Lose Belly Fat

What you need to know about losing belly fat

How to lose belly fat? It is a question that claws the mind of the physically conscious and health conscious alike. A survey by Prevention Magazine asking respondents "What’s your least-favorite body part?" had two-thirds of respondents say it is their stomach. Don't we all hate that soft, protruding and jiggly midsection? 

Unfortunately, belly fat is not only unsightly; it is also a major health risk. Infact your waist size has been show to correlate with the potential risk of lifestyle diseases like diabetes and heart disease. The bigger your waist size the larger the risk. No wonder we are all trying to shake off that stomach fat by hook or by crook. But there is one problem. It is hard to lose belly fat.

Lose Belly Fat Pictures:

Generally speaking we tend to develop a fat belly as we age, particularly as you hit your mid thirties. 

For women that give birth earlier, chances are that you might lose the baby fat but some will stay put as belly fat.

These trends can then shed some light on why and how we develop excess belly fat and why it is so hard to lose.

Belly fat will tend to occur primarily because of three things. First is a slowed metabolism. If your calorie intake stays the same but your energy needs reduce, you will tend to have excess body fat. And though this fat is stored all over the body it tends to collect much more easily around the midsection.

This has to do with the fact that fat around the midsection tends to be more easily available for use by the body.

A second reason that drives excess belly fat is hormonal changes. This is particularly evident in mothers that have just given birth. It also occurs in men who are under long periods of stress. It is the reason fairly lean men have a lower stomach that pops out (pot belly).

The third reason is similar to the first; and that is excess calories. However unlike the first case, the individual will just be consuming more calories than they need for one reason or another. This is the primary reason young adults and teenagers have belly fat.

So to lose belly fat, we need to counter the causes in an effective and strategic way.

But before we can look at these strategies, we need to be aware that there are primarily two kinds of belly fat. There is visceral fat and there is subcutaneous fat.

Subcutaneous belly fat is the fat that you can pinch. It is just below your skin. This is the fat that jiggles when you are walking. It is considered to be a less dangerous kind of excess body fat.

Visceral fat on the other hand is deep inside your abdominal cavity. It is behind the abdominal muscles. One of its structural functions is to provide cushioning for your internal organs like liver and kidneys.

But due to its proximity to these organs, excess visceral fat is considered to be extremely unhealthy. As an endocrine gland as well as a tissue, visceral fat can get inflamed leading to the “poisoning” of these organs causing a myriad of health problems.

Unfortunately the only way to empirically determine the amounts of subcutaneous belly fat to visceral fat is by CT scan. But there are less accurate means.

For example; if you find that you have a firm but protruding belly, then you have a huge amount of visceral fat. The belly is protruding because the fat inside your abdominal cavity is pushing your abdominal muscles outward. And since muscles tissue tends to be firm, you exhibit a firm and tight pot belly.

On the inverse, if you have a large belly that tends to hang over your pants, then you have more of subcutaneous belly fat. Since the fat is just under the skin, it tends to stretch the skin by its sheer weight.

And if you have both a protruding and hanging belly fat then you are most likely in the overweight and obese category.

So how do we shed this fat?

How to lose belly fat

These two types of belly fat have been shown to respond differently to different weight loss strategies. But here is the good news, most of the time when you start losing weigh you tend to lose visceral fat more than the subcutaneous fat.

This is the reason why studies show that even a little lose of weight (e.g. 5% of excess body fat) by obese and overweight individuals leads to great improvements in health indicators. This is simply because the body can easily access visceral fat and use it for energy than the fat under your skin.

But there is also bad news…

As you lose more and more belly fat, you waist will shrink drastically and you will be able to fit in smaller pants in weeks. But you get to a stage where you can not lose any more belly fat. It just seems to be stuck right there on your lower abdomen.

Here is why…

To completely lose a fat belly and get a flat stomach or six pack abs for that matter requires you shed most of your excess body fat. And since your body is losing fat from all over your body, belly fat tends to be amongst the last fat to go.

Unfortunately, the common advice to losing belly fat tends to revolve around diet and exercises. Specifically that you need to control the calories you eat and increase you calories expenditure. But nearly always this advice will rarely get you results you can keep if at all.

To lose belly fat you need a strategy that will to lose lots of fat fast. And even more importantly you need to able to keep that belly fat off for good. This in-turn means that if you want to lose belly fat, you need a strategy that loses you body fat by the pounds every week. Such a strategy will require two things, just two things. These two are…

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