Eliminate Belly Fat With These Simple Techniques
December 18, 2017 | 2,674 views
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By Dr. Joseph Mercola
Many struggle to trim down their waistlines and achieve a flat belly. The usual recommendation is to either do sit-ups or crunches, both of which are challenging exercises, especially if you’re a beginner.
While exercising is the obvious way to trim down your love handles, there are also other approaches, some of which are extremely simple and easy to apply to your everyday life. All you need is discipline and a ton of motivation.
Trim Down Your Waistline by Extending Sleep
In a Forbes Magazine article, fitness expert Jennifer Cohen notes that getting sufficient sleep rejuvenates your body, and helps improve your metabolism. By getting sufficient sleep, you normalize the cortisol levels in your blood and in turn help correct your circadian rhythm, which affects both your metabolism and weight.
The University of Chicago also conducted a study, and found out that people who were trying to lose weight lost more than 55 percent of body fat when they slept for about 8.5 hours, as compared to dieters who got only about 5.5 hours of sleep.
Improve Your Diet
While people believe that losing weight is as simple as limiting your intake of food or increasing physical activity to burn fat, 80 percent of reducing body fat is dependent on what your diet consists of. This means that only 20 percent of exercise and lifestyle habits affect your ability to lose weight.
Keeping this in mind, it is then obvious that if your diet mainly consists of processed foods, junk foods or foods that are high in fructose, your ability to lose weight is close to being nonexistent. Here are some suggestions (as seen in from my Nutrition Plan:
- Reduce or Eliminate Sugar From Your Diet. This includes fructose and artificial sweeteners. Even though fruits are usually part of the conventional diet for people who want to lose weight, fruits high in fructose should be limited because excessive intake of these fruits may be counterproductive. I also suggest that you limit the grains in your diet because they are also broken down into sugar in your body.
- Reduce or Eliminate Processed Foods. These foods go through so many manufacturing processes and cycles that it’s not surprising that their nutrients and minerals are completely depleted. Most processed foods also contain high-fructose corn syrup, which is one of the leading causes of obesity.
- Increase the Amount of Fresh Vegetables in Your Diet. Vegetables are good sources of vitamins and minerals. I recommend that you consider juicing so that you can boost the amount of vegetables that you can eat as compared to when you eat vegetables in specific dishes.
The market is also filled with foods that are labelled “healthy” by the food manufacturers. While they may contain certain nutritional components, some of them actually cause more harm to the body than good. These include conventional yogurt, condiments, “diet” foods and enhanced/flavored waters. These foods are actually loaded with insane amounts of sugar, and excessive intake can cause insulin resistance, which can then lead to far more serious health problems.
High-Intensity Interval Exercises Can Burn Your Fat Away
The key to a healthy and fulfilling lifestyle is achieving the perfect balance between a healthy diet and a fair amount of exercise. But if you want to achieve flat abs, the amount and the type of exercise is extremely important.
I personally perform high-intensity interval exercises because of its superb benefits. It increases muscle mass and improves muscle fiber quality. By burning energy through the use of your muscle tissues, you actually increase your metabolic rate. Studies also show that high-intensity exercise in short bursts actually helps you burn more fat than exercising for a whole session. This type of exercise consists of high-intensity activities in short bursts, keeping your workout time short.
Incorporating Other Exercises Can Help You Get Toned Abs
Toned abs are not only aesthetic, but can also provide your body with better support and spine protection. This can also help you and your ability to lift heavy items, twist and turn, and perform without any back pain or muscle issues.
The usual exercises that are connected to the development of abs are crunches and sit-ups, but these exercises are not enough. To achieve the maximum muscle activity, it’s recommended that you take part in traditional exercises (conventional crunches with rotation), functional exercises (workouts with a stability ball), stabilizing exercises (lie on the floor and pull your belly back towards the spine), and extension exercises (arm and leg raises).
Employ Intermittent Fasting With Your Diet Overhaul
Achieving a flat stomach need not be a hard and tedious task if you discipline yourself and limit your intake of harmful foods. If you want to trim down your weight, I recommend that you assist your diet overhaul with intermittent fasting.
Intermittent fasting refers to limiting your food intake to specific hours in a day and fasting for the rest. Some people fast for more than 14 hours. This helps in assisting your body to properly process and metabolize the food that you eat. It jumpstarts your body into entering a nutritional ketosis wherein your body transitions from using sugar to using your stored fats, which then promotes weight loss.
By simultaneously doing an intermittent fast and improving your diet, you’re ensuring that you’re going to lose weight without harming yourself, as you’re not starving or depriving yourself of the nutrients that you need.
Losing weight to get a flat belly doesn’t mean that you need to starve yourself. There are better ways to achieve your goal and simultaneously heal and improve your grasp on your health. For more information about ways to cut down your belly fat, read “6 Ways to Shrink Your Belly (And 5 Don’t Include Exercise).”