May Help You Make Better Food Choices
Getting a full nights sleep may help you make healthier food choices.
Lack of sleep alters the way your brain works and can affect decision making. This may make it harder to make healthy food choices and resist tempting foods .
In addition, it appears that the reward centers of the brain are more stimulated by food when you are sleep deprived .
For example, one study found that sleep deprived participants had greater reward-related brain responses after viewing images of high calorie foods. Interestingly, they were also more likely to pay more for food than those who had adequate sleep .
Therefore, after a night of poor sleep, not only is that bowl of ice cream more rewarding, but youll likely have a harder time practicing self-control.
Another study showed that sleep deprivation led to increased smell sensitivity to high calorie foods and greater consumption .
Furthermore, lack of sleep may lead to poorer food choices, such as a higher intake of foods high in calories, sugar, and fat, to compensate for feeling a lack of energy .
Summary
Poor sleep can decrease your self-control and decision making abilities, as well as increase your brains reaction to food. Poor sleep has also been linked to an increased intake of foods high in calories, fats, and sugar.
Don’t Ban The Good Stuff
If you want to get a flat stomach, you’d be advised to avoid foods that cause bloating such as lentils, onion and broccoli. Ditch that thought! Lentils are a great source of protein as well as being rich in iron, onions both raw and cooked – provide fibre and broccoli and broccoli is packed with Vitamins K and C. These foods are so good for you it’d be ridiculous to cut them from your diet.
Monitor Your Eating With A Food Diary
Self-monitoring, like keeping a daily food diary, is a great way to keep track of what you’re eating.
Try out a free food diary app like MealLogger, MyNetDiary, iEatBetter, and MyFitnessPal. These apps make it easy to keep track of your meals, nutrients, and calories right from your phone. If you prefer a pen and paper, that works too! You can purchase a simple notebook and manually keep track of what you’re eating each day.
The Center For Disease Control has a free food diary template online that you can print out. Websites like MyFoodDiary can help you track your diet right from your computer too.
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Incorporate Probiotics Or Probiotic Supplements
According to a 2021 review, certain probiotics can aid in fat loss.
Evidence shows that probiotics may play a role in releasing hormones that regulate appetite. Research also shows that probiotics may increase levels of certain proteins that regulate fat.
One small 2013 study found that the Lactobacillus amylovorus and Lactobacillus fermentum strains of probiotics were capable of shifting body composition. In other words, these probiotic strains helped study participants lose 3% to 4% of their body fat over six weeks.
If you want to incorporate more probiotic foods into your diet, try eating more:
- Sauerkraut
- Kombucha
- Sourdough bread
You can also take probiotic supplements. There are a ton of supplements on the market, so make sure to look into the brands, ingredients, quality, and reviews.
Probiotic supplements also contain different strains, so you’ll want to research which strain is best for your specific needs. Always talk with your physician before taking any new supplements.
Effective Tips To Lose Belly Fat
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Belly fat is more than a nuisance that makes your clothes feel tight.
Its seriously harmful.
One type of belly fat referred to as visceral fat is a major risk factor for type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and other conditions .
Many health organizations use body mass index to classify weight and predict the risk of metabolic disease.
However, this is misleading, as people with excess belly fat are at an increased risk even if they look thin .
Though losing fat from this area can be difficult, there are several things you can do to reduce excess abdominal fat.
Here are 19 effective tips to lose belly fat, backed by scientific studies.
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Eat Whole Grains At Lunch
You know to avoid big meals, coffee, colas, and alcohol before bed, but did you know that it’s best to eat your complex carbohydrates at lunchtime, not with dinner? “Serotonin converts to melatonin in your stage 3 REM sleep, and serotonin is sourced from whole-grain complex carbohydrates. So you don’t need to have carbs before bed to sleep, just have them at some point through the day,” says Cat Smiley, owner of Whistler Fitness Vacations, a weight-loss retreat for women.
Also, to meet your daily fiber goal, “about 20 grams of insoluble fiber is important to enable you to sleep, so aim to eat that daily, and you’ll ensure you can convert enough serotonin to sleep well.”
How Does Your Sleeping Position Affect Your Overall Health
Sleeping in the correct position will not only help you lose some pounds, but it will be providing several benefits to your body like it makes you feel relaxed, increase the general health of your brain, and assists in the elimination of the waste found in the brain known in another name as interstitial brain waste.
When this waste is cleared from the brain, it minimizes the chances of a person suffering from several different diseases sleeping on the right-hand side exerts minimal pressure on the heart and stomach while enabling digestion to take place smoothly. This eliminates the flow of Qi and improves the functionality of your heart.
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Blackout With Blackout Shades
Light-blocking curtains make a huge difference when it comes to falling asleep. Outside light makes it harder for your mind to shut down, even if you think you’re immune to such instinctive signals. Melatonin, the hormone involved in putting your body to sleep, is compromised when light is present.
“Darken your room so that going to bed, even early, feels natural,” Smiley says.
How Quickly Will You Lose Weight
The volunteers reduced their waist sizes by an average of 1 inch for every 4lb they lost.
So if you lose 1lb a week you could hope to reduce your waistline by an inch after four weeks.
Dieticians advise that if you eat 500 calories less than your daily requirement you will lose about 1lb every seven days .
This chart shows you how many pounds you can hope to lose per week based on how many calories you cut out of your daily diet.
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Banish Belly Fat With A Good Nights Sleep
Losing belly fat isnât easy, especially as you canât spot reduce it, so youâll need to focus on losing fat overall. But there are some things beyond diet and exercise that you may be overlooking when it comes to fat loss.
Keeping your sleep debt low and aligning with your circadian rhythm can stop more belly fat from forming, and help make losing existing body fat easier.
The RISE app makes those two things much easier to do. The app keeps track of sleep debt as you pay it back and predicts your circadian rhythm each day so you can sync up with it. It also tells you the best time to do sleep hygiene habits, which will help you sleep easier and longer each night.
What Causes Abdominal Fat
Fat around the belly is common. When you stand up tall, your torso is elongated. The skin and tissue in your midsection are spread over a greater surface area. When you sit down, your torso shortens. The skin and flesh are now compacted into a smaller space. The result is that you develop a few fleshy folds.
Everyone, including thin people, gets excess fat around their belly button when their spine curves and midsection is compressed.
There are a few factors that might cause some people to develop abdominal fat more so than others.
- Excess body fat: If your body fat percentage is higher, some of that excess fat is likely sitting around your middle, resulting in rolls that appear when standing or sitting.
- Genetics: Research has found that storing excess fat in the abdominal area is up to 60% genetic. This study adds that your genes can also determine if the excess fat sits deeper inside your midsection or if the fat stays closer to the skin .
- Poor posture: Just as belly fat is more apparent when sitting versus standing due to a shortened torso, the same is true if you have poor posture. Leaning forward or slouching can both cause bigger or more prominent folds of skin.
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You’re Exercising Too Much
Theres no doubt that slobbing out wont do anything to diminish belly fat, but going overboard isnt the answer either, as Libby affirms:
Physical stresses such as overexercising and endurance exercise can upset cortisol balance. Switch gruelling cardio workouts for 20-30 minute HIIT sessions instead.
HIIT the ground running with these get fit fast workouts .
Not Getting Enough Sleep Leads To Insulin Resistance Which Can Lead To More Belly Fat
But itâs not just the direct link between sleep and fat storage. One study looked at participants who slept for five hours a night for one week. The results showed this sleep deprivation significantly reduced insulin sensitivity, which could lead to insulin resistance.
When our bodies become resistant to insulin, the pancreas makes more and more of the hormone in order to get the glucose in our blood to be absorbed into our muscles and organs, where itâs needed for energy. But higher insulin levels can trigger the body into storing this glucose as fat, especially around the belly.
And it doesnât take long for this to happen. One study found a single night of four hours of sleep can lead to increased glucose production by the body, decreased insulin sensitivity, and evidence of insulin resistance. If thereâs excess glucose in our system that canât be used as energy, it can be stored as body fat.
Not sleeping for long enough may also increase levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the evenings, which may decrease insulin sensitivity the next morning. Cortisol itself has been shown to trigger the body into storing fat, especially stomach fat.
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How Many Hours To Sleep For Weight Loss Sleep Cycle Explained
When someone asks, how many hours should I sleep to lose weight, he must understand the sleep cycle. This is because the sleep cycle can only answer the question, how much time should I sleep for weight loss.
The health experts mostly suggest sleeping 8 to 10 hours a day can be beneficial if you want to lose weight. So, what might be the reason behind sleeping this much time to lose weight? Well, the reason is that your sleep consists of non-REM and REM sleep.
The non-REM sleep is the stage of light sleep and itself consists of different stages that eventually lead to REM sleep. During REM sleep, your brain activity increases, and also the ability of your brain to signal your body for fat burn increases. Your body can metabolize fat during this sleep stage.
The muscle relaxation and brain activity of your body increase in this stage. So, it is important to sleep at least 8 hours to achieve longer REM stages, so that your sleep can help you with weight loss.
How Much Body Fat Should You Have
The way in which women could and should lose belly fat is different to that of men. Women need somebelly fat to function fat cells store oestrogen, so having too little can cause your whole hormonal function to go out of whack, causing serious health issues such as irregular periods and even infertility.
To that end, striving to lose fat from your stomach with the aim of getting a six-pack, for most females, wouldn’t be healthy. Instead, aim to sit within the 21-30% body fat category. This is what’s considered a healthy body fat percentage range for women.
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Look At The Quality Of Your Sleep
Dont underestimate the power of a good nights sleep, too. Yes, it can help combat under-eye bags but, according to the University of Leeds, adults who get more than six hours of sleep per night are likely to carry 3cm less around their waist.
Head to bed earlier and follow the WHhow to get to sleep guide to ensure a lack of shut-eye doesnt hold you back from losing belly fat.
Do Exercises Standing Instead Of Sitting
If youre able, performing exercises while standing up may benefit your health more than performing the same exercises while sitting or using weight machines.
A 2013 study comparing the effects of standing and sitting exercises showed that some standing exercises increased muscle activation by 725%, compared to sitting .
Another study suggested that standing may improve your breathing and slightly increase your heart rate compared to sitting .
Although this might seem like a minor alteration, for individuals who are able to, standing can be an easy way to strengthen the midsection and maximize your results.
Summary
If youre physically able to, doing exercises while standing instead of sitting may burn more calories, increase muscle activation, improve your breathing, and increase your heart rate.
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What Foods Help Burn Belly Fat
Can we be honest? No foods can help to burn belly fat. That’s just not how it works.
There are, however, nutrient-dense foods that you can incorporate into your diet to help you load up on goodness whilst you’re aiming for a calorie deficit. They include, but aren’t limited to:
- Eggs
- Apples
- Bananas
It’s also important to remember that food is to be enjoyed, so the key to a sustainable diet is creating one that’s full of produce you look forward to eating and with meals that leave you feeling satisfied and not craving more due to restriction. While the number of calories in food affects satiety , its much more complex than that, explains Dr Barbara Rolls, professor of nutritional sciences at Penn State University. Satiety and how long that feeling is sustained depends on numerous factors, including portion size, how long it takes to eat a food, its texture and how filling you expect it to be.’
Get A Good Night’s Sleep
How are you sleeping? A study by America’s National Sleep Foundation found that people who slept for less than five hours a night gained more abdominal fat over five years and those who slept for six or more. Aim for eight hours.
Lack of sleep and stress can raise your cortisol levels, which make it harder to lose weight. When this stress hormone is being released, it gives your body the message to hang on to weight. Add to that the urge to comfort eat when you’re tired or stressed and the chances of you putting on weight increase.
This is where exercise comes in. Working out regularly or doing something relaxing such as walking or yoga will naturally help to destress you, so you should see the effects on your mental health.
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Lie On Your Back For Weight Loss During Sleep:
This is a comfortable sleeping posture and is suitable for most people.
Lying on your back while sleeping does not prevent creating belly fat like when lying on your stomach, but it also helps to improve the situation of stomach pressure and facial skin down to form wrinkles.
After years of researching losing weight, a Japanese doctor named Fukutsudzi has come up with a supine way to lose weight and beat belly fat effectively.
Implementation Guide:
- You use a large towel, rolled up into a tube about 10cm in diameter. You can also use a pillow of the same shape to perform.
- Beginning the exercise, you lie on your back on the floor and place the prepared towel tube at the end of the end so that the towel is aligned with the belly button.
- Face up to the ceiling.
- Your legs are straight, and your toes are touching.
- Place your arms outstretched on top of your head so that they touch each other on your little finger.
This is a small exercise you can do before going to bed. Each activity is about 5 minutes. Note for those who are having spinal problems should not apply this method.
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What Is The Best Exercise To Lose Belly Fat
Before you ask about the best exercises for a flat stomach, let’s get clear on why crunches and sit-ups alone not going to be the thing to help you lose belly fat. ‘While crunches will help strengthen your abdominals and core muscles, theyre not enough in isolation to burn calories,’ Luke Hughes, Origym PT says.
Instead, Hughes recommends a rounded bodyweight or free weights workout routine done at a higher intensity as the best exercise to lose belly fat. These sessions will help to burn calories and increase muscle mass, which will, in turn, tap into your body fat stores even within a limited time period.
Do note though, too much HIIT can elevate cortisol in your body, which could hinder how effectively you lose stomach fat . Aim for three to four sessions per week and make sure you’re allowing your body plenty of time and space to recover.
‘Burning calories through cardio exercise like this helps to burn belly fat, particularly when we operate at a calorie deficit,’ says Hughes. ‘Try adding star jumps and mountain climbers into your workouts.’
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