You need a proper plan to follow if you want to lose belly fat
If you’re on a mission to learn how to lose belly fat, it’s going to be time that you put in a dedicated effort to getting a proper program set up that you’ll follow for the weeks ahead. Far too many people set the goal to learn how to lose belly fat with no plan in place.
Instead, they stagger about their half-planned program, never really knowing what they’re doing but just hoping something lands them some results. Months pass by and they still have yet to lose any belly fat and then they simply just grow frustrated and give up on the goal altogether.
Does this sound familiar?
Are you fed up with always searching for the best way to learn how to lose belly fat but never landing upon solid answers?
If so, this article is for you. There are a number of different things that you can do that will help you learn how to lose belly fat and by structuring your program properly, you should have no problem seeing the success that you’re after.
The key is to approach it from all angles. Those who are best able to learn how to lose belly fat are those who are focusing on not only what they’re doing in the gym, but also what they’re doing in the kitchen as well as their overall lifestyle approach.
Remember, learning how to lose belly fat is a 24 hour endeavour. It’s not something that you just ‘do’ and then forget about it. Your main mission – to learn how to lose belly fat needs to always be in the back of your mind.
You need to be focused and constantly taking one step forward, taking actions that you are fully confident in will lead you to that end road. If you aren’t, you’re simply wishing on a star that you will see the results you’re after.
So what does it take to lose stubborn belly fat?
Let’s walk you through the main steps that you need to know.
The Top 10 Tips For Losing Belly Fat
The following tips all must be applied if you want to be successful with the goal of losing belly fat. If you skip over any of these steps, progress will be lower and frustration may set in.
The good news is that after taking a bit of time to get these habits in place, it shouldn’t be long before you’re seeing clear progress with the goal of losing belly fat and stay that much more motivated to keep up the hard work.
If you’re constantly looking leaner with each day that passes by, you know that you will never let up in your quest for abs.
1) Track Your Calorie Intake
First things first, if you really want to lose belly fat, you must make sure that you’re tracking your calorie intake. There’s no way around this one. You could be eating the healthiest foods out there but if you’re eating too many of them, your body is going to have no reason to start using up body fat stores as a fuel source.
It simply doesn’t need to.
So the solution is to make sure that you’re tracking your calorie intake and are ending up in a calorie deficit at the end of the day. This means that you’re consuming fewer calories than what you burned off.
A good rule of thumb in order to figure out how many calories you need to lose belly fat is about 10-12 calories per pound of body weight.
If you’re very ambitious and want to get down to your end goal sooner, you could take this a bit lower and go with 8-10 calories per pound, but note that this will be a very intense diet and could cause further issues down the road if you follow it too long.
The more you reduce back your calorie intake, the more your body is going to start to fight you as it thinks starvation is taking place. A low calorie intake such as that may be okay for 2 weeks or so, but after that you should move to a more moderate program. The good news is that the low of a calorie intake will produce fast results, so two weeks may be all you need to spend on the diet in the first place.
If after a two week period at any given calorie level you haven’t see any progress with the goal of losing belly fat, then it’s time to reduce your calorie intake by another 10-20% which should helpfully get fat loss moving along better.
2) Cycle Your Carbohydrates
Next, another important tip to help you learn how to lose belly fat is to cycle your carbohydrates. In a world where everyone seems to be using a low carb diet, it’s not abnormal to find people cutting these out of their plans left, right, and center.
Before you rush off to go ultra-low-carb however, note that this can cause your metabolism to plummet. Carbohydrates are closely connected to proper thyroid gland functioning, so if you’re not getting any, your metabolic rate may decline.
If it does, this means that you’ll be burning off fewer calories with each day that passes by, making it that much more difficult to see the progress you’re after.
To get around this, carb cycle. This entails having both high carbohydrate days as well as low carbohydrate days in your diet to help lose belly fat. By doing so, you’ll trick the body into thinking that it is getting enough food so that your metabolic rate stays revved at all times.
This quite simply is one of the best ways to beat a fat loss plateau.
Make sure that you’re placing the higher carb days on those days when you are doing your intense workout sessions so that you can see the best benefits from them.
3) Choose the Right Type of Carbohydrates
In order to effectively see how to lose belly fat, you need to be choosing those carbohydrates correctly.
This means selecting wholesome sources such as:
- Barley
- Brown rice
- Buckwheat
- High amount of vegetables.
- Moderate amounts of fruits
- Oats
- Quinoa
- Sweet potatoes
Those who are filling their diet with too many processed carbs are very likely to find that they experience blood sugar highs and lows throughout the day, which will make it nearly impossible to stay with the plan and successfully learn how to lose belly fat. Whenever you pick up a carbohydrate rich food that you plan to consume, always ask yourself how many steps were taken to create it.
If the food hasn’t essentially come straight from the ground or fallen from a tree, chances are that it just isn’t a food that you want on your diet and is not going to bring you any closer to the end goal of being able to lose your belly fat.
4) Focus On A Full Body Weight Lifting Program
Moving along, the next thing that you’ll want to be doing is focusing on a full body weight lifting program. By far, when it comes to seeing fast fat loss, these are the programs to provide this.
Full body weight lifting programs are ideal for learning how to lose belly fat since they’re going to work so many muscle fibers at once, meaning that you’ll not only burn more calories while you’re doing the actual workout session, but you’ll continue to burn more calories for hours after its completed.
This means you’re burning fat 24/7, which as you can imagine is definitely useful for burning away your belly fat.
The trick with full body workouts is to make sure that you choose the exercises you perform properly. Since you are only able to do so many exercises per session and you do have to get through the full body, you ideally need to choose compound movements whenever possible.
These compound movements are the best exercises for losing your belly fat:
- Bench press
- Bent over rows
- Deadlifts
- Leg presses
- Lunges
- Pull-ups
- Push-ups
- Squats
- Step-ups
If you can add more of these in and drop the isolation work that you might be doing such as bicep curls, lateral raises, leg extensions, and so on, you’ll move much closer to the goal of losing your excess belly fat.
Remember to keep the weight heavy while doing these sessions as well as that’s a huge part of what will keep your metabolic rate going strong.
5) Know Your Cardio Training
When it comes to cardio training in order to lose belly fat, you need to know your varieties. High intensity interval training is often said to be the single best cardio as far as burning fat goes, but the caveat to this is that it is extremely intense.
If you’re also going to be doing three full body workouts per week and don’t have the best of recovery abilities, this could very well prove to be just a bit too much for you.
Remember, recovery is key when on a low calorie diet if you want to lose belly fat since if you aren’t recovered, you may just start to lose lean muscle mass.
Losing muscle mass would mean a slower metabolic rate overall and this would translate into a harder time keeping the weight off once you do finally lose belly fat successfully.
If you hope to maintain the lean body you’ve built, keeping that muscle mass will be a must. On the other hand, steady state moderate intensity cardio will not boost your metabolism as much, however it is less taxing on the body so is often a better option for those who are weight training quite extensively.
As long as you don’t go overboard with it and start doing hours and hours a day, this can be a great way to boost your overall daily calorie burn, enhance fat loss, and still maintain recovery rates for your sessions in the gym.
Whatever form of cardio you choose to help lose belly fat, just make sure that it never impacts your ability to lift heavy as this is the number one priority for fat loss.
6) Reduce Chronic Stress
The next step for helping to learn how to lose belly fat is to start taking steps to reduce your stress level. Chronically high levels of stress are one of the worst things for staying lean long-term because this will cause a hormonal shift in the body that will prime you for a greater cortisol release.
Cortisol is the main hormone that will influence body fat storage in the abdominal region, so it could really set you back when you want to shed the excess weight.
Remember that stress comes in all shapes and sizes and can include stress from financial reasons, stress from your career, stress from relationships, or training related stress from going to the gym.
Stress can also make you more prone to overeating, which is definitely going to be detrimental as you work towards the goal of losing belly fat.
Fortunately, it should only take a few stress busting techniques to really help you gain control over this, so you can be more successful with the goal of losing belly fat.
Just be sure that you’re paying attention to your stress on a daily basis and as soon as it seems as though it’s getting out of control, you take action immediately to combat it.
7) Choose Belly Fat Reducing Foods
Another must-do if you want to be successful with the goal of losing belly fat is to make sure that you’re choosing plenty of belly fat reducing foods.
This includes foods that are high in protein, low in fat, and low in carbs along with a high amount of fresh vegetables.
These foods are going to provide your body with all the nourishment that you need as you begin losing your belly fat and are going to also help to rev your metabolic rate the most.
Another very important food group that must be in your diet if you want to lose belly fat is dairy products. Most people think that dairy is not the best of options as they mistakenly believe it will cause fat gain and make them move away from the goal of losing belly fat, but this isn’t the case at all.
Low-fat dairy products will help promote greater fat loss from the stomach region, so can actually accelerate your progress dramatically.
The key is to make sure that you do go for only low-fat varieties, otherwise you will be taking in too much saturated fat and calories for a sound diet to help you lose your belly fat.
8) Get Sufficient Sleep
The next quick tip that you must note if you want to successfully learn how to lose belly fat is to make sure that you also are getting enough sleep at night. Sleep is the primary time when the body is really going to spend in the rejuvenation process and is going to repair all the damage done to the muscle tissues throughout the day.
If you aren’t getting enough sleep, you won’t be able to effectively lose belly fat because you’ll enter each session unrecovered. This means a lower intensity workout will likely be performed and intense workouts are the number one must-have for results.
Intensity, not duration is what will make sure that you are able to burn more calories on in the day when you’re sitting around resting and not doing anything.
Put in lack-lustre effort in the gym and you’re only going to see lackluster results as far as your ability to lose belly fat goes. Sleep is also important for keeping cortisol levels down, which we already mentioned in the section about stress.
If you’re short on sleep, cortisol will go up which will encourage stomach fat accumulation and also promote the use of lean muscle as a fuel source. For creating a lean body, this is definitely not what you want.
Finally, the last drawback to lack of sleep is that it can influence your metabolic rate as well. Those who aren’t getting enough sleep in the evening hours will burn fewer calories during the day, so that too will harm your progress.
You really must be doing everything possible to up your total daily calorie burn as this will be key to producing lasting results in your quest to lose your belly fat.
9) Be Smart With Abdominal Exercises
Looking at the abdominal exercises you choose to perform in order to lose belly fat, you want to focus on those exercises that are best going to reduce your base of support or add some form of additional outside weight to the activity.
Putting more tension on the ab muscles is what will get them best sitting up and responding, bringing you the fat loss results you’re hoping for.
Don’t rely on just doing abdominal exercises on the crunch mats if you want to learn how to lose belly fat. This is just a fast way to waste time.
Instead, incorporate an exercise ball into the mix or perform some single leg squats on a bosu ball. This is an excellent way to test your core as it’ll struggle to keep you balanced.
Another important thing to note about ab workouts in regards to learning how to lose belly fat is that you should never be devoting too much time to them.
While they can help to build strength in the core, in order to really lose belly fat, your better bet is focusing on what you can do to bring your body fat levels down lower. That is the real ticket to getting clear six pack abs, and that will come with a good diet and a proper full body workout, as we mentioned above.
Ab workouts are good, but don’t ever let them overtake your program.
10) Stay Consistent to Reach Your Goal
Finally, the last quick tip to note on your quest to learn how to lose belly fat is to make sure you stay consistent. By far, consistency is the number one element to success.
You simply cannot expect to put in the effort ‘part-time’ and get results. Seeing successful fat loss from the abdominal region requires that you put in a full-time effort.
If you’re falling off the program every two or three days, you know that you’re going to be facing an uphill battle ahead.
Those who are best able to reach the goal to of losing belly fat are not those who have the most perfect program planned out. Rather, they’re the ones who have a pretty good program but who stick with it over time.
Achieving the goal of learning how to lose belly fat won’t come overnight. For most people who have ten or more pounds to lose, you can expect it to be at least a month-long process as the stomach fat you’re trying to lose does tend to be more stubborn than any other fat on the body.
For this reason, intense focus and perseverance is key. If you get that in place, then you will easily be able to learn how to lose belly fat and reach your end goals.
So there you have the top 10 tips to shed the fat around your middle and attain the lean body you’re looking for. If you invest in the time and effort to learn how to lose belly fat, it’s not going to be long before you’re proud to show off your mid-section when at the beach or the gym.
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