How to lose belly fat

The pursuit to lose belly fat is what most people have in mind when endeavouring to lose weight. A problem with this lack of clarity, however, is that the steps often taken to lose weight are often counterproductive to losing belly fat. Resultantly, people find themselves even less lean in spite of enduring intense osterity. Such regression for their efforts fosters belief that the pursuit to lose belly fat is futile.

Regardless of most people contending that losing belly fat is futile, however, quite the opposite is true. In fact certain diet and exercise guidelines can help ensure the reduction of. belly fat when dieting. These guidelines, that will be discussed later, involve adjusting diet and exercise so the belly fat hormone, cortisol, is kept to a minimum.

So what are these guidelines and how are they implemented? Well, because cortisol is a stress hormone, training and nutrition need to be modified to keep stress levels minimal. Once these training and nutritional stresses are kept to a minimum, cortisol levels should lower and the portion of fat loss coming from the belly should increase.

Nutritional steps for belly fat loss

Cortisol and belly fat are influenced by nutrition in that calorie restriction, erratic eating patterns, and certain foods can elevate cortisol. Strategies to offset these nutritional pitfalls will help greatly in accelerating belly fat loss. Among the strategies effective for nutritional cortisol reduction include graded calorie reduction, less inflammatory foods with more anti-stress foods, and consistent meal times.

Reducing calories as minimally as possible to lose weight will help keep the body's starvation response minimal. Avoidance of the starvation response helps maintain levels of fat loss hormones while keeping cortisol at bay. Calories reduction without starving response equals a greater portion of weight loss coming from belly fat.

Exercise to reduce belly fat

Like any disruption to the body, exercise can be stressful enough to trigger cortisol release. When exercise is too frequent and/or too intense for the body to heal and recover from, cortisol is released and belly fat loss is blunted. Sensible exercise practices, however, allows for the body to fully recover to become stronger and leaner. Such exercise practices focus on keeping fatigue to a minimum.

Keeping fatigue to a minimum means ending workouts feeling like you could have continued quality performance longer if you had to. For weight training this means feeling like another quality set could be done at workout's end. For cardio, this means going at a pace that could be maintained for an hour for just 30 minutes.

To conclude

Actions conducive to general weight loss aren't necessarily ideal to lose belly fat. To lose belly fat your body can't be over stressed or elevated cortisol will keep the belly fat around. Reducing calories gradually and keeping exercise fatigue minimal, however, can allow the body to preferentially burn belly fat.