Workouts To Lose Belly Fat: How It Works
Fitness trainer sees many clients looking to shed excess fat from around the abdominal area who hope that exercising that one spot will do the trick. But, she warns, No exercise causes fat to be burned from any specific area. The body will, of course, release fat from fat cells to create energy for you to exercise. But this energy is taken from fat cells all over the body. So no preference is given to fat cells located in the area where the muscles are working hardest.
Research backs this up. In one study , six weeks of training just the abdominal muscles had no measurable effect on waist circumference or fat in the abdominal cavity.
According to research , aerobic exercise like brisk walking, running, and swimming can allow significant reductions in body fat, including abdominal fat. Another study found that as little as 80 minutes a week of aerobic or resistance training had positive effects on preventing weight regain following a diet-induced weight loss. More importantly, aerobic and resistance training prevented the regain of potentially harmful visceral fat.
Running Has Many Other Benefits For Health
Aside from weight loss, running has been linked to many other health benefits.
A few specific health problems that running may help prevent or alleviate include:
- Heart disease: A 15-year study with over 50,000 participants found that running at least five to ten minutes a day, even at low speeds, reduced heart disease risk up to 45% .
- Blood sugar: Running can lower blood sugar by making muscle cells more sensitive to insulin. This helps sugar move into muscle cells for storage (
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Summary:
Along with weight loss, running can provide various health benefits, including a lower risk of heart disease, reduced blood sugar, lower cataracts risk, lower falls risk, stronger knees and less knee pain.
The Truth: How To Burn Abdominal Fat
You don’t need to spend a dime to tighten and tone those abdominals. You only need to understand a few things about the human body!
Time to face facts: All those crunches and as-seen-on-TV devices won’t give you a six-pack. What will? Losing the belly fat that covers up your abs, as strong as they may be. Exercise, especially the right kind of cardio, is your ticket to a core you can bounce quarters off.
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Why Do We Want To Reduce Belly Fat
People often want to lose weight because fat can cause health problems such as diabetes, heart failure and high blood pressure. Some people are genetically predisposed to these conditions so they have a higher risk of developing them if their obesity worsens. Others may not be obese but still carry the genes for those disorders this means that even with healthy diets and regular exercise they could develop one or more chronic diseases in later life due to heredity alone!
Sometimes losing belly fat is difficult because it has become a habit over time when we eat too much food at once which will result in an increased waist size overtime. The best way you might need help from someone who knows how your body operates on what type of foods work well for you instead of relying on dieting alone.
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Belly Fat Is Hard To Eliminate
Reducing belly fat is often more challenging than dropping inches from other parts of the body because doing so relies heavily on diet, says Caley Crawford, NASM CPT, and Director of Education for Row House.
“We often think if we do enough sit-ups, then we’ll get a flatter stomach however, abs also happen in the kitchen,” says Crawford. “So, if you’re looking to lose belly fat, it’s crucial that you partner a strong and healthy diet with your exercise routine,” she says.
You’ll also need to consider your age and genes. According to the Mayo Clinic, they can play a small role in where you store fat. That’s why adhering to a healthy, balanced diet along with your exercise program is critical to get rid of stubborn belly fat.
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What Are Abdominal Muscles
Abdominal muscles help stabilize your core.
They also assist your breathing, allow movement, protect your internal organs and are in charge of postural support and balance.
There are four main abdominal muscles:
- Rectus abdominis.
- Internal oblique.
It is important to maintain strength in all these muscles.
Strong abdominal muscles can help improve posture and balance. They can also help reduce back pain and increase flexibility 60745-6/abstract” rel=”nofollow”> 1, ).
Bottom Line:
Abdominal muscles allow movement and provide stability, support and balance. Strong abs can prevent back pain and other problems.
Weight Training To Reduce Abdominal Fat
An even greater strategy for losing belly fat is to combine aerobic exercise with weight training. With weight training, you gain lean body weight, which makes your metabolism go up. This allows your body to burn more calories, even when you are at rest.
To get the most success, do body weight exercises that use multiple muscles at once. These help to raise the intensity of the exercise and allow you to burn more calories.
Examples of body weight exercises are:
- Squats
- Burpees
- Mountain climbers
You can also try the following exercises using a light set of dumbbells for a higher-intensity workout:
- Dumbbell deadlift
- Dumbbell single-arm row
- Dumbbell walking lunge
Tip: Speak to your doctor before starting any new aerobic or weight training routine, as the activity will challenge your heart. And remember to do your resistance training on alternate days to allow your muscle groups to recover between workouts.
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Use Good Fats When Cooking
When cooking, you need to pay attention to the products you use and focus on good fats. Cooking oils that can withstand higher temperatures include olive oil, avocado oil, and coconut oil. These oils can include unsaturated fatty acids. Healthy fats can improve overall health by reducing the risk of heart disease and stroke.
Get Inspired By: Reem Khashou 50 Austin Tx
Khashou is a personal trainer and nutritional coach specializing in guiding her clients along a path of sustainable wellness that fits their unique personality. She believes that we are all, ultimately, experts on ourselves. She loves meditation: By allowing myself to breathe, meditate, and be present in my body, I have fostered a continuous awareness of, and connection to, my core.
Her secret to abs
When people ask me about my figure I most often reply that it is merely a by-product of doing what I love, said Khashou. At 50having undergone two c-sections, rectus diastasis, and overcoming hormonal and gut health issuesKhashou found an achievable golden ticket to a strong core: listening to the wisdom of her body. With exercise, she envisioned what she wanted, was thankful for what she could do at the time, and “showed up. Her best advice is that you find physical activity you enjoy, give yourself grace during the process, and show up.
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How To Lose Belly Fat While Running
One of the traps many runners fall into is thinking that the further they run, the more belly fat theyll burn, but thats not always the case. While long-distance runs are excellent at building endurance and burning calories, theyre not necessarily the best for dealing with body fat. To lose the flab, youll have more success by mixing up your training routine.
- Consider cross-training
Cross-training involves picking a primary exercise, which in this case is running, and supplementing it with secondary exercises such as swimming and cycling, which are both effective at burning belly fat, to improve the gains made by the primary exercise. These secondary exercises should be low impact, to reduce the risk of injury, and should only be done for a relatively short period of time, so no more than 30 to 60 minutes per session.
- Try trail running
A simple way to tweak your running to lose belly fat is to head away from the roads and onto the trails. Although your pace is likely to be slower, trail running provides more of a total body workout to help you tighten up those problem areas. Jumping over logs and rocks, running up and down hills and navigating unpredictable terrain that changes with every step will work your calves, quads, glutes and belly far more than running on a flat road. If you find youve reached a weight loss plateau on the roads, working smarter, not harder, by incorporating some trails could be an effective solution for you.
You Are Stressed To The Max
“Stress related adrenal hormones increase your body’s susceptibility to storing any extra calories around your belly,” says Georgie Fear, R.D., author of Lean Habits for Lifelong Weight Loss. And if you’re trying to lose weight by eating less calories than you’re burning, you’ll lose fat from other regions before you ever start to lose from your stomach, says Fear. In fact, research from the University of California, San Francisco, suggests that stressed-out women are more likely to have high levels of abdominal fateven if they have a healthy BMI.
If you haven’t already, now’s the time to master that whole stress-management thing, Fear says. Try to identify the things that are contributing the most stress to your day-to-day routine, and then have an honest talk with yourself about what you want to take on and what responsibilities or stressors you can let go of. Remember, it’s okay to say, “No.”
Super-stressed lately? This yoga pose can help:
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What Exercises Should You Do
Regular, whole-body exercises will speed up your metabolism and burn calories and fat. Aerobic exercise may also be effective at targeting visceral belly fat .
Intensity plays a role as well. Moderate or high-intensity exercise can reduce belly fat mass, compared to low-intensity aerobic exercise or strength training (
Bottom Line:
Good nutrition is important for losing belly fat. Eat fewer processed foods, watch your portions and eat more protein and fiber.
How To Exercise To Lose Belly Fat
This article was co-authored by Laura Flinn. Laura Flinn is a National Academy of Sports Medicine Certified Personal Trainer, USA Olympic Weightlifting Sports Performance Coach and Certified Fitness Nutritionist, with an additional qualification as a TRX Suspension Trainer. Laura runs her own personal training program based in the San Francisco Bay Area and specializes in topics such as weight loss, muscle growth, cardiovascular training, and strength training.There are 17 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been viewed 32,080 times.
Shedding the weight around your middle is possible, though you can’t target one area. When you lose fat, you lose it from your whole body, not just your belly.XResearch source Each pound of fat equals 3500 calories, so you’ll need to burn an extra 500 calories a day to lose 1 pound a week. It’s easiest to lose weight if you balance reducing your calories with exercising. To lose belly fat, burn fat off with cardio and interval training, and then target your abdomen with strength training to help tighten up those muscles.
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How Much Cardio Should You Do To Lose Belly Fat: Summary
And thats pretty much all there is to it! Start at a low baseline, slowly increase this overtime as needed, and then reverse back once youve stripped off that belly fat while keeping all other variables consistent, of course.
Step 1 : Start at a low baseline level of cardio to kickstart the fat loss process.Step 2 : In gradual increments, increase the duration/difficulty of your weekly cardio sessions every time you reach a plateau.Step 3 : Control all other variables and keep them consistent to avoid compensating for your cardio sessions.Step 4 : After youve successfully stripped off the belly fat, find a routine thatll enable you to maintain your new body weight and physique.
There really isnt a magic number of how much cardio you should be doing. It will vary for everyone, but the key really is to use the least amount of cardio so that you have a lot of room to gradually increase this amount to enable you to continue stripping off fat until the fat loss finally reaches your belly.
Manage Your Stress Levels The Best You Can
Easier said than done, right? Unfortunately having higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol has been shown to promote accumulation of fat tissue around the midsection, explains Cording.
If you know whats seriously stressing you out, like a friend who wont stop talking sh*t or a bad living situation, take action to eliminate these stressors. Facing a situation thats trickier to fix? Consider taking up mindfulness meditation or yoga, or seeing a mental health professional for tips on how you can better manage your stress.
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Best Exercises To Lose Belly Fat In Men
There are many exercises to choose from for men, but it is best to start with the best six exercises below that will yield huge payoffs: fewer injuries and more muscle.
=> Also have a look on our exercices list to lose weight and top 2020 weight loss apps.
Here are six exercises for men to consider that dont require any equipment :
How Many Miles Should I Run Every Week To Lose Weight
The number of miles you need to run each week depends on how fast you want to lose weight.
If you want a moderate pace, you should aim for about 3 miles per week. If you want a faster pace, you can go for 4 miles per week.
You can also mix in some strength exercises with your cardio sessions. Try lifting weights or doing resistance exercises like pushups, pullups, squats, lunges, and crunches.
You can also add sprints into your workouts. Sprinting is great for improving your cardiovascular health. It helps build stamina and improves muscle tone.
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Add Hiit To Your Routine
High-intensity interval training isn’t just a passing fad. In fact, it’s considered one of the best workouts for burning belly fat. A group-based intervention has found that HIIT combined with conventional training reduces total and visceral fat to a greater extent than regular gym training alone. The results were published in The Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness in 2016.
This training method is more effective and less time consuming than steady-state cardio. A typical session takes as little as 10 to 15 minutes. A 2018 meta-analysis published in Sports Medicine indicates that HIIT works better than running and cycling for overall fat loss. The HIIT group experienced a significant reduction in abdominal and visceral fat after exercise.
High-intensity workouts put more stress on your body compared to traditional training. This increases metabolism and fat burning after exercise due to the so-called afterburn effect. Basically, your body will use more energy after intense training to recover from stress and repair damaged tissues. Furthermore, HIIT improves insulin sensitivity and may lower the risk of age-related cardiometabolic problems in older people.
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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Choose Between Two Options
So, what Id recommend is one of two options:
- Option 1 – Find a consistent cardio routine that you can adhere to and stick to. It should be one thatll enable you to maintain your new body weight and new physique with ease. For example, a 30-minute incline walk. Or cycling session in the morning. Or, just whatever youll be consistent with long term.
- Option 2 – Start tapering down the amount of cardio you do until your bodyweight stabilizes. In effect, what this does for many people is even though youre burning fewer calories within your cardio sessions, your body actually then burns more calories outside of your cardio sessions through NEAT. That’s as it doesnt feel as fatigued or try to compensate by moving less outside of your cardio sessions.
It really does depend on the individual though. Not to mention, your lifestyle. But monitor your bodyweight closely to see how you can make the right adjustments to find a cardio plan or even a hobby that you can sustain long term while keeping your new physique intact. At the end of the day, its about:
- Burning sufficient calories AND
- Finding what enables you to do so with the most enjoyment and consistency
And on that note, ideally, this should be combined with something called a reverse diet. This is where youre also at the same time gradually increasing your calories to continue boosting the energy you expend through NEAT and your overall metabolism. But thats something Ill cover more in-depth in another article.
The Best Dumbbells To Use
This training plan shows how much you can achieve with just a set of dumbbells, and its certainly going to be more convenient to pick up a set for your home rather than heading to a gym to complete the workouts. We have an extensive round-up of the you can buy for your home, but there are few pairs we think are worth highlighting for this particular workout plan.
Thats because the renegade row exercise pops up in two sessions where you have to support yourself in the press-up position while holding dumbbells. Anyone who has ever done a renegade row will know that a dumbbell with a flat side makes the move far easier because it provides a more stable base than a round dumbbell. The York rubber hex dumbbells fit the bill, and give you a wide range of weights to pick from. If youve spent some time in the gym youll know what kind of weight suits you, although wed err on the side of lighter because youre doing 30-odd minutes of exercise with minimal rest the final round is going to feel a lot tougher than the first. If you can afford them, selectorized dumbbells like this PowerBlock set are even better because they offer eight levels of weight from 1.8-14.5kg.
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