Risks of Belly Fat

The notches on your belt tell the tale: If your waistline has gained girth, you've got more than friendly padding. You've got too much belly fat, and that's a serious health issue.

Doctors have a catchy term for that too-familiar round belly -- the "apple" shape. If your fat has settled on the buttocks and thighs, you're a "pear" shape. Don't get sidetracked with the cutesy names, however. Belly fat (aka visceral fat) is serious business.

Even skinny people can have unhealthy "hidden" belly fat. Research shows that fat may be folded deep inside the belly around the stomach organs, visible only by CT or MRI imaging. This fat puts people at the same health risks as someone with more obvious big girth, researchers say.

How Does Belly Fat Harm You?

Belly fat doesn't just lay idle at your beltline. Researchers describe it as an active "organ" in your body -- one that churns out hormones and inflammatory substances.

When these excess fatty acids drain into the liver, they trigger a chain reaction of changes -- increasing the production of LDL 'bad' cholesterol and triglycerides. During this time insulin can also become less effective in controlling blood sugar, so insulin resistance sets in, he explains.

Blood sugars start to get out of balance. Fats and clots get into the bloodstream, and that sets the stage for diabetes, heart disease, and more.

And research shows that abdominal fat triggers a change in angiotensin, a hormone that controls blood vessel constriction -- increasing the risk of high blood pressure, stroke, and heart attack.

Indeed, belly fat is a key indicator of "metabolic syndrome," a cluster of abnormalities that include high levels of blood sugar, blood pressure, and triglycerides, as well as low levels of "good" HDL cholesterol. This combination of risks has an impact on mortality from heart disease.

Belly Fat: Men's vs. Women's Risks

Men tend to collect more belly fat than women, and it starts early in life. "In adolescence and postadolescence, men start collecting abdominal fat. It's one of the reasons men have more coronary disease than women."

In one study, men with excess belly fat and a large waist were most at risk for what researchers call "all-cause mortality" -- early death from any cause. And because belly fat can trigger cardiovascular problems, a large belly has also been linked to erectile dysfunction in men over age 60.

7 tips to lose BELLY FAT

Let's face it, there's nothing sexier than a set of six-pack abs. If you're a man or a woman, you may be working to achieve a flat stomach on a daily basis. The one thing that can get in your way is abdominal fat. To help you succeed, here's a list of things you can do today to lose belly fat fast.

1.Cut the salt out of your diet. If you eat a lot of processed foods or frozen meals, you're eating more sodium in one day than your body needs in a week. Why is salt so bad for you? Too much salt can make you retain water. Even if you have the firmest abs in town, you'll never see them if you're body is retaining water.

2.Drink at least eight glasses of water per day. Consuming an adequate amount of water will help you to keep toxins flushed out of your system, along with excess salt. 

3.Cardio can help you lose belly fat fast. Again, tone your muscles all you want, but if you don't burn the fat off, you won't have anything to show for your hard work. Burning more calories in a day than you intake is the only way melt your body fat.

4.Keep your diet in check. You should be able to eat the foods you like if you can eat them in moderation. Most diets are too strict for people to be able to stick to religiously, but if you can keep your hunger in check, you can eat the foods you like and still lose weight. If you have a hard time staying on track, keep a food diary and write everything down.

5.Find a weight loss supplement that will be effective in helping you to reach your goals. Choose a weight loss pill that is safe, all-natural, and effective. The best weight loss supplement to help you lose belly fat is one that will curb your hunger and raise your energy levels.

6.Work your core from all angles to get abs that everyone will envy. If you want a toned core, pilates is one of the best exercises you can do. Not only will it give you a flat stomach, it will also tone up your entire body.

7.Make small changes in your diet to see big changes in your body. You don't have to throw yourself entirely into any weight loss regimen to see results. The best thing you can do for yourself is to be consistent with small changes in your diet. Doing things this way will help you to stick with it for the long term.

These seven tips should get you well on your way to lose belly fat for good. With the right combination of diet, exercise, and weight loss supplements, you can't fail.

Six Tips To Lose Belly Fat Fast

In my opinion most people have the wrong idea when it comes to lose belly fat and unfortunately they end up wasting their time. To ultimately achieve success in losing weight going to have to look at what actually works instead of focusing on the stuff that never seems to get you any results.

1. Do exercise that you enjoy. I like to golf for example. Choose activities that you enjoy this way you will want to do it. At the gym vary your exercise routines and do scissor kicks and crunches to specifically target that area.

2. Eat more healthy fats. The vast majority of people simply don’t get enough healthy fats in their diets, especially the vitally-important omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 fats have been shown to decrease fat-storing while increasing fat-burning. They may also be able to reduce stress hormones in your body.

3. Do exercise 3-4 times per week. Nothing reduces stress or burns tummy fat like regular vigorous exercise. Training yourself to hate exercise is a big mistake that way too many people make. Instead, try speed walking, jogging or hiking outdoors.

4. Try the Mediterranean Diet. It works because it’s high in antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables as well as healthy fats like virgin olive oil and oily fish. At the same time it’s low in “bad fats” and “bad carbs”. Even if you don’t want to make a complete diet switch, it’s extremely easy to incorporate delicious Mediterranean foods into your daily diet.

5. Do simple things like cutting out cream in your coffee this is easy and effective. Try and exchange sugar for honey in your coffee or if that does not work for you try to replace the sugar with something you are comfortable with.

6. In the morning eat fresh fruit. By the way vary your fruit. Cut up some grapefruit. Before you eat it - drink warm water with lemon. Then eat some whole bran cereal and have whole wheat toast with honey.

with love 

sagar

How to Lose Fat and Gain Muscle Through Dieting

The physical transformation people typically most want to make is simultaneously building muscle and losing fat. Yet this is a very difficult thing to accomplish; without the help of an excellent genetic code or performance-enhancing drugs, it can seem virtually impossible to build muscle and lose fat at the same time. The only thing that is certain is that you can't achieve the perfect body without the proper diet. Before you find yourself stuck in a monotonous workout cycle that yields little to no results, read this article to supplement your plans

Instructions

1. Diet, Count Calories, Work Out, Rest

   • 1
     Follow a diet that is high in protein and low in fat. It's important to tap natural sources of energy. Foods like vegetables, berries, salmon, tea, lean proteins and plenty of oranges and apples can keep natural energy flowing throughout the body. Low-fat yogurt with oatmeal and honey and a side of bananas makes for a great power breakfast or snack. Chicken breasts and steamed vegetables, sliced tomatoes with tuna, or salmon are all healthy dinner items. Design a healthy diet and stick to it throughout your workout plan.
   • 2
     Keep track of your calorie intake, whether your goal is simply to lose fat and gain lean muscle, or to make massive muscle gains and increase body size. Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps is said to eat more than 10,000 calories of junk food a day. The exceptional shape he maintains is due to the amount of calories he burns. A diet that's high in protein and based on the consumption of organic foods high in essential vitamins but low in carbohydrates can supplement your workout regimen with vital energy without the fatty carbohydrates. It is also very important that you burn calories every day, but as long as you maintain a diet that is high in protein and low in fat, it is not mandatory that you burn more calories than you take in, since you are still trying to gain muscle. In fact, if you stick to a diet that only includes the foods listed in Step 1 (combined with a good workout regimen), even consuming an excessive amount of calories would still be giving you entirely vital nutrients.

     3
   • Understand that working out is equally as important as your diet. Even if you fail to keep track of your calorie intake and how many calories you burn, maintaining a consistent workout schedule is vital to molding your body into the desired shape. Cardiovascular workouts, as well as lean-muscle exercises involving 15 to 25 repetitions for all parts of the body, will ensure that all of the nutrients you ingest are put to good use in muscle growth.
   • 4
     Get your rest. Whenever muscle is cut, it needs time to rejuvenate. Rest and protein are the only factors that can assist in this. Remember that the more protein you eat, the less sore you will be from your workouts and the faster your body will heal. As a rule, bodybuilders tend to eat 2g of protein a day for every pound they weigh. You will not need to take in this much protein unless your workout plan is very intense. The muscle gain and fat loss are entirely up to you and how disciplined you are willing to be. Stick to the plan drawn for you, and you should start seeing gains within the first 3 weeks.

The Best Exercise To Lose Chest Fat

Believe it or not the best exercise to lose chest fat is not about working out the muscles in your chest (bench presses, push-ups, dumbell flys etcetera). This is a huge misconception and also happens to be the main reason why people have such a hard time losing chest fat. Exercising the muscles beneath your chest fat does NOT help to burn fat in that area!

Allow me to explain myself before I tell you about the kind of exercise that WILL finally eliminate that excess chest fat and give you a flat chest. If you were to adopt a good diet today and start doing lots of aerobic exercise (i.e. swimming, running, cycling etc), then you'll no doubt start to lose some body fat.

Which part of your body will you lose body fat from first?

Well to an extent that's determined by your genes and unfortunately there's nothing you can do about that.

If you're like most others who are having a hard time losing chest fat, then your genes are likely programmed to remove fat from your chest AFTER you've lost fat everywhere else on your body. Not only that, but if you were to start gaining weight again, it would happen in the same order – so your chest would get fat LAST.

Think about it for a second...

If you're obsessed about losing only chest fat, you could be exercising for weeks and see NO change whatsoever! Whereas in actual fact you're losing LOTS of fat from your bum, thighs, arms, face, belly and back – you just don't notice it because you're so focussed on your chest!

Also, when you're skinny and you start gaining weight, you'll first gain weight on your bum, thighs, arms, back etc. But because you're only worried about your chest and belly fat, you wont even notice that you're getting fat! Then when your chest and belly blow up, you start exercising and you can't get rid of them – because you have to lose that arse fat first!

“So Why Don't Push-Ups/Bench Presses Work?”

These exercises don't do a good job in getting rid of chest fat because they only work one muscle group – your pectorals. If you really give it your all and build up those chest muscles, you'll only be burning a few calories and only be losing a few pounds of fat at best – from your bum, thighs or where your genes are programmed to lose fat from first.

So the best exercise to lose chest fat is one that burns as many calories as possible to burn as many pounds of general body fat as possible. It involves an exercise that gets your body working in overdrive by using almost all of the muscle groups in your body.

This exercise will follow your genetically predetermined sequence of weight-loss, and burn fat in all those other areas before resorting to getting rid of that chest fat. Hence it's crucial that you don't gauge your success by looking at your chest. The size of your chest will remain unchanged for some time, while you lose heaps of body fat all over the rest of your body.

And when finally your body decides to get rid of that chest fat, it'll disappear so quickly you wont even know it was there!

The best exercise to lose chest fat involves aerobic workouts such as cycling, swimming and running, which include all of your muscle groups and involve your heart and lungs.

Reduce Waist Size – Reduce Your Waist Size in 2 Steps!

Lose Belly Fat Tips

Certain foods are especially likely to cause you to put on unhealthy pounds. Trans fats are among the worst culprits. These are found in many junk foods, such as deep-fried foods and snacks that have hydrogenated oils. There is some debate about saturated fats, which are found in animal products. It is best to limit your intake of saturated fats and try to get them from high quality sources. If you do consume animal products, look for natural or preferably organic varieties.

The healthiest fats are monounsaturated. These can be found in foods such as coconut and olive oils, avocados and almonds and other nuts. These are all excellent sources of healthy fats. So, in summary, when it comes to fats, look for monounsaturated, eat quality saturated fats in limited quantities and stay away from trans fats completely.

Stress and Losing Belly Fat

In addition to the more obvious issues of diet and exercise, there have also been some interesting links found between overweight people, stress and sleep deprivation. It seems that people who are sleep deprived, and/or suffer from high stress levels, are more likely to be carrying around excess pounds. So if you want to lose fat, one thing you should do is learn to relax. One thing you can do that can help you to relax and will also mean taking in fewer unhealthy calories is to cut back on sugar and high caffeine drinks. If you need a boost, consider a healthier alternative, such as green tea. Both of these, incidentally, may be beneficial for weight loss in addition to containing less caffeine than coffee or energy drinks.

If you want to lose belly fat, you also have to increase the amount of physical activity you get. If you don’t exercise regularly, you should seriously consider starting a program, whether that means joining a gym or even taking a walk every day. You can also make the effort to move around more in your everyday life. Eat a lighter lunch and go for a walk during your lunch hour; take stairs instead of elevators; walk to the store instead of driving.

There are no magical solutions to losing belly fat. It probably took you many years to put on the excess pounds. It doesn’t have to take that long to shed them, but you will have to make some real changes in your life and stick with them. If you do this, you will see results, maybe not overnight, but within a few weeks you should start lose belly fat.

How to Lose 20 lbs. of Fat in 30 Days… Without Doing Any Exercise

It is possible to lose 20 lbs. of bodyfat in 30 days by optimizing any of three factors: exercise, diet, or drug/supplement regimen. I’ve seen the elite implementation of all three in working with professional athletes. In this post, we’ll explore what I refer to as the “slow-carb diet”.

In the last six weeks, I have cut from about 180 lbs. to 165 lbs., while adding about 10 lbs. of muscle, which means I’ve lost about 25 lbs. of fat. This is the only diet besides the rather extreme Cyclical Ketogenic Diet (CKD) that has produced veins across my abdomen, which is the last place I lose fat (damn you, Scandinavian genetics). Here are the four simple rules I followed…

Rule #1: Avoid “white” carbohydrates

Avoid any carbohydrate that is — or can be — white. The following foods are thus prohibited, except for within 1.5 hours of finishing a resistance-training workout of at least 20 minutes in length: bread, rice, cereal, potatoes, pasta, and fried food with breading. If you avoid eating anything white, you’ll be safe.

Rule #2: Eat the same few meals over and over again

The most successful dieters, regardless of whether their goal is muscle gain or fat loss, eat the same few meals over and over again. Mix and match, constructing each meal with one from each of the three following groups:

Proteins:
Egg whites with one whole egg for flavor
Chicken breast or thigh
Grass-fed organic beef
Pork

Legumes:
Lentils
Black beans
Pinto beans

Vegetables:
Spinach
Asparagus
Peas
Mixed vegetables

Eat as much as you like of the above food items. Just remember: keep it simple. Pick three or four meals and repeat them. Almost all restaurants can give you a salad or vegetables in place of french fries or potatoes. Surprisingly, I have found Mexican food, swapping out rice for vegetables, to be one of the cuisines most conducive to the “slow carb” diet.

Most people who go on “low” carbohydrate diets complain of low energy and quit, not because such diets can’t work, but because they consume insufficient calories. A 1/2 cup of rice is 300 calories, whereas a 1/2 cup of spinach is 15 calories! Vegetables are not calorically dense, so it is critical that you add legumes for caloric load.

Some athletes eat 6-8x per day to break up caloric load and avoid fat gain. I think this is ridiculously inconvenient. I eat 4x per day:

10am – breakfast
1pm – lunch
5pm – smaller second lunch
7:30-9pm – sports training
10pm – dinner
12am – glass of wine and Discovery Channel before bed

Here are some of my meals that recur again and again:

Scrambled Eggology pourable egg whites with one whole egg, black beans, and microwaved mixed vegetables

Grass-fed organic beef, pinto beans, mixed vegetables, and extra guacamole (Mexican restaurant)

Grass-fed organic beef (from Trader Joe’s), lentils, and mixed vegetables

Post-workout pizza with extra chicken, cilantro, pineapple, garlic, sundried tomotoes, bell peppers, and red onions

Rule #3: Don’t drink calories

Drink massive quantities of water and as much unsweetened iced tea, tea, diet sodas, coffee (without white cream), or other no-calorie/low-calorie beverages as you like. Do not drink milk, normal soft drinks, or fruit juice. I’m a wine fanatic and have at least one glass of wine each evening, which I believe actually aids sports recovery and fat-loss. Recent research into resveratrol supports this.

Rule #4: Take one day off per week

I recommend Saturdays as your “Dieters Gone Wild” day. I am allowed to eat whatever I want on Saturdays, and I go out of my way to eat ice cream, Snickers, Take 5, and all of my other vices in excess. I make myself a little sick and don’t want to look at any of it for the rest of the week. Paradoxically, dramatically spiking caloric intake in this way once per week increases fat loss by ensuring that your metabolic rate (thyroid function, etc.) doesn’t downregulate from extended caloric restriction. That’s right: eating pure crap can help you lose fat. Welcome to Utopia.

How to lose weight

Weight loss, in the most basic sense, comes down to simple arithmetic.  You must eat less calories than you burn.  Period.  And the best way to go about creating this caloric deficit is a combination of diet and exercise.  But you already knew that.  Let’s get to the meal plan. . .

I can sum the meal plan up in six simple words: Eat small well balanced frequent meals.  But you want more specifics than that right?  Ok, here we go.

Eat 3 meals and 2 snacks each day.  And if you must, you can add a third snack.  Space each meal or snack about 3 hours from the previous meal or snack.

Weight loss meal plan

Eat and drink the following with reckless abandon:

• Spinach
• Broccoli
• Green, Red, or Yellow Pepper
• Cucumber
• Apples
• Asparagus
• Cauliflower
• Green Beans
• Kale
• Celery
• Pretty much any green leafy vegetable with the exception of iceberg lettuce
• Water

Eat 2 – 4 servings of the following throughout the day:

• Carrots
• Bananas
• Berries
• Peaches
• Plums
• Oranges
• Pretty much any fresh fruit you like

Eat one 4 – 6 ounce lean serving of the following with each meal.  Preparation should be grilled, steamed, baked, or stir fried – no breaded and fried foods!:

• Turkey breast
• Chicken breast
• Steak
• Pork
• Fish
• Also consider eggs (2 or 3)

Eat one serving of the following with each snack.  Truth be told, I recommend you avoid dairy during your weight loss quest, but if you feel you need it, eat it with you snacks:

• Almonds
• Walnuts
• Cashews
• Natural peanut butter (no sugar, no salt added)
• Yogurt
• Low-fat cottage cheese
• Low-fat milk

Eat these only with your meal that follows your fitness training and only in limited portion:

• Oatmeal
• Brown rice
• Legumes
• Potatoes
• Whole wheat bread
• Whole wheat pasta
• Other whole grain food items

Use the following in extremely limited portions or not at all:

• Salad dressing
• Butter
• Cheese
• Other condiments

Foods and Drinks you MUST stay away from to lose weight

• Soda (tons of sugar and lots of empty calories)
• Alcohol (empty calories and usually leads to bad food choices when drinking)
• Sugar
• Fast Food
• Creamy salad dressings (Ranch, 1000 Island, etc.)

Example of weight loss meals

Ok, so what does a day’s worth of meals and snacks look like?  Check out the sample below:

6:00am  Fitness Training

7:30am  2 eggs scrambled in non-stick pan with chopped green pepper and onion, 1 piece of wheat toast dry, small fruit cup of berries, melon, and pineapple, 1 cup of coffee black.

10:30am  10 almonds, 1 apple.

1:00pm  Large spinach salad with cucumber, celery, grilled chicken breast, and 1/2 table spoon of Italian dressing.

4:00pm  Handful of walnuts, 1 orange.

6:30pm  Grilled flank steak, large portion of steamed asparagus, small side salad with Romaine lettuce, tomato, and small amount of vinegrette dressing.

9:00pm  4 celery sticks with small amount of natural peanut butter.

Some other final tips:

• Drink a large glass of water with each meal and snack.

• Pre-cook and prepackage your meals and snacks on one day for the rest of the week.  I usually do this on Sunday.  This is MUCH easier if you eat the same meals each day.

• Keep a food journal and track your weight loss progress.  You should be losing about 2 pounds per week.  If you’re losing less than that, you probably need to tighten it up.  If you’re losing more than that, it might be time to add that third snack.

• If it comes in a wrapper or other packaging, don’t eat it