It’s always encouraging when you’ve been working out regularly and you’ve noticed a few inches have disappeared from your hips, your biceps look more defined, and your bum feels a little tighter. However, those aren’t necessarily the area where you most want to see an improvement. Unfortunately, it seems that no matter how many miles you run, you many ab workouts you do, and how healthy your lifestyle is, that stubborn pouch just refuses to shrink. It’s especially frustrating when you’ve managed to lose weight everywhere else. It’s to target that stubborn belly fat for good with the following tips.
Keep moving
If you have a regular exercise routine, then you’re already on the right track. Visceral fat (the kind that grows around your organs) is easily fought with regular exercise; running, cycling, swimming, or jumping on a trampoline for 30 minutes are all effective for targeting the stubborn fat. Anything that gets your heart rate up will, with time, start to reduce the belly, it’s just a matter of finding what works for you. Some say that jogging the equivalent of 12 miles per week will help you shed fat, but a ten minute workout on a trampoline is the equivalent of running on a treadmill for thirty minutes. If you find that your usual workout doesn’t challenge you anymore, it might be worthing increasing your intensity, or finding a new exercise to push you even more.
Calories matter
Regardless of what some fad diets will say, it’s not healthy to cut your daily calorie intake too much – in fact, it’s pretty dangerous. Cutting down your intake to less than 1000 calories can lead to heart problems, digestive problems, nutrient deficiencies, and it causes your body to destroy muscle tissue, which is an unhealthy form of weight loss. More importantly, expecting your body to perform well with too few calories is like expecting a car to run well on less than half a tank of gas – you might be fine at first, but you’ll burn out quicker. If you’re trying to lose weight, it’s recommended that you consume around 25 percent fewer calories than you burn every day.
Extra help
In addition to exercise and getting in the right amount of calories, you could also speed up the progress slightly. You could either seek out natural remedies such as fat-burning beverages like ginger tea or matcha green tea, or you could try non-invasive procedures such as Coolsculpting or Liposonix is you only have a small amount of fat left before you reach your target weight. While quick fixes won’t be as effective or long-lasting as exercise, they can help speed up the process, and it can be encouraging to see some significant results.
Sleep
Those all-nighters are not doing you any favours; in fact they might be hindering your progress. According to a 2010 Wake Forest University study, getting five hours sleep per night or less can increase your levels of fat. The same is true for those who sleep late.
