Been busy lately but am finally back to write about getting rid of belly fat. Something funny has happened. Well, actually not funny at all, but the Christmas holiday hasn’t been nice to me. I have gotten a small belly, so now I not only have to write about the best way to lose belly fat, but I have to follow my own advice. Eat my own cooking if you will.
Belly fat removal is at its finest when you combine a healthy and smart diet with proper workout. That is what I will be focusing on today when I talk about how to lose your belly fat.
There are just tons and tons of different methods out there on how to get a flat stomach, and each is hyped as the best way to achieve your goal to lose weight rapidly in that area. I just have to say, most of these hyped up programs are just crap, and very few help you getting rid of belly fat because they don’t help you lose fat in general.
The only way to get rid of belly fat is to lower your total percentage of body fat. Nothing else will work.
Belly fat pill – There is no secret belly fat pill that will magically make you lose fat on your stomach. Many might claim that effect, but none have proven to actually help you get rid of belly fat.
Exercises to lose stomach fat – Doing crunches won’t help you more than microscopically. How to get rid of belly fat has nothing to do with spot training, because the body simply doesn’t work like that.
Bulk muscle – Many people are afraid that a weight training program will make them bulk up and their body explode with new muscle. Muscle protein synthesis doesn’t happen over night, and you will have to work out really disciplined and specific before bulk muscle will become an issue.
These are just some of the myths surrounding how to get rid of body fat. There are many more, and I will be writing about them here on this blog. But for now, let’s look at some of these a bit closer.
It would be fantastic if science could come up with a belly fat pill that you could take each morning before breakfast and not have to think about the struggles of dieting and working out. It would be a miracle for many, and some day that kind of pill might be invented. Who knows? But as of right now, no such pill exists.
The reason such a pill doesn’t exist is because belly fat is just like all other body fat, and the body takes what it needs evenly from all your fat storages. If science could figure out a way to pin point belly fat then great. The problem is that as soon as you take some kind of drug to lose weight, you are playing with your body in a way that can have catastrophic consequences. I don’t even want to touch this subject other than to say, stay away from any pill that claims to help you getting rid of belly fat or is labeled as a belly fat pill.
A different topic that has a lot of myths surrounding it, and for much of the same reasons as for pills that claim to help you lose belly fat, is spot training or spot reduction of belly fat. The same applies here as above, when the body needs energy, which it constantly does, it utilizes fat from all your fat storages, not just nearby the muscle you are training. It doesn’t matter how many push ups you take, you will not burn more fat around your stomach than other places on your body. Think of your fat storages as one big gas tank.
As for bulk muscle, no one ever woke up one day after training weight 2-3 times per week and won Mr. Universe. To build big muscles you have to work out specifically to build big muscles. If you are afraid of looking big, adjust your diet. The only way to grow big anyway is to eat a lot more (protein) than your body needs AND work out with weights.
Ok, this post about getting rid of body fat is starting to become long, and I have to address my own little belly before I close up. Yes, I have gained a few pounds, and that has a lot to do with the fact that I am formerly a fat boy, meaning that there was a point in time when I was overweight. This means that I put on weight easier then if I had not produced those extra fat cells back when I was overeating. If I let my diet run wild for a month, I gain 10 lbs easily, even if I workout so-so regularly like I have in the Christmas holidays.
I will be using my own rapid weight loss diet that I know works for me. Most likely this will be a diet of around 1000 kcal under my maintenance level and I will probably stay on this diet for 1-2 months. I always recommend not over doing it, so if I don’t get my workout frequency up from 3 times a week to 5, I might go for a 500 kcal deficit only. I will post my results here in the weeks to come. Right now I am at about 200 lbs and losing 10 lbs is my initial goal.
That’s about it for the getting rid of belly fat advice for today. I will try to be more specific as to the “how” in my next post. Stay tuned!