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10 Super Effective Ways to Bust Belly Fat
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Although most people think that those who are overweight are unhealthy, this is not necessarily the case. We all know plenty of people who eat right, work out, but still have some excess body fat. On the other hand, we also know people who eat tons of junk food, smoke, drink, and never go to the gym, yet they are thin as a rail. Sometimes, it has more to do with genetics than with lifestyle habits.
It’s not so much the fat that lies underneath the skin that poses a real health problem, but the fat that lies in the abdominal cavity, otherwise known as visceral fat. This fat surrounds our organs and puts us at a much greater risk for heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and even early death.
So it makes sense to take steps to lower your belly fat if you find that you carry most of your weight in your middle. Although we make plenty of jokes about spare tires, they aren’t very funny when you consider that your “spare tire” is churning out stress hormones, inflammatory substances, and setting you up for serious health complications further down the road.
We are going to list the top 10 super effective ways that have been proven to help people reduce their midsection easily and quickly. Keep in mind that you don’t have to do all 10 of these every day and you don’t have to go overboard. Losing just a pound every week will add up very quickly and you will never regret the way you look and feel.
So stick around and keep reading for the best ways to reduce that spare tire and reduce your risk of dying earlier than you need to.
1. Keep Moving
One of the great things about visceral fat (if you want to look on the bright side) is that it tends to give way fairly easily to aerobic exercise. You can literally blow up your belly fat simply by doing anything that gets your heart rate up and running: swimming, brisk walking, running, jogging, tennis, or dancing. Duke University conducted a study which found the best way to get rid of belly fat was jogging but the truth is that any type of exercise will do the trick. Even if you haven’t exercised in years, simply walking 30 minutes or so every day will go a long way towards reducing your middle.
2. Avoid Sugar
Well, this is one we are all too aware of, but it still needs to be repeated. We often think that our one little afternoon soda isn’t really doing us any harm, but it is. Numerous studies have shown that consuming processed sugar, especially the high fructose corn syrup in sodas, leads to an increase in the amount of visceral fat. When we are talking about sugar, we don’t mean the natural kind that is in fruits, but we mean refined sugar such as donuts, candy, sports drinks, sodas, even the table sugar you put in your coffee and tea.
Decide today that you are going to stop eating sugar and that you will start reading labels to be sure that you are not eating hidden sugar in your foods. Simply cutting sugar out of your diet will go a long ways towards reducing the visceral fat in your abdomen.
3. Yoga
You might think of yoga as nothing more than stretching, but it has been shown in numerous studies to have positive effects in many areas of your life. One study showed that when postmenopausal women did yoga daily during the 16 week study period, they had significant reductions in belly fat, even though they did not change their eating habits. How does yoga work? It lowers our body’s production of the stress hormone cortisol, which has been linked to abdominal fat. Yoga relaxes the body and mind, which affects our production of hormones.
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