenance of lean mass (muscle)
• Reduced inflammation
• Reduced oxidative damage
• Increased cellular stress resistance (esp of heart and brain)
• Decreased risks associated with degenerative diseases of aging (cancers, heart diseases, diabetes, Alzheimers)

Performing intermittent fasts once or twice a week can really speed up your fat loss. If this doesn’t sound like something you would want to do just stick with a standard calorie restrictive diet and only eat healthy foods and you will be fine. If this is something that interests you then click here to learn more about Intermittent Fasting and the EatStopEat program.

Exercise

I said near the beginning of this post that it is impossible to spot target an area for fat loss, meaning you can’t perform endless amount of crunches to burn off your belly fat. However exercise will cause fat loss all over your body including the stomach. The best form of exercise (in my opinion) for fat loss has got to be HIIT training. HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training and simply put means that you perform a period of high intensity exercise followed by a period of low intensity exercise. So if you were jogging you would sprint for 30 seconds followed by a brisk walk for 30 seconds and repeat.

For a more detailed look at HIIT and its benefits when it comes to fat loss take a look at this post: HIIT Training – Interval Training for Fat Loss

Perseverance

The final and most important aspect of burning belly fat is perseverance. You have to keep at it. You will not lose your belly fat overnight. It will be demoralizing at times when you think that nothing is working, but it is at this time that you need to push on and keep at it because it will happen eventually you just need to keep yourself motivated.

What you should do right now is check out this inspiration fat loss video, bookmark it and watch it every time your motivations starts to dwindle.

I hope you enjoyed this post about how to lose belly fat and I really do hope that it will help you in your fat loss journey. If this helped you please click the ‘like’ button at the very top of this post and if you have any questions or comments please feel free to share them in the comments section below.

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