Feel stuck with your attempts to banish belly fat? If so, it’s time to get an action plan in place. Belly fat is harder to lose than some other areas of the body as it does tend to be more ‘stubborn in nature’, meaning your body is less likely to give that fat up as a fuel source.
This said, it’s not impossible. With the right plan of attack, you can get that slimmer waistline you desire. Just one note before continuing – it is impossible to “spot reduce”. Meaning, you can’t pick and choose where you lose fat, so you can’t just lose fat from the belly only. Rather, fat will come off from all areas of the body over time provided you are patient and just keep working hard. It’s just that the belly will tend to be one of the last places you lose fat from.
Let’s go into some details on how you can begin to lose belly fat successfully.
Kill Stress
The first step to lose belly fat successfully is to do your best to combat stress. What many people don’t realize about stress is that it can cause the release of the hormone cortisol, which then will encourage fat accumulation in the abdominal region.
If you lead a high stress lifestyle, this is probably the number one reason why you aren’t losing fat as successfully as you would have hoped. Practice some stress reduction strategies such as deep breathing, meditation, yoga, or journaling. These can all help you get your levels under control.
Get Sleep
It’s also a wise move to start focusing on getting more sleep. Lack of sleep can also increase the overall level of cortisol in the body and in addition to that, also promote greater insulin insensitivity, meaning your body will be more prone to converting excess carbohydrates you eat into body fat stores.
Sleep also decreases your energy level, which then typically means you move less during the day. Less movement means fewer calories burned which then means slower rates of total body fat loss.
Seven to eight hours each and every night is a must for optimal results.
Begin Strength Training
Strength training is a must for anyone who wants to shed belly fat. And I’m not referring to crunch after crunch here either. While crunches can be good for building up core strength, they are going to do very little for helping you actually burn off belly fat.
Instead, turn to full body compound exercises. It’s these exercises that will help to jumpstart a sluggish and slow metabolic rate, firm up your entire body, and help build lean muscle mass, which can then torch fat 24/7.
By performing a full body strength training program, you increase your permanent defense against fat gain.
To help you ease into your strength training, you might also consider checking out our Butts or Abs Trainer, or challenge yourself with the 100 Push-Ups challenge.
Cardio Train With A Goal
To successfully lose belly fat as quickly as possible, it’s important that you cardio train with a goal in mind. Many people who just head into the gym and do mindless sessions on the bike, elliptical, or treadmill will soon come to find that they are falling off the bandwagon. Boredom sets in and they simply don’t have enough motivation to continue.
To help get past this, set those goals. Try our 10K Trainer, which will help you work your way up to running a complete 10K race for instance. Or, for the higher level runner, you might consider the half or full marathon trainer instead.
When you sign up for an actual event, this will do wonders for sparking greater motivation in you.
Balance Your Macros
Finally, last but not least, it’s important that you learn how to balance your macros. If you don’t get your diet down right, you will be hard pressed to be seeing any success at all from your efforts.
You want to form the foundation of your diet out of lean protein and leafy greens and then add in smaller doses of carbohydrates and dietary fats into the picture.
These are both going to provide some energy to the body to help get you through your training and whatever else your day happens to bring.
Just do keep in mind that you don’t want to go overboard with carbs or fats as that will reduce the chances your body turns to stored body fat as a fuel source.
So there you have the key tips to know and remember to help lose belly fat successfully. If you look after all elements of the equation, you can feel confident that you will be moving forward to optimal results.
Share your thoughts on losing belly fat below!
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Thank you for the tips. I particularly like the point about reducing stress. I feel like this one change alone will help me improve all the other areas that need attention!