Of all the e-mails I get sent every day, by far the most common — from men and women alike — are questions about the best way to lose belly fat.
A pot belly… love handles… the spare tire… call it what you will. It seems to be the area of your body that you’d really like to do something about.
Read on, and I’ll explain why belly fat is so bad, and what you can do to get rid of it.
Not only is a firm, flat stomach the ultimate symbol of sex appeal, researchers have found that losing abdominal fat is one of the most important steps you can take to stay healthy for life.
Most people realize that excess fat is unhealthy, but the key is where the fat is distributed. People with apple-shaped bodies (fattest in the abdomen) have a greater risk of heart disease and diabetes than those with pear shapes (fattest in the hips, buttocks, and thighs).
There are two main types of fat in the stomach area. Visceral (pronounced viss-er-al) fat is stored deep inside your body. It surrounds and protects your internal organs.
Subcutaneous (pronounced sub-cue-tain-ee-us) fat, on the other hand, is stored just under your skin. It’s the stuff that wobbles when you jump up and down.
What’s the best way to lose belly fat?
Step #1. Lift weights 2-3 times per week. Strength training isn’t just for people who want to gain muscle, and will improve your body composition in two ways.
Firstly, with a properly designed strength-training program, you’ll burn fat both during and after your workout. Second, if you don’t do some kind of resistance exercise while dieting, much of the weight you lose will come from muscle as well as fat.
How much weight you lose is a lot less important than where that lost weight comes from. If you drop 10 pounds of fat while gaining 3 pounds of muscle, your weight on the scales will only have dropped by 7 pounds. But you’ll look 13 pounds different.
Your routine should be based on exercises with a high metabolic demand. I’m talking about squats, deadlifts, rows, chin-ups (or pulldowns) and presses (bench press and overhead press), using a weight that limits you to between 5 and 15 repetitions per set. Each workout should take around 45 minutes.
Step #2. Use your diet to create a calorie deficit. Think of your belly fat like a bank account. But instead of storing money, it stores calories. If you want the amount of money stored in your bank account to go down, you have to spend more money than you’re paying in. In much the same way, getting rid of belly fat is all about “spending” more calories than you eat.
That’s not to say that calories are the only thing that counts, because they’re not. The composition of your diet IS important and has a big impact on how much of the weight you lose comes from muscle or fat. It will also affect your hormone levels, appetite, metabolic rate and so on.
But no matter which way you look at it, losing belly fat still requires a calorie deficit. Don’t allow yourself to be seduced into following an overly complicated diet masquerading under the guise of a “new and revolutionary” approach to weight loss.
Step #3. Eat a protein-rich diet. Studies show that protein does a better job at filling you up than carbohydrate or fat. Eat a protein-rich breakfast, for example, and chances are that you won’t eat as much food for lunch.
The figure below is from a University of Washington study where dieters were told to eat roughly twice as much protein as normal. The circles at the top represent daily calorie intake, while the diamonds at the bottom represent body weight.
As you can see, eating more protein led to a spontaneous reduction in calorie intake that lasted for the length of the study. In fact, calorie intake dropped by an average of 441 calories per day.
After 12 weeks, the test subjects had lost about 5 kilograms (12 pounds). Considering they did no exercise, losing an average of 1 pound per week is a decent result.
Protein also has a “muscle sparing” effect during fat loss. If you don’t get enough protein while you’re on a diet, you’ll end up dropping muscle as well as fat. Finally, protein has a higher thermic effect than carbohydrate or fat. In other words, some of the energy in each gram of protein is wasted as heat during the process of digestion and metabolism.
Step #4. Then add some cardio. If you’re just starting out, you can forget about cardio altogether and rely on diet and strength training to create the calorie deficit needed for weight loss. Then, when your rate of fat loss starts to slow down (which it will), add some low-intensity steady-state (LISS) cardio to your program, even if it’s just 30 minutes of brisk walking three or four mornings each week.
Just four steps of these steps alone – creating a calorie deficit, eating more protein, and combining strength training with cardio – has been shown to work almost twice as well compared to the traditional high-carbohydrate diet + cardiovascular exercise approach to losing abdominal fat.
Step #5. Monitor your progress on a weekly basis. Focus on the way you look in the mirror, your weight on the scales, the way your clothes fit around your waist and your strength levels in the gym. There’s not much point trying to measure your body fat, mainly because most body composition tests (even things like DEXA and the Bod Pod) are not accurate to provide you with information you can use and act on.
Step #6. Don’t waste time doing hundreds of crunches, sit-ups, or any of the various “drawing in the belly button” exercises. They’re virtually useless when it comes to losing belly fat.
“Let’s get this straight right now,” says The Truth About Six Pack Abs author Mike Geary. “Abdominal exercises do NOT burn fat away from your abs! This can only be accomplished through a much more effective full-body training routine that maximizes both your metabolic response and your hormonal response to your workouts.”
Researchers from Illinois took a group of 24 participants and assigned them to one of two groups. The first group did nothing, while group two performed seven abdominal exercises (2 sets x 10 repetitions), five days a week for six weeks.
A grand total 4,200 repetitions of various abdominal exercises over a six-week period had “no significant effect” on the amount of fat stored around the stomach. Please don’t waste your time trying to burn off stomach fat by twisting and crunching it away.
Step #7. Finally, you’ll need to be consistent. To lose belly fat, eating right and exercising regularly needs to become a habit, not just something you do when you can be bothered or when you have the time. If your current schedule makes it difficult to find the time for exercise, change it. Get out of bed earlier. Turn off the TV. Stop wasting time on Facebook.
Then all you will need to do is sit back, relax and watch the fat drop off your belly.
If you’re looking for an effective fat-burning exercise routine that will help you burn off belly fat and lose the love handles, take a look at Mike Geary's The Truth About Six Pack Abs . It’s one of the top selling abs programs on the Internet and is worth looking into if you want to get into seriously good shape. Click here to continue to the official website.
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My name is Christian Finn. I run a private "members only" website that will help you burn fat, build muscle and get strong. If you want accurate, honest and in-depth reviews on the latest "hot topics" in the world of fitness, you're confused by all the conflicting advice out there, or you just want some fat-burning and muscle-building training routines that work, click here now to find out how I can help you.
