How to Naturally Reduce Your Body Fat Levels

A good natural diet and exercise are the main keys for reducing body fat levels. Many people are overweight. In fact, obesity has become one of the biggest health issues facing Western nations. It’s important to ensure that your body fat levels are healthy, to avoid the many problems that come with being obese.

The Danger of Elevated Body Fat Levels

Elevated body fat levels mean that you are overweight or obese. Obesity is defined as being more than 20% above a normal weight. When you have elevated body fat levels, you are more likely to contract several life threatening illnesses.

These threats include:

• Type 2 Diabetes
• High Blood Pressure
• Heart Disease
• Stroke
• Some forms of Cancer

Because of all of these dangers, reducing elevated body fat levels is very important. This is best accomplished through a healthy diet combined with exercise.

Exercises to Reduce Body Fat

Aerobic exercise helps burn body fat, so it should be a primary part of any plan to reduce body fat levels. You can walk, run, cycle, swim or dance to get your heart moving and reduce body fat levels. For the best results, you should get some aerobic exercise three to five times a week.

Strength training is also a good option for reducing body fat levels. Though building muscle doesn’t directly reduce body fat, it does help you burn more calories in a day, which helps you lose weight more easily.

Diets to Reduce Body Fat Levels

As great as exercise is, it can be very difficult to reduce body fat levels through exercise alone. Exercise combined with dieting is the best combination.

Choose a diet that focuses on healthy eating, and watching what you eat as well as how many calories you consume. Reducing the amount of simple carbohydrates you eat, for example, can help you lose weight faster and more easily than simply counting calories alone.

Try to Avoid the Sugar Spikes

That’s because simple carbohydrates like those in white flour and sugar cause blood sugar to spike. This, in turn, causes your body to produce insulin. When insulin is present in the body, it is much easier for the body to store fat. Therefore eating foods that keep insulin levels stable, like whole grains, vegetables, and lean protein, make it easier for your body to shed fat.

Avoid Starvation Diets

Any diet you choose to reduce body fat levels should focus on eating healthy foods and on getting enough calories in a day. Starvation diets are unhealthy and can actually make it more difficult to reduce body fat levels.

When you don’t consume enough calories, your body goes into “starvation mode” where it tries to conserve every calorie possible. This makes it very difficult to lose weight.

Reducing body fat levels takes time and patience. Weight isn’t gained over night and it isn’t lost overnight, either. With some simple strategies like plenty of exercise and a healthy diet, however, you can ensure that your body fat levels are healthy, reducing your chances of obesity and all the diseases that can go along with it.