3 Best Tips For a Flat Belly

Belly fat is hard to lose and maintaining a flat belly can be frustrating for some people. So here we share some of the best tips for a flat belly.

Everyone has some belly fat, even people with a fairly flat stomach. It’s perfectly normal, but too much belly fat can affect your health in ways that other fat doesn’t. Let’s get right into how to get rid of that pesky belly fat.

HOW TO GET A FLAT BELLY

Belly fat is hard to lose, and It’s more dangerous than other types of fat, and it can be harder to burn off than other types of fat as well. 

That said, if you’re looking for a way to get rid of your belly fat and have that flat stomach you’ve always wanted, here are some things you can do:

1. Eat a Healthy Diet

You need to pick a healthy eating plan you can stick to. The benefit of this approach is that it simply involves learning better food choices—no calorie-counting is necessary. In general you’d be adjusting to a direct style of staying away from problem foods and sticking to foods that will aid your course for the long run.

Our recommendations would be to; 

Increase Water intake – There are several ways in which drinking more water could help support weight management and prevent bloating.

To begin with, it may aid in weight loss by temporarily increasing your metabolic rate, or the number of calories you burn at rest.

Moreover, drinking water before meals can make you feel fuller, allowing you to eat fewer calories.

Besides that, drinking more water can help relieve constipation, which can also contribute to preventing bloating.

However, Drinking water may temporarily increase your metabolism, increase feeling of fullness, and help relieve constipation, all of which may be beneficial for a flatter stomach.

Protein – Give this step your full attention because protein has been shown to reduce food cravings by up to 60%. If you consume enough protein you will automatically eat less calories each day. Furthermore, protein is extremely important if you want to build muscle. Try to eat one gram of protein per pound of body weight every day. You can do this by eating more meat, unprocessed eggs, seafood, dairy products and poultry. You can also supplement your diet with whey protein

Protein shakes are an easy way to add extra protein to your diet. Increasing your protein consumption may help you lose visceral fat, retain lean body mass, and suppress your appetite.

Fibre for breakfast (against bloating) – Eating soluble fiber can increase feelings of fullness, help decrease the absorption of calories, and protect against the accumulation of visceral fat around the organs.

Fibre ensures that you feel satiated, this helps to reduce your appetite and the amount of food you eat. 

Fibers are water binding and create some sort of jelly that attaches to the bottom of your intestine that slows down the passage of food through your digestive system, making you feel fuller and reducing your appetite.

Eat Fatty fish or Heathy fat food – Fatty fish is rich in protein and omega-3 fatty acids, both of which may help reduce belly fat.

Foods rich in this kinds of fats are avocado nuts and seeds, etc. 

Take unsweetened Coffee or Green tea – Drinking unsweetened coffee or tea may increase fat burning and metabolism to help you reach or maintain a moderate weight.

2. What Foods To Avoid 

Avoid sugar – This is very important because studies show that too much sugar can damage your body’s metabolism. Sugar is made up of glucose and fructose. Since your liver is unable to metabolize fructose in large amounts, it is quickly converted to fat. So it’s best to minimize your sugar intake and eliminate Sugary drinks from your diet altogether. If you ignore this step, you’re in for a rough ride. 

Cut Sugary Drinks – Beverages like soda, fruit juice, sweet tea, and energy drinks are often high in calories, added sugar, and fructose, which may contribute to weight gain. Additionally, liquids are easier to overconsume because they have a less significant effect on fullness than solid foods.

Reduce carbohydrates – Reducing your carbohydrate intake will keep your appetite in check. Studies have shown that people who eat a low carb diet lose two to three times more weight than people who eat a low fat diet. You also lose water faster, which should show up on the scale after just a few days. Refined carbohydrates are what you should watch out for the most.

So you should stay away from foods like white bread or pasta. If you avoid them, you will automatically eat a lot of protein so you can lose weight quite fast. When you reduce your carbohydrate intake to 50 grams per day. Your body will even go into ketosis and burn even more fat. 

Ketosis is a metabolic state that occurs when your body burns fat and converts it to energy. 

Cut calories – Typically, if you’re looking to lose weight, you may need to monitor your calorie intake.

You can lose about 1-2 pounds (0.5-1 kg) every week by cutting your daily calorie consumption by 500–750 calories, which is a common strategy.

Having said that, severely limiting your calorie intake may be detrimental to your health and prove ineffective.

Carbonated beverages – Consuming carbonated drinks, drinking from a straw, and chewing gum may cause stomach distention and bloating in some people.

Excessive use of carbonated beverages like soda, sprite, coke etc might result in gas.

This is because the carbon dioxide in the bubbles in it is liberated from the liquid in your stomach and as a result may cause bloating or stomach distention.

Limit Alcohol – Alcohol contains seven calories for each gram, which partly explains why many alcoholic drinks are often loaded with liquid calories.

Beer has about the same amount of calories per ounce as a sugary soft drink, but red wine has almost twice as much.

In contrast to severe drinking, which is associated to increased weight gain, especially around the midsection, moderate drinking is unlikely to have an impact on body weight.

However, Heavy alcohol consumption may contribute to weight gain, especially around your midsection.

    3. Regular Exercise

It is quite popular that whenever anyone feels like there’s a bit of growth in their midsection and they want to “shrink it down” a bit– they tend to go straight into crunches and sit ups. Well, while these are great exercises with other great benefits, this is not the way to go about it. 

Although strengthening your core with abdominal exercises will make you appear leaner because these muscles help keep your stomach in place, 

Core exercises on their own, will not completely eliminate fat. Which means just doing stuff like Crunches alone will not slim the midsection. If you want a flat belly, you must include cardio to burn those calories!

This goes without saying that you also have to know the underlying cause of your belly fat, before even looking into exercising for fat loss. Find out bout the three types of belly fat here.

Aerobic exercise – Involving in aerobic exercises now and then can help your cause. Aerobic exercises, such as brisk walking, running, swimming, and cycling, for 20-40 minutes a day have been shown in studies to help reduce that pesky fat in your midsection.

Taking a regular brisk walk can be often underrated but if taken into consideration can be one of the best ways to lose some fat. 

Since It has been observed that 20 to 40 minutes a day of moderate to intense cardio is effective in reducing belly fat (Don’t worry cardio and aerobic exercises are the same thing). Incorporate this with your core strengthening exercise and you are on the right path to developing and maintaining that flat belly.

Resistance training – Although it might sound a bit technical, ‘Resistance Training’ is just another name for exercising your muscles using an opposing force 

either with dumbbells, resistance bands, or even just your own weight.

Weightlifting, resistance training, toning, and strength training are all the same thing because they all involve applying resistance to the body in order to build stronger, bigger muscles.

So how does it work? 

During resistance training, Muscle fibres are broken down, and as a result of the body repairing these torn muscle fibres, your muscles get stronger. 

In addition to helping you develop strength, this also helps you shape and tone your body (don’t worry, you have to work really hard to appear like a weight trainer!).

So since the goal is more muscle and less fat, resistance training slowly replaces the broken fat cells to muscle. 

An extra 20 pounds of fat may give you a softer, less toned appearance, helps insulate the body and trap in body heat. 

But an extra 20 pounds of muscle will look firm and sculpted and boost metabolism.

Muscle is also a metabolically active tissue, which means that the more muscle you have as a percentage of your body weight, the more calories you’ll burn at rest. Excellent news for those of us attempting to lose or maintain our weight.

Examples of resistance exercise you can do at home are: Crunches, leg raises etc. 

  What No One Is Telling You!

Maybe your doctor has advised you to lose some weight, or you have personally made the decision to lose some weight based on recent life choices or whatever the reason is, it’s important to keep your journey in perspective — cos regardless of what random weight loss ads and products attempt to convince you of…

Fact is – it is not possible to “target” fat reduction in your stomach in particular, while there are numerous methods that can effectively boost overall fat loss and weight loss.

Spot reduction, or focused fat loss in a particular area of the body, is also not viable, according to numerous research.

This is due to the fact that fat cells are found all over the body and that they can be broken down and used during exercise, not only in the area you are working out.

Therefore, losing weight overall will help shrink your waistline and more importantly, it will help reduce the dangerous layer of visceral fat, a type of fat within the abdominal cavity. When there’s more visceral fat there’s health risks such as; diabetes, heart diseases, cancer etc.

De-stress: Stress management is also as important as the tips mentioned above or it’ll all be for nothing. So avoiding stress as much as possible, especially in the late evening hours, when cortisol levels are high and your body’s natural fat burners  such as serotonin and adrenaline — are at their lowest levels.

Posture : Did you know that a bad posture can result in the accumulation of belly fat whether it be standing or sitting ? 

If you spend long hours sitting at a desk in front of a screen, chances are you slouch, leaving your stomach loose and bulging. The first step toward a flat stomach is to avoid slouching while sitting, standing, or walking. 

Weak back muscles affect the abdominal muscle as well. 

You can keep your back straight while sitting at your desk. Walking with your chin up, shoulders back, and stomach in position not only makes you look fitter but also flattens your tummy.

And if these is not good enough then get involved in some yoga. Some yoga exercises are known to correct bad postures. 

Bottom Line

It’s hard to lose belly fat, but I hope this article has helped you understand what causes it and how to get rid of it. If you are already trying one or more of the tips above then great! If not, then it is time to start today with some small changes that will lead to maintaining a healthy weight and a flat tummy.