There are so many different terms regarding belly fat, but no matter what you call no one likes having that extra fat around their midsection. People that have belly fat have probably tried many different diets or exercises to get rid of it and when all the methods they have tried don’t work they tend to just live with it.
Fortunately, there are really effective strategies to get rid of belly fat, however you may have to let go of some preconceptions. First, understand we are talking specifically about fat loss rather than losing weight overall which includes not only fat but water and muscle as well.
A good strategy does include both exercise and diet, that’s nothing new. However, it is the way you go about it that makes the following strategy unique and highly effective.
Incorporating a low carb diet is a highly effective way to lose body fat.
You may be wondering why that is true.
Because here is how the body burns energy…
From body fat and food – Fat
From muscle tissue and food – Protein
From stored glycogen and food – Carbohydrate
You would be a carb burner if you eat what is typical governed guidelines. So obviously, if you want to be a fat burner you would have to take away that carb energy source.
After lowering your carb intake from your diet, your body needs a couple of days to adjust your metabolic rate to burn fat like a machine. Now the fat you eat is consumed first so you start burning body fat as your first source of energy. You have to be realistic and not consume loads of fat and you also don’t have to lower your carb intake to nothing in order to benefit. Ideally, anything less than 60 grams of carbs would get you great results.
When you choose a diet that is low fat, typically it is high in carbohydrates. So when you use up your food calories, your body will burn a combination of muscle tissue and fat, which is protein. Muscle can burn calories continuously just by being there, so when someone that is dieting loses muscle their metabolism starts to slow down and their weight lose efforts are extremely affected.
Low fat diets only give you temporary results. You will lose weight but eventually it no longer works and typically you put the weight back on because your metabolic rate has crashed.
Let’s talk about exercise. You would think you need to do tons of cardio, right? Not true.
Too much cardio can cause your body to break down lean muscle tissue. So you may be wondering how to get the right combination of your fat burning diet strategy with your fat burning exercise.
A strategy called High Intensity Interval Training provides some type of cardio done for a period of lower intensity then followed by a period of higher intensity.
This method will burn about 50% more fat than steady cardio. Studies have shown an increase in fat loss for HIIT when compared to low to medium intensity cardio.
In regards to belly fat, research has shown that HIIT produces more fat loss in the midsection than other parts of the body. A study in Australia found that people using the HIIT strategy lost three times more fat than those that used the typical steady cardio and exercised even longer.
What’s also great about HIIT is that you only need to perform for about ten to twenty minutes at a time.
These unique approaches to nutrition and exercise work together and are highly effective in losing fat.
First, get your body to burn fat for energy, then incorporate exercise that utilizes the most fat possible
