Say Hello to your new BFF – Belly Fat Freedom!
I am sure everyone reading this has at one point or another looked down or in the mirror at your belly and said “If I can just get rid of “this” right here!”
Including yours truly! Yup Even I, your respected Fitness Guru have had that thought a time or two. So lets talk Belly Fat and what we can do about it.
Why, how do we develop the extra cushion around the midsection and its affects?
Prolonged periods of inactivity and a diet high in saturated fat and high sugar lead to visceral fat storage. Too much fat in this area can lead to all sorts of unwanted health issues:
- High Blood Pressure
- Hormonal Imbalances
- Cardiovascular Disease
- Type 2 Diabetes
Fat cells can build up and get into the main vein that supplies and delivers blood to our liver, leading to #5. High Cholesterol. All and all it’s not a pretty picture, on the inside or on the outside.
So why have I lost weight but “This Right Here” just keeps holding on?
You probably don’t want to hear this answer…but its all about Safety First.
The body sees it as a reserve needed to ensure our survival for when times are tough and food is scarce. Listen at the end of the day, the body is smart and the mind wants to keep you alive come what may. Therefore the subcutaneous fat that we carry under our skin that leads to cellulite in women and saggy thighs in men, is a lot easier to get rid because it is part of our primary fat stores. However visceral fat (the deep stuff) is reserved for dire circumstances and is only accessed when there is nothing else left to burn.
When we are in our prime our bodies try to plan ahead and save up extra resources for a rainy day, for when we are not as agile, less successful at hunting and are unable to feed ourselves regularly. Yes I know we are not hunting for food these days, but we use to and even though we have evolved we are still the same on the inside. That is why as we age, we reserve more and more visceral fat rather than the subcutaneous type gaining a belly that only grows bigger the older we get. Not too mention we are sitting up ourselves for success and failure with all of our technology and lack of movement. More to come about that on another blog.
The Hard Truth of the matter is this:
We can’t target any of these reserves specifically, there is no way to pick where we are going to lose fat from. Wrapping yourself in saran wrap, putting on a waist trainer or other slimming product is not the magic ticket. More to come about that on another blog. We can’t target it with exercise or dieting, our bodies always lose overall body fat and only when they are done shedding it everywhere else will they access the fat that’s reserved in problem areas like our bellies.
But what about doing exercises specifically for belly fat loss?
Since we can’t target our bellies specifically no amount of crunches or other ab specific exercises will help us burn reserves there faster. It doesn’t matter how much muscle we put on in a specific part of the body, we burn body fat in an overall way.
This means that in order to get rid of the belly you have to do exactly the same training you would do if you wanted to lose weight in general, once you are low or out of other extra fat reserves to burn you will begin to burn visceral fat in your midsection and every other problem area you have.
The best way to dig into those stubborn fat reserves is through a combination of cardio and HIIT workouts. The sheer variety of each, longer burn and/or higher intensity will eventually force your body to part with the fat and trade it for quality muscle instead.
Are you a victim of “The belly bulge”?
What do I mean by the belly bulge? If you ignore cardio and concentrate on the ab work exclusively instead of burning the fat you need to burn you will end up with a belly bulge. What happens is when you gain muscle and you still have extra fat reserves in your midsection the muscle tightens up and pushes those fat pockets out visually making the situation look even worse than before. This is NOT what you were going for at all.
That’s why it’s recommended that you concentrate on cardio instead of ab work in general. You can still do some ab exercises especially if your end goal is having strong abdominal wall but avoid making it the center of your training, cardio should be what you focus on. Cardio and staying active throughout the day – its really simple – the more you move the more you burn.
Follow my motto – Active Living!
Adopting an active lifestyle and cutting out high sugar high saturated fat foods will eventually lead to a flat and healthy stomach. It takes patience and patience is vital in this case. If you rush it and force your body to lose fat faster than it’s comfortable with, it will not have time to adjust – the skin cells will not adapt to the change and you’ll end up with a hanging sack for a stomach which cannot be fixed without a surgery. Sudden changes to your lifestyle, extreme physical and dietary conditions will also make your body panic and switch to emergency mode lowering your metabolism and conserving anything extra you may eat reserving any and everything it can, from its point of view, for your survival.
The only way to get permanent results is to introduce conditions you can maintain for the rest of your life. Small changes introduced gradually in your lifestyle will make a big difference in the long run. Do anything too extreme and you’ll end up with more weight than you started off with the moment you relapse or stop your training and dieting regimen.
Take on this BFF Plan of Attack – Belly Fat Freedom:
Do cardio and high burn workouts, but make sure you change things up, our bodies adapt to any monotonous training. The trick here is to keep your regimen fresh: do HIIT (high intensity interval training), jogging and sprints, bodyweight circuits, strength and flexibility training.
I have an idea…. Follow me on YouTube– I have a 12 week, totally FREE workout program designed after HIIT. Live in or near Brooklyn NY. Join me every Saturday and Sunday in Prospect Park for a great 1 hour combo of HIIT and flexibility work based on Yoga.
Click on Bootcamp above for more info.
Bottom line is:
The more confused your body is the better the results you’ll get. Which means the more you do by implementing regular daily exercise and movement into your life the better off you will be.
It takes work, sadly, there are no shortcuts that will give you permanent results but it’s worth the trouble.
