Lose Weight With Friends
If you struggle to lose weight on your own, consider making it a team effort. According to a study published in the journal Obesity during a 12-week, team-based weight loss competition, getting encouragement from teammate increased the odds of achieving clinically significant weight loss by 20%.
“In our study, weight loss clearly clustered within teams, which suggests that teammates influenced each other, perhaps by providing accountability, setting expectations of weight loss and providing encouragement and support.”
Is The Fat Tummy A Normal Part Of Eating Disorder Recovery
I just wanted to know if this belly was normal. I asked Google, but initially all the answers that I got were fluffy feel- good memes such as accept yourself and you are beautiful. I was frustrated. It was as if questioning the distribution of fat on my body was taboo. It is hard for people to understand that I was not questioning my self worth, I just wanted to know why my weight gain was so uneven.
Finally, after turning to science for an answer, I found this study. The highlighted red line made me feel so much better:
One of the cardinal symptoms of anorexia nervosa is the fear of gaining weight and becoming fat . With near-delusional conviction, patients tell us that if they gain weight, it will be all fat and no muscle.Another common complaint during treatment is that weight gain isnt being evenly distributed, but is collecting all in my stomach.
I realized even after reading that much that was all I had needed. I had been looking for something that would tell me that this protruding stomach was ok.
Three Ways To Reduce Belly Fat
How can I lose belly fat? pulls up over two million hits on Google. Its a hot topic that goes beyond wanting to improve appearance. A larger waist measurement can mean that you have too much visceral fat. This is the fat stored around internal organs like your liver and pancreas, which is commonly referred to as belly fat.
Whether youre overweight or not, carrying more fat around your belly is linked to a number of serious health problems, such as:
- heart and circulatory problems
While anyone can have this type of deep visceral fat around their inner organs, its important that you make some changes to get your body into a healthier place.
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Work All Of The Muscles In Your Bodynot Just Your Abs
Doing crunches every morning and every night? It’s time to switch it up! When you’re down to your final inches of belly fat, countless crunches won’t necessarily help you reveal a six-pack. “You can’t spot reduce,” Jill says. In other words, you can’t tell your body where to lose fateven if you exercise your abs every day, that doesn’t always make ’em flatter.
Instead, Jill suggests doing functional exercises that use the muscles of your entire coreabdominals, back, pelvic, obliquesas well as other body parts. “These exercises use more muscles, so there is a higher rate of calorie burn while you are doing them,” she says. Planks are her favorite functional exercisethey activate not just your core muscles but also your arm, leg, and butt muscles. Add some movement to the plank, with shoulder taps or leg lifts, and you up the ante even more.
Tips And Recommendations To Promote Fat Burning
Besides general dietary and training advice, there are some tips that may add to the whole fat-melting process and help you achieve your goal faster. The following recommendations do not require any critical lifestyle changes and helping you get rid of the protruded stomach, they can also significantly improve your health and wellness.
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Eat Plenty Of Soluble Fiber
Soluble fiber absorbs water and forms a gel that helps slow down food as it passes through your digestive system.
Studies show that this type of fiber promotes weight loss by helping you feel full, so you naturally eat less. It may also decrease the number of calories your body absorbs from food .
Whats more, soluble fiber may help fight belly fat.
An observational study in over 1,100 adults found that for every 10-gram increase in soluble fiber intake, belly fat gain decreased by 3.7% over a 5-year period (
Make an effort to consume high fiber foods every day. Excellent include:
- flax seeds
- blackberries
SUMMARY
Soluble fiber may help you to lose weight by increasing fullness and reducing calorie absorption. Try to include plenty of high fiber foods in your weight loss diet.
How To Naturally Cure Ulcers
Ulcers are open sores or cracks appearing in the lining of internal organs, most commonly found in the stomach or bowels, but which can also be found in the esophagus. Peptic ulcers are open sores which begin as pain points then become red and inflamed, eventually breaking the surface of the lining or skin. Ulcers that appear in the stomach, called gastric ulcers, are the most common. Finding relief from a peptic ulcer by adopting home remedies is possible but must always be done under the supervision of a physician. Carefully read this article on how to naturally cure ulcers.
To naturally cure ulcers you should avoid: fried and greasy food, gassy and carbonated drinks and spicy food. Youll also boost your recovery by eating small portions of food to ease their digestion.
Moreover, avoid drinking alcohol, as it will irritate your ulcer, inflamed tissue and open blisters, just as pouring alcohol on an open wound would, it irritates the stomachs mucous and the intestines which could cause inflammation.
On the other hand, there are also some foods that can help you improve and heal gastric ulcers. Among them we want to highlight papaya and its seeds as one of the best fruits for people with ulcers, as its been proven by several medical studies.
Do not take non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for pain relief. They are also known to damage the stomach lining, thus making you more prone to an ulcer or making an existing ulcer worse.
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Getting Rid Of Skinny Fat For Women & Men
Now everybody tends to store fat in stubborn places. Women tend to have a pear-shaped body storing their excess fat in their hips and thighs . Men tend to have an apple-shaped body and store fat in their bellies . But just because you were born for the genetics to be predisposed to store fat in these troublesome areas doesnt mean youre stuck with it.
But the more skinny fat you are the more likely you are to hang onto stubborn fat in these troublesome areas. This is what makes getting rid of lower belly fat so difficult. Having too much excess body fat and not enough lean muscle is what causes the skinny fat syndrome in both women and men. Those with a natural ectomorph body type tend to be naturally thin but they could also have high body fat. This is what causes them to become skinny fat.
And being skinny fat doesnt mean youre going to be healthy. Those who are skinny fat tend to be more prone to health problems such as Alzheimers disease . Osteoporosis can also become a problem from a lack of muscle mass . Without enough muscle, your bones will have to work harder to support your body.
Bloating can also make your skinny fat trouble spots look worse. Eating junk foods like chips can cause increased water weight retention. This makes these stubborn places like your belly appear even bigger than they are. Without enough muscle tone, these stubborn spots will have a flabby jelly-like consistency.
Your Blood Sugar Goes On A Wild Ride
When you binge, “the pancreas produces extra insulin to process the sugar load from the carbohydrates and remove it from the blood,” said Eberly.
And it doesn’t stop there. “Your body will produce insulin until your brain learns that the sugar levels in the blood are safe.”
“But hormones don’t move as fast as we think they do,” she said. By the time your brain gets the memo that your blood sugar is normal again, your levels are often too low and below the healthy threshold. “This leads to exhaustion, dizziness, nausea, and even depressive symptoms.”
And big surprise: “These symptoms often make us want to eat more food, particularly carbs,” she told us. Her suggestion again was to go on a 20-minute walk after your meal.
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Avoid Foods That Contain Trans Fats
Trans fats are created by pumping hydrogen into unsaturated fats, such as soybean oil.
Theyre found in some and spreads and also often added to packaged foods, but many food producers have stopped using them.
These fats have been linked to inflammation, heart disease, insulin resistance, and abdominal fat gain in observational and animal studies .
A 6-year study found that monkeys who ate a high trans fat diet gained 33% more abdominal fat than those eating a diet high in monounsaturated fat .
To help reduce belly fat and protect your health, read ingredient labels carefully and stay away from products that contain trans fats. These are often listed as partially hydrogenated fats.
SUMMARY
Some studies have linked a high intake of trans fat to increased belly fat gain. Regardless of whether youre trying to lose weight, limiting your intake of trans fat is a good idea.
Alcohol can have health benefits in small amounts, but its seriously harmful if you drink too much.
Research suggests that too much alcohol can also make you gain belly fat.
Observational studies link heavy alcohol consumption to a significantly increased risk of developing central obesity that is, excess fat storage around the waist .
Cutting back on alcohol may help reduce your waist size. You dont need to give it up altogether, but limiting the amount you drink in a single day can help.
One study on alcohol use involved more than 2,000 people.
- meat
- beans
26 ).
Cut Calories But Not Too Much
It is a well-known fact that you need to cut calories to produce weight loss.
One popular approach is to reduce your daily intake by 5001,000 calories to expect to lose approximately 12 pounds per week .
That being said, restricting your calorie intake too much can be counterproductive.
Eating too few calories can cause a major , or the number of calories you burn on a daily basis .
In one study, a group of people who ate 1,100 calories per day slowed their metabolic rate more than twice as much as those who consumed about 1,500 calories per day for four consecutive days .
Whats more, this decrease in metabolic rate may persist even after you start behaving like you normally do. That means you may have a lower metabolic rate than you had before you severely restricted your calorie intake .
Therefore, it is important that you dont restrict your calorie intake too much or for too long.
Bottom Line:
Eating too few calories may slow your metabolic rate, even in the long term. Therefore, it is important not to restrict calories too much or for too long.
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Cardio Workouts To Lose Belly Fat
- This 28-day plan by Alice Liveing will teach you the basics of strength training, helping you to build lean muscle with foundation moves.
- Or, this four-week Kayla Itsines workout plan incorporates HIIT to burn fat and tone muscle.
- PT Gauri Chopra’s four week HIIT plan will help to burn fat efficiently and increase your stamina and muscular endurance.
‘The key to continually improving and losing belly fat is to scale up your workouts every week. Incrementally increase the intensity and load of your workouts, and you will soon see improvements to your fitness,’ says Hughes.
Thin People Have It Too
Even if you’re thin, you can still have too much visceral fat.
How much you have is partly about your genes, and partly about your lifestyle, especially how active you are.
Visceral fat likes inactivity. In one study, thin people who watched their diets but didn’t exercise were more likely to have too much visceral fat.
The key is to be active, no matter what size you are.
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Engage In Cardio And Strength Training
Exercise is a key component of weight loss, along with belly fat reduction specifically. A mix of resistance training and aerobic activity will give you the most benefits.
Research is still underway about the optimal intensity and duration of exercise, but a good starting point is to follow the Center for Disease Control and Preventions recommendation of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity or 75 minutes of vigorous activity a week, along with at least two days of muscle-strengthening activities.
Over 40 And Cant Lose Belly Fat
Wondering what the heck is happening to your stomach since you turned 40? Does it feel like its just never flat anymore? If you are in your late 40s or 50s, you may be finding weight piles up there more than anywhere else creating rolls and that classic apple body shape.
If you feel like you just cant lose belly fat after 40, Ive got you covered in this article. Well look at some hard truths as to why you might be gaining belly fat and what you can do about it. The reason I say hard truths is that I think too many people blame age and hormones. These things definitely make it more challenging and change the way your body stores fat. But usually there are more obvious things, like your lifestyle, which need to be addressed before you can blame age.
In your 40s there is a lot within your control and blaming age takes away your power to change things. I work with so many women over 40 who have had fantastic transformations and losing belly fat is possible at any age if you put in the work. If you change what you are doing and the way you are thinking, you can have an awesome transformation regardless of your age.
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Increase The Consumption Of Healthy Fats
Healthy fats, such as monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats are not only a great option for your health improvement but are also highly recommended by dietitians as a substitution for saturated and trans fats. The problem is that saturated fats are more likely to stick to the sides of your arteries, gradually clogging them up, which leads to higher blood pressure and higher risk of heart disease. Trans fats in their turn are considered the most harmful fats out there. Found mostly in packaged processed foods, they increase your bad cholesterol and lower your good cholesterol, leading to huge risk of heart disease.
If your stomach sticks out because of nutrition, you absolutely need to reduce the consumption of saturated fats and eliminate trans fats altogether if possible. There are various good fats, which, when consumed in moderation, can help trim your waist and flatten your belly. Olive oil is especially effective in the process of weight loss, which decreases lipotoxicity, which leads to the reduction of saturated fatty acids that attach to the internal organs . Other sources of healthy fats include avocados, eggs, fatty fish, nuts and nut butters, chia seeds, and others.
Think Eating Plan Not Diet
Ultimately, you need to pick a healthy eating plan you can stick to,Stewart says. The benefit of a low-carb approach is that it simply involveslearning better food choicesno calorie-counting is necessary. In general,a low-carb way of eating shifts your intake away from problem foodsthosehigh in carbs and sugar and without much fiber, like bread, bagels andsodasand toward high-fiber or high-protein choices, like vegetables, beansand healthy meats.
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Avoid Swallowing Air And Gases
The biggest source of gas in the diet is carbonated beverages such as soda.
The bubbles in it contain carbon dioxide, which is released from the liquid in your stomach. This may cause stomach distention or bloating.
This can also happen when you chew gum, drink through a straw or talk while eating.
Eating in silence, drinking from a glass and swapping carbonated drinks out for water may help you achieve a flatter stomach.
Bottom Line:
Carbonated drinks and gum may both cause stomach distention and bloating in some people.
Scientific Reasons For Belly Fat
We all know that eating too much and moving too little is the foundation upon which flab is built. But theres more to the belly fat equation than calories in and calories out. Certain stressors, for example, will see you scaling your belt notches with very little effort. Heres what you should look out for.
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How Much Belly Fat Do You Have
The most precise way to determine how much visceral fat you have is to get a CT scan or MRI. But there’s a much simpler, low-cost way to check.
Get a measuring tape, wrap it around your waist at your belly button, and check your girth. Do it while you’re standing up, and make sure the tape measure is level.
For your health’s sake, you want your waist size to be less than 35 inches if you’re a woman and less than 40 inches if you’re a man.
Having a “pear shape” — bigger hips and thighs — is considered safer than an “apple shape,” which describes a wider waistline.
What were really pointing to with the apple versus pear, Hairston says, “is that, if you have more abdominal fat, its probably an indicator that you have more visceral fat.”
Continued