How to lose weight at belly area

If you came to this article looking for advice on how to lose weight at belly area thinking only on the aesthetic side of the situation, waste a few minutes with us as we will give more reasons (besides tips) for you that want to lose weight and lose a few inches of your belly.

Having a flat belly or a defined abdomen can be very good for self-esteem, making the individual safer to wear certain clothes or expose the abdominal region in public. However, there are much more important reasons to bother you with the rolls or with the protruding belly. The accumulation of fat in the abdominal area is not only aesthetically undesirable; is also an important risk factor for the development of diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease.

Being a few pounds overweight and having fat in the belly area is very common. But not being alone does not mean that accumulating fat in the womb is not a cause for concern. Even if you do not mind aesthetics, as with some adult men, losing your stomach is important for you to be a healthy person.

It is important to keep in mind that these "rolls" in the belly that annoy you a lot may not only be an aesthetic problem, but a sign that you have to be more careful with your health.

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In this article we will explain why and how to lose weight at belly area. Let's address the following points:

• Ways to accumulate fat in the body.
• Dangers of abdominal fat.
• How to achieve a flat abdomen.
• Diet and physical exercise to lose weight and lose belly.
• Gain muscle mass to lower your belly.
• Tips to lose belly.

Ways to accumulate fat in the body

Regardless of your weight and BMI (body mass index), how your body accumulates fat has great importance in the risk of developing diseases in the future.

When we gain fat we gain visibly and invisibly. Visible fat is one that builds up under the skin in the subcutaneous tissue. Generally, the places that the body tends to accumulate more fat are abdomen, thighs, buttocks and hips. Already the invisible fat accumulates more deeply around the organs, being called visceral fat.

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Most people care more about the fat that can be seen. 

However, hidden fat, or visceral fat, is the most worrisome to doctors because it can occur in non-obese people.

The way the body accumulates visible fat can give important clues about the formation of visceral fat. People who accumulate fat predominantly in the belly, keeping thighs and hips relatively thin, are those with a higher risk of visceral fat formation. Women who accumulate more fat in the thighs and hips than in the abdomen generally have less visceral fat, which reduces the risk of cardiovascular problems.

Dangers of abdominal fat in the BMI greater than 25 kg / m²

Anyone who believes that they are overweight should calculate their BMI and measure waist circumference with a common and malleable tape measure.

When BMI is greater than 25 kg / m², men with a waist greater than 102 cm and women with a waist greater than 88 cm are at increased risk of developing obesity-related diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol and cardiovascular disease.

In obese patients with a BMI greater than 35 kg / m2, abdominal circumference measurement loses value because fat accumulation in these cases is diffuse and, of course, the formation of visceral fat also occurs.

If you are obese, there is no doubt that fat is doing you wrong. The problem is to convince people who are overweight and a protruding belly (BMI between 25 and 29.9 kg / m²) that the problem goes beyond a simple aesthetic discomfort.

As an example, for 10 years, adults with normal and belly-free BMI have a 30% lower risk of developing heart disease compared to those with a BMI greater than 25 kg / m² and increased abdominal circumference.

How to achieve a flat abdomen

Before giving advice on how to achieve a flat abdomen, we need to point out some points:

1- There are no miracles. First, you have to accept the fact that there are no teas, special diets, formulas, recipes, pills or any other means that makes you lose stomach easily and quickly. As long as you do not understand, you will continue to give money for charlatans and you will accumulate frustrations. Not to mention the health risks that some "miracle" weight loss treatments can cause.

2- The degree of success you will always be proportional to the degree of effort you are willing to do. If you want to lose weight effortlessly, you will fail without effort.

3- It is impossible to lose belly without losing weight. The only exception is liposuction, which is not the solution indicated in most cases. There is no point in doing crunches, buying appliances that give blows to the abdomen, passing creams on the belly, etc. Belly fat is one way the body stores the excess calories that was consumed over the months. To lose your belly, you have to make your body consume more calories than it can store. You have to spend the reserves, you have to burn the fat.

4- Slimming and losing belly, necessarily, pass through the binomial: physical exercise + control of ingested calories. If in the course of several days you consume more calories than you eat, you will gain weight. On the other hand, if you manage to spend more calories than you consume, you will inevitably lose weight. It's as simple as that. There is no escape.

Diet and physical exercise to lower belly

It is important to understand that it is much easier to lose weight by exercising than just dieting. Restricting calorie consumption may work in the short term, but if you have a lot of weight to lose, it will only take you halfway. Many people lose weight quickly with diets, but after a few weeks they are stagnant without being able to lose more weight. As best they can, and still with a lot of effort, is not to regain weight. 

This is because, as we know, as we lose weight the body's basal calorie expenditure is also reduced, forcing the diet to become increasingly restrictive to function. Our body consumes an average of 23 calories per kilo of weight. Therefore, people with 100 kilos have baseline expenditure of 2300 calories a day,

Example: a sedentary person weighs 100 kilos and wants to reach 70 kilos. With 100 kilos the body spends about 2300 kcal / day.

- If in the course of several days a person ingests an average of 2300 kcal per day, its weight will be maintained.

- If the person ingests more than 2300 kcal / day, it will gain weight.

- If the person ingests less than 2300 kcal / day, it will lose weight.

Therefore, if this patient diets, for example, with 1800 kcal per day, he will lose weight even without exercises after a few days.

The problem is that, as he loses weight, fewer calories the body will spend to spend throughout the day. A fat body requires more energy to function. When this individual reaches 85 kilos, his daily basal calorie expenditure will have dropped by around 1800 kcal. That is, the diet that served when he weighed 100 kilos will not be enough to continue losing weight.

At this point, the patient has two options: either he switches to an even more intense diet with approximately 1300 calories a day, which is very restrictive and difficult to do, or starts exercising to increase his daily calorie expenditure. If the body spends 1,800 kcal / day and the patient still gets to spend another 500 calories in the gym, his daily expenditure will be 2300 kcal. Therefore, the 1800 kcal diet will continue to be effective for weight loss.

Gain muscle mass to lose belly

Physical exercises have 2 advantages: they expend calories immediately and increase basal calorie expenditure when we are at rest.

Ideally, always combine aerobic exercise (running, spinning, swimming, step, etc.) with exercises to gain muscle mass.

Muscle is a structure that consumes a lot of calories. 

Therefore, the more muscle mass one has, the greater the body's basal calorie expenditure. While a kilo of fat consumes approximately 4 kcal / day, one kilo of muscle consumes about 13 kcal. That roughly means that for every kilo of fat you lose your basal calorie intake drops to 4 kcal / day, but if you can replace this kilo of fat lost by a kilo of muscle, the effect will be the opposite - you will increase your basal caloric expenditure In 9 kcal.

We soon came to the conclusion that, contrary to what happens when we only diet, as we lose weight and gain muscle at the same time, it is becoming easier to keep on losing fat and reducing the belly.

So, if you want to lose your belly, do bodybuilding. It is not exactly doing sit-ups that will make you lose your belly, but gain muscle mass in the body.

Tips for losing belly

After having understood everything that has been explained before, it is easy to follow the advice that I will give now:

- It gives preference to more intense aerobic exercises to lose many extra calories per day. In a spinning classroom, for example, you can lose 500 to 800 calories more in a single day. That's without the cardiovascular benefits of having good aerobic endurance.

- Do at least 30 minutes of physical exercises and then 30 minutes of bodybuilding. The ideal frequency is 4 to 5 times during the week.

- Aerobic exercises with less than 30 minutes of duration do not help to burn belly fat. In the first few minutes we burn only the sugar reserves. To reach the fat reserves are required, at least, 20 to 25 minutes of aerobic exercises.

- If you cannot or you cannot run, walk. Walking for 30 minutes a day is enough.

- You can do bodybuilding at any age, provided you are accompanied by a trained professional.

- Swimming is an excellent exercise to lose weight as it is aerobic and stimulates muscle development. Doing dozens of repetitions of abdominal exercises will not make your belly disappear if you do not lose weight. You can even create abdominal muscles but, as the fat is more superficial, they will be hidden. There is no way to have a laundry abdomen with a large layer of fat above, in the subcutaneous tissue.

- Work large muscle groups, such as chest, back and thighs because, because they are bigger muscles and easier to develop, they will cause you to lose weight faster.

- Ask a nutritionist to help you make a diet with the right amount of calories for you.

- Flee from fad diets. Losing weight and losing belly is not a secret - it's just a matter of effort and will.

- Avoid eating fats, fried foods, soft drinks and sweets. They fatten and raise the level of cholesterol.

- Sleep at least 7 to 8 hours a day. Our body spends more calories when we are sleeping in deep sleep than when we are just lying down, whether reading or watching TV. Who sleeps little has a greater risk of accumulating fat in the belly.

- Watch out for miraculous formulas. There are many weight loss treatments that actually hide substances like amphetamines, sleeping pills, diuretics or antidepressants in their composition.

- At the time of eating, after each bite, take a sip of water. This will make the stomach fill more quickly, reducing the amount of food needed to meet your requirements. Never fill the plate. When we are hungry, we tend to put more food than we really need on the plate.

- Do not feel obligated to finish the plate. If you are satisfied, stop eating even if there is food on the plate.

- Do not do long periods of fasting during the day. Avoid being hungry. It is best to eat 5 or 6 small meals throughout the day, with a few hours apart, than 2 or 3 large meals spaced. Large intervals between hours decelerate metabolism and increase the release of insulin at mealtime, two factors that prevent the patient from losing weight.

- Eat slowly, chew the food well and take small breaks during the meal. It gives time for the mechanisms of satiety of the body to activate.

- Do not eat dessert immediately after a meal. See if you really need it or if dessert is just a habit.