Joburg - We all crave a slender figure, especially in the summer season. Getting rid of belly fat can be a sometimes difficult goal to achieve, and once you have achieved this target, maintaining a slimmer and trimmer figure becomes an arduous task.
Professional dietitians tell us that this has health benefits and helps individuals live longer. Larger waistlines are linked to a higher risk of heart disease, diabetes and even cancer.
Losing weight, especially belly fat, also improves blood vessel functioning and sleep quality.
According to Kerry Stewart, director of clinical and research physiology at Johns Hopkins, it is nearly impossible to precisely target belly fat when dieting; a multi-pronged approach may be required to achieve desired results.
Below are five ways one can adopt to get rid of that beer belly.
“But losing weight overall will help shrink your waistline; more importantly, it will help reduce the dangerous layer of visceral fat, a type of fat within the abdominal cavity that you can’t see but that heightens health risks,” Stewart says.
Try curbing carbs instead of fats.
Stewart says when Johns Hopkins researchers compared the effects on the heart of losing weight through a low-carbohydrate diet versus a low-fat diet for six months – each containing the same amount of calories – those on a low-carb diet lost an average of 10 pounds more than those on a low-fat diet—28.9 pounds versus 18.7 pounds.
He said an extra benefit of the low-carb diet was that it produces a higher quality of weight loss.
“With weight loss, fat is reduced, but there is also often a loss of lean tissue (muscle), which is not desirable. On both diets, there was a loss of about 2 to 3 pounds of good lean tissue along with the fat, which means that the fat loss percentage was much higher on the low-carb diet.
Think eating plan, not diet.
Stewart recommends that people pick a healthy eating plan that they can stick to, as this has more benefits.
The benefit of a low-carb approach is that it simply involves learning to make better food choices — no calorie counting is necessary. In general, a low-carb way of eating shifts your intake away from problem foods —those high in carbs and sugar and without much fibre, like bread, bagels and sodas — and toward high-fibre or high-protein choices, like vegetables, beans and healthy meats.
Keep moving.
Walk or jog. There are benefits to this simple weight-loss programme for reducing belly fat.
“Physical activity helps burn abdominal fat. One of the biggest benefits of exercise is that you get a lot of bang for your buck on body composition … Exercise seems to work off belly fat in particular because it reduces circulating levels of insulin, which would otherwise signal the body to hang on to fat, and causes the liver to use up fatty acids, especially those nearby visceral fat deposits,” he says.
He says the amount of exercise one needs to achieve weight loss depends on one’s goals. For most people, this can mean 30 to 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous exercise nearly every day.
Lift weights.
Take those dumbbells and start lifting weights.
Adding even moderate strength training to aerobic exercise helps build lean muscle mass, which causes you to burn more calories throughout the entire day, both at rest and during exercise.
Move away from processed foods.
The ingredients in packaged goods and snack foods are often heavy on trans fats, added sugar and added salt or sodium — three things that make it difficult to lose weight.
The Star