Over the years, you might notice the size of your belly getting larger, and think it’s normal with aging. It shouldn’t be normal, and in fact, it is dangerous to your health. You can prevent and reverse illness and disease if you take steps to lose your belly fat.
How to Lose Belly Fat
Excess belly fat sneaks up on you as the years go by. One day you’re trim and fit, and a few years later when you drop your security key fob, you can barely bend down to pick it up. That is when you realize you’ve gained too much belly fat. There are several ways you can lose belly fat, but they all take commitment to a healthier lifestyle. One way to reduce belly fat is to cut the amount of calories you eat. But counting and cutting calories is not fun and usually not sustainable. You need to cut out empty calories and use more calories each day.
Eliminate Oil
To lose weight and excess body fat, it comes down to eating fewer calories than you burn per day. One change you can make is to eliminate excess calories from your diet. You might think you’ve already cut out excess calories, but most likely you’re still eating plenty of excess calories. Oils and fats are full of empty calories. You might think that eating a big salad is healthy and contains few calories. But once you pour the oily salad dressing on the salad, it is no longer healthy.
Oil is nothing but fat. Oil and fat have more than twice the calories per gram than either protein or carbs do. And those excess calories add up. Instead of oil, use balsamic vinegar as the basis for salad dressings. You can find many types of flavored balsamic vinegars that are much healthier than oils.
Eat Whole Foods
A whole food plant-based diet is the healthiest diet you can eat. A diet full of vegetables, whole grains, potatoes, legumes, lentils, beans, and fruit is a nutrient-dense diet. This means you can eat a lot of food, feel full, never go hungry, and still eat at a calorie deficit.
Complex carbohydrates cannot make you fat because they are too low in calories. A baked potato, for example, is only 160 calories. But when you add butter and sour cream which contain a lot of fat, you double and triple the calories of a simple baked potato. A whole food plant-based diet is also high in fiber, and research has shown that eating more fiber is not only healthier, but it can help you lose weight.
Eliminate Alcohol
Alcohol is a huge source of empty calories. The average beer has about 175 calories. Just one beer each night will add up to 1,225 calories per week or 63,875 empty calories per year. That’s an extra 22 pounds per year, and much of that goes to belly fat.
Limit Processed Foods
Processed foods are full of refined carbs, oils, saturated fats, and chemicals. Many of these chemicals in today’s foods are classified as obesogens or endocrine disruptors that can disturb your endocrine system and hormones. These obesogens are linked to weight gain and obesity. If a food package has a list of ingredients you can’t pronounce, you should probably avoid it.
Eliminate High Fructose Corn Syrup
High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) has been shown to increase abdominal fat and obesity. HFCS is not the same as table sugar since it usually contains more fructose than sugar does. Fructose not only increases belly fat, but it is also a leading cause of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
Prebiotics and Probiotics
A healthy gut microbiome is essential for our immune system and can help you lose weight. Creating good gut bacteria is dependent on the foods you eat. Eating junk foods, fried foods, and processed foods cause bad bacteria to thrive and kill off good gut bacteria.
A diet high in plant foods and fiber are called prebiotic foods. These prebiotic foods create the perfect environment for good gut bacteria to thrive, crowding out the bad bacteria. You can also try taking a good quality probiotic to enhance the good gut bacteria.
Exercise
A little exercise can boost your metabolism to burn more calories. Walking is an excellent start. Lifting weights is excellent for burning belly fat. It doesn’t take much. Using dumbbells will work fine. With dumbbells, you can build the arms, back, and legs.
