Excess fat around the stomach is not only unsightly – it’s also dangerous. Known as visceral body fat, it puts you at a higher risk of cancer, coronary heart disease, diabetes, arthritis and depression. Fortunately, it is possible to make dramatic reductions in your belly fat levels - without going to dangerous dieting extremes.
Here are the top 3 ways to safely and permanently slim down your waistline.
Solution #1: Cut Out Processed and Sugary Foods
The typical Western diet supplies the gut with a constant supply of toxic non-foods that are clogging up the digestive system and causing massive amounts of inflammation. The first thing that you need to do is to stem the flow of processed and sugary foods that you are eating.
In addition to filling your gut with pounds of ‘gunk’, processed and sugary foods have a lethal effect on one of the most important hormones in your body - insulin. Simply put, it plays havoc with the body’s insulin release, causing you to eat more and pack on excess calories.
Here are five steps you can take to cut back . . .
- Replace all soda drinks with water flavored with lemon
- Snack on almonds and walnuts
- Make 2/3 of every plate veggies
- Eat every 3 hours, with 1/3 of each meal consisting of a lean protein
- Stop buying packaged foods
Solution #2: Reduce Stress
Stress is rampant in our society. And it has a direct correlation with excess body fat. That’s because it releases the hormone cortisol, which causes us to crave unhealthy food options, and lowers our metabolism in order to protect the body for a perceived emergency situation.
Here are 8 quick stress busters you can apply immediately . . .
- Exercise at least 3X per week
- Feed yourself daily positive affirmations
- Get a minimum of 8 hours sleep each night
- Plan out the coming days activities the evening before
- Prepare for the unexpected
- Single task it (no multitasking allowed!)
- Listen to your favorite music at least 20 minutes daily
- Know your stressors – and develop strategies to deal with them
Solution #3: HIIT Fat Burning Exercise
A lot of people spend a lot of time performing low intensity cardio exercise to burn body fat. You see them wiling away their time on a treadmill or stair stepper. That is not the best way to exercise for fat loss. It simply doesn’t burn enough calories. In order to get rid of body fat, you have to work harder than that. The way to do it is with HIIT style workouts.
High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) has you performing an intense cardio sprint followed by a shorter rest for multiple rounds.
Incorporating HITT training into your exercise schedule 3 times per week will allow you to not only burn calories while exercising, it will ramp up your body's ability to torch fat, boosting your metabolism for the next 48 hours. That means that you will still be burning off calories from your early morning workout that night while you’re watching TV.
Here is how to do a HIIT running session . . .
Get yourself to an open field and jog up and down for 2 minutes. Have your stopwatch set for 20 seconds of work followed by a 10 second rest.
Immediately that your 2- minute warm-up is done, begin sprinting as fast you can for 20 seconds. Then walk with your hands on your hips for 10 seconds. Do this for multiple rounds – begin with 5 and work up to 8 rounds.
This routine is super intense, but the great thing is that it only lasts for a few minutes – and it will keep your metabolism revved up for the next 48 hours.