Losing The Dangerous Belly Fat Assuredly!
Most people want to lose their paunch or belly fat because it is ugly and causes discomfort and inconvenience in common daily activities requiring bending down to pick up anything from the floor or tying the shoelaces.
What they don’t know is that it is more lethal than the excess fat anywhere else in the body!
It can cause hypertension, diabetes, heart disease and strokes, PCOD, breast cancers and cholecystitis and many more chronic diseases!
But it is no different from any other fat in your body in that it too can be knocked off as assuredly as any other fat in the body, only if you knew how!
It can be done any time you wish, doesn’t matter how long you have had it.
To understand this, you have to understand the following facts.
How do we gain fat?
We gain fat when we eat more calories than we burn in twenty-four hours. The unused calories are converted into fat and stored away in the body in different places, for future use.
Where does the body store the extra fat?
The body stores the excess fat in fat cells in different fat depots all over the body, a little more in some places than others, tummy, hips, thighs, chest, back, and arms being the more preferred places.
Different people store their excess fat in different places. Generally, men tend to store more fat in the upper body, above the waist, while ladies tend to store more fat in the lower body, below the waist. The former is called the ‘apple-shaped’ or upper body obesity and the latter the ‘pear-shaped’ or lower body obesity’.
How do we lose fat?
When we eat fewer calories than we burn in twenty-four hours, we draw the additional calories from the excess fat that we had stored up previously exactly for such shortfalls and the fat store reduces. This means we lose some of the stored fat and our weight drops proportionately.
This fat loss is generalized, that is we use up some fat from fat stores from all over the body.
So how do we lose belly fat?
If we burn more calories than we eat and have more fat in your belly, more fat will be lost from the belly area than in other areas, but since there is more fat in the belly, it will take some time to lose all of it. So you have to be patient.
How can we burn more calories?
Walking, jogging, running, swimming, cycling, dancing, in short, cardiovascular exercises burn more calories than floor exercises or working out with weights, that is strength training.
Do abdominal exercises help burn abdominal fat?
No. Abdominal exercises like ‘sit-ups’ and ‘crunches’ can tone up the abdominal wall, but they can’t selectively burn the excess fat in the abdomen. Plus they burn fewer calories than the cardiovascular exercises.
And excessive ‘sit ups’ and crunches can cause injuries like muscle tears, hernias, and prolapsed disks.
Is belly fat bad?
Presence of excess abdominal fat leads to hypertension, high blood sugar, high levels of total cholesterol and low density lipid (LDL) cholesterol and triglycerides and it also lowers the good cholesterol, the high density lipid (HDL) cholesterol, leading to diabetes, heart disease and strokes.
Presence of abdominal obesity increases the incidence of PCOD, breast cancer and cholecystitis in women.
It is also associated with other chronic diseases and some other cancers.
It also invites hernias and back problems by causing an abnormal drag on the vertebral column.
Corona kills the pot-bellied obese easier than slim and fit people.
So how can we lose our belly fat assuredly?
The simplest way to lose our belly fat, or in fact, excess fat anywhere in our body and our excess weight is to eat our own healthy, normal, everyday food a little better balanced nutritionally and sensibly and at least walk regularly.
Don’t fall for very-low-calorie diets sold under the garb of so-called magic slimming machines or medicines or meal replacement shakes or ‘revolutionary’ diets sold by commercial slimming treatments or take up mindless exercises and protein supplements.
Don’t waste your time doing hundreds of ‘sit ups’ and crunches and risk getting injured.
Also read the articles ’Basics Of Nutrition’, ‘Designing A Healthy Weight Loss Food Plan’, and ‘Simple Steps To Slimming’ on this website.