You’ve been walking regularly for sometime now. Your grocery items consist of healthy food. You’ve cut down on Cola and chocolates. Yet your belly fat remains. It’s frustrating and you don’t know what to do anymore.
Now that summer is very nearly here, you have all the more reason to get that flab out of the way. Also excess belly fat is more serious than fat in other areas of the body. While you may not like the fat that’s on your hips and thighs, these areas don’t pose a major threat to your health. Fat around the middle of your waist, however, does pose a health risk and should be decreased as much as possible.[break]
A drink that shrinks belly fat
It’s a well known fact that green tea is good for your skin and helps fight cancer too. Now, researchers say it’s also an effective belly fat buster. Exercisers who drank four cups of green tea a day for 12 weeks lost over eight times more abdominal fat that those who drank other caffeinated beverage. The catechins, a polynutrient, in green tea help speed the breakdown of fat.
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Healthy habits are a good start but belly fat is the hardest to lose, so you need to fine-tune your already healthy routine for fast results. For speedier flattening, try our workout plan and watch the stubborn belly bulge disappear.
Speed up your walk
Pick up your pace and you’ll burn more calories and target belly fat. A recent study from the University of Arkansas found that even when exercises burnt exactly the same number of calories a week, those who did shorter, high intensity workouts lost more abdominal fat in three months while those who did longer workouts at a moderate pace had no change. Try two or three speedy sessions for 30 minutes every week. You can also alternate short bursts of fast walking with slower segments.
Balance on one leg
Incorporating a balance challenge such as standing on one leg helps target and tones every little muscle. When you narrow your base support, like balancing on one foot, you have less stability and so your body engages your core muscles to prevent you from falling. You can also try lifting your knee and bringing it up to your chest or do single leg squats. Another way to work your abs, while toning the rest of your body, is to hold a light weight overhead during lunges and squats. By creating more length from your center to your fingertips, your abs have to work extra hard to keep you upright and that creates a firmer, stronger midsection.
Add weights to your workouts
Vigorous aerobic exercises such as fast walking and jogging is great for busting belly fat, but total body weight training will boost results and firm up your abdominals even more. Also, you’ll be less likely to regain the lost kilos as resistance training helps maintain muscle mass which prevents a slowdown in metabolism. To avoid plateaus, you need to increase your intensity regularly. You can do this by increasing the amount of weight lifted, changing your sets/reps, changing the exercises and changing the type of resistance. You can make these changes on a weekly or monthly basis.
Tweak your crunches
To get more from crunches, add a stability ball and you’ll be using more abdominal muscles that way. The key to a firm midsection is to strengthen everything under your top abdominal muscles. Planks are an easy way to tone these muscles. Lie facedown with the upper body propped on elbows and forearms. Tuck your toes and raise your hips and legs off the floor so that the body is in line from head to heels. Hold this position for a minute and repeat.
Turn in earlier
Eating right and exercising regularly help ward off both stress and belly fat, but only if you’re getting enough sleep. Skimping on sleep causes levels of the stress hormone Cortisol to rise along and that leads to increase in levels of deep abdominal fat. According to a Canadian research, adults who slept for five to six hours a night were more likely to gain weight and were heavier around the middle than those who slept seven to eight hours.
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