Despite what magazines and other articles say, you cannot spot reduce or lose stomach fat quickly.
If you want to get rid of your stomach fat and keep it off forever, you have to look in terms of a lifestyle change and not just a fad diet.
Types of Stomach Fat
There’s actually two types of stomach fat, visceral fat and subcutaneous fat.
Without getting too deep into it, visceral fat surrounds your organs in your abdomen, poses many health concerns, and is much harder to get rid of than subcutaneous fat.
Subcutaneous fat is fat that is directly under the skin and is much easier to lose.
Since there are different types of fat in your stomach, the speed in which you lose it all will vary.
How To Reduce Stomach Fat Forever: Diet
The only way to reduce your stomach fat will be through diet and exercise.
I’m sorry to tell you that simply drinking tea or eating a grapefruit will not get you any results.
The Chipotle diet or any other fad diet will not help you lose your stomach fat but it may actually give you more.
What Really Works
- Eating more protein: Protein is the fundamental building block to build muscle, it helps curb your appetite because you stay fuller longer, and it has thermogenic properties that favor burning fat.
- Cutting down on carbohydrates and upping fat and protein intake: Eating extremely low carbohydrates will put your body into a ketogenic state. You may have heard of “raspberry ketones” that supposedly burn fat simply by taking them (which is far from the truth. Check out this article about the ketogenic approach… it really works.
- More fiber: Whether you get more fiber through oatmeal, fibrous vegetables, or through supplementation, eat more fiber. Fiber helps with digestion, keeping you regular, and helps keep you fuller longer. This is extremely important when you are dieting down.
- Eat whole eggs: Whole eggs (white and yolk) are quite possibly nature’s perfect food. Eating whole eggs keeps you fuller longer, can reduce your cholesterol (despite what mainstream has been lyi… telling you), easy to cook, and full of protein and other nutrients essential for a healthy lifestyle.
- Eating nutritious whole foods: This means you are going to have to learn how to cook. If you learn how to cook and prepare your meals using fresh ingredients, you are going to cut down on your calories, increase your nutrient and vitamin intake, have better tasting food, and you will notice quickly how much of a difference it makes. Think about how great of a “hamburger helper” you can make if you used fresh ingredients instead of freeze-dried over-processed noodles and seasonings?
How To Reduce Stomach Fat Forever: Tips
- Change your mindset: Like I said before, this is not something that will happen overnight. This also will not stay off if you don’t change your habits. Bad eating habits are why you see many people lose weight and gain it all back (and sometimes more). You have to have a better relationship with food if you want to enjoy a healthier lifestyle.
- Get active: Don’t equate being active with going to the gym. Sure, going to the gym is a convenient place because you can do weight training and cardio… but what about the hiking, biking, and playing sports outdoors? What fun is life if you can’t enjoy being active, playing with your kids, or enjoying life to its fullest? Think about what you enjoyed doing as a kid; grab a pair of roller blades, a bicycle, or a basketball and have fun. Don’t think about “how many calories have I burned” or “is this too much exercise” just have fun.
- Start weight training: If you’ve never been to a gym and really hit the weights… you are missing out. Building lean muscle and burning fat is the name of the game. You can’t lose stomach fat and tone up without building muscle. Using quality exercises will increase your balance, make daily activities easier, and will teach you how to mentally and physically prepare for anything in life.
- Pick better snacks: Picking foods that are more nutrient dense than calories dense will actually fill you up instead of causing you to overeat. Fresh vegetables, fruit, yogurt, (some) granola bars, and even pickles are a great snack. A pickle slice has about 1 calorie per slice and a potato chip has about 10 or more.
- Drink more water: I hate saying this in the article, but it is alarming how many people don’t drink any water… ever! They stick to sodas or other high sugar drinks that do not quench their thirst, cause health issues, and have so many empty calories it will make your head spin. Replace your sodas and other sugary drinks with water and learn to sparingly drink things that are high in sugar. Eventually you will not enjoy the soda and will voluntarily give it up.
- Eat breakfast: Learn to eat something for breakfast; it will break the fasted state you have been in from sleeping and you will be able to control your blood sugar if you eat something when you wake up. Something simple as a piece of toast with peanut butter or a serving of cottage cheese will start your day off right. You do not have to eat a large five-course meal for breakfast for it to be beneficial to you.
- Watch your portion sizes: America as a whole has their portion sizes messed up. Our 8 ounce serving of meat is closer to 12 and our 1 tablespoon is closer to 2… these calories add up fast. Invest in a food scale, a good set of measuring cups, and measuring spoons.
- Use planned cheat meals: I don’t want to see you completely depriving yourself of the foods you have grown to love. Comfort foods and favorite meals should never be shunned; they need to be planned. Planning your meals a week in advance will give you the ability to cut down one or two days so that you can eat something you love on another day. It’s okay to splurge on that cheat meal, use it as something to look forward to. Every two or three weeks have a favorite meal planned out so you can reward yourself that day for staying on target with your weight loss goals.
- Get enough sleep: Sleep is one of the most important functions your body needs to do everything. Not getting enough sleep can raise cortisol levels which keep you from losing stomach fat, increases anxiety and keeps your body from recovering from weight training. On the far end of the spectrum, not getting enough sleep can cause dementia and other mental disorders.
How To Reduce Stomach Fat Forever: Full Body Workout Routine
Whether you are new to the gym or looking for a different workout routine, a full body workout has many advantages.
Full body workouts are great because every day you step into the gym, you are working every part of your body and maximizing your ability to burn calories and build lean muscle.
This workout is a 2 day alternating workout which means you do not have complicated schedules or certain workouts that you have to do on a certain day. This is helpful if you cannot get to the gym consistently every week.
Workout Sample Schedule
- Monday – Workout A
- Tuesday – Workout B
- Wednesday – Off
- Thursday – Workout A
- Friday – Workout B
- Saturday – Off
- Sunday – Off
You simply go from Workout A to Workout B no matter how many days you go to the gym. I would not recommend using this workout for more than 5 days a week; you need to have time to recover and simply doing more weight training will not help you lose weight.
| Workout A | ||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps |
|---|---|---|
| Goblet Squats | 3 | 8 |
| Incline Dumbbell Bench Press | 3 | 12 |
| Seated Rows | 3 | 12 |
| Seated Dumbbell Overhead Press | 3 | 8 |
| Dips | 3 | 12 |
| Workout B | ||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps |
|---|---|---|
| Deadlifts | 3 | 8 |
| Shoulder Press Machine | 3 | 15 |
| Lat Pull Downs | 3 | 12 |
| Dumbbell Flys | 3 | 8 |
| Dumbbell Curls | 3 | 12 |
Workout Tips
For these workouts, pick a weight that will challenge you to complete the set. Once you feel comfortable in completing the sets with this weight, bump up the weight by 5 to 10 pounds and follow this process again.
Keep the rest in between sets as short as possible to keep your heart rate up and help burn extra calories.
How To Reduce Stomach Fat Forever: Cardio Routine
Like I said before, don’t equate cardio and exercise with only the gym.
Since you will be going to the gym some, this cardio routine is designed to be run on those days you do go to the gym.
Pre Workout Cardio
For your pre-workout cardio I want you to pick a random machine and do 5 minutes of easy to moderate exercise on it. I want you to pick something different every time for your pre-workout cardio; this is going to give you something new and will help warm your body up to new movements.
Post Workout Cardio
For your post workout cardio I want you to stick with a certain machine for 2 weeks. It doesn’t matter if you go 2 times or 5 times a week, every 2 weeks I want you to change your cardio machine.
When you stick to the same machine, your body will adapt and get more efficient at whatever exercise you are doing. So for example, if you are constantly on the treadmill, the “calories burned” will not be the same. This is why if you are a runner, you run to get better at running.
Stick to 20 minutes of cardio on whatever machine you choose. There is no reason for you to spend hours in the gym doing cardio.
Cardio Outside of the Gym
Cardio aka activity outside of the gym is something I want you to work on the most. Turning the hours of sitting on the couch watching TV and movies into cleaning, yard work, playing sports, hiking, biking, walking, or [insert favorite activity here] will drastically change how fast you lose your stomach fat.
Get up and go do something. If you just have to see a certain TV episode, either plan to do exercise around that time frame or get a way to record it so you can watch it at another time.
If you simply were to change your activity levels at home and not change anything else, you would notice the stomach fat coming off.
Using the weight training and cardio routine here in addition to changing your activity levels at home will give you the quickest and healthiest change to your body.
Nothing will pay off more than to look into the mirror and you have the body that you have been wanting.
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