Wow, there are a lot of places online claiming they can show you how to best lose your belly fat. In fact, if you take a moment and look at the covers of most women’s magazines as well as the fitness magazines, you’ll see something along this line in just about all of them. But, as we’ve mentioned numerous times on here, there is no such thing as spot reduction when it comes to losing weight. That’s a pretty simple rule and once you grasp it you’ll rarely get suckered into some miracle product or supplement. BUT… having said all that, there is some scientific evidence that an increase or concentration of fat in your belly can be a sign of impending diabetes. In fact, your gut or belly is something some people call your diabetes indicator.
Let’s look at why this happens and anything we can do to correct or reverse the process. First of all, diabetes is a very real danger for almost everyone. In fact, our current diet and lifestyle makes it nearly impossible for you to not get diabetes and that’s proving itself to be true with the latest medical statistics. A good way to measure if your at risk for diabetes is to take your height in inches divided by two (ex 68 ÷ 2 = 34) and compare that to your waist size. If your waist size is greater than half of your height, you’re at an increased risk for developing type II diabetes and you should take corrective actions now.
One of the recommendations for combating belly fat sounds a bit odd on the surface bet it can really help you get your eating under control. Never eat on an empty stomach. Initially that just doesn’t make any sense and truth is it probably is meant to come across that way to grab your attention. But, here’s how it works, about 30 minutes before you’re supposed to eat a main meal (you should be having 4-6 meals a day) grab a small healthy snack and slowly eat it. Maybe that’s a handful of almonds or a piece of fruit. Make it something healthy and enjoy it slowly, regardless of how hungry you are at the time. When you do this, you’ll make a huge dent in your likelihood of overeating when you sit down for your meal. In fact, I’d suggest you place some of these items out on the dinner table at night as about half an hour before you serve the family. Make sure their healthy snacks and not a bowl of potato chips.
This is vital and something everyone should incorporate into what they call “normal eating.” Get rid of all the white foods from your diet. This means white bread, white sugar, white pasta and anything else that’s processed to the point of being white. These are what we call simple carbohydrates and they convert in your system incredibly fast and tend to spike your blood sugar levels. When you body detects this, it will blast you with a huge amount of insulin to help keep it under control. When this happens you’re severely overworking your pancreas and most likely taking time off of its effective life-span.
The last item from my list of weight loss tips to help you fight belly fat (and consequently diabetes) is to begin building some muscle. If you’re a women you’re about to skip past this section, don’t! You’re natural reaction is to see ‘build muscle’ and instantly think that’s for the guys. It’s not for guys and it applies equally to women who want to get into shape. The truth is, muscle burns more energy than fat does, so you’ll increase your metabolism and help burn any simple carbs before they turn into fat.
Doing crunches and other core exercises will develop your abs but you won’t see all that hard work until you get rid of the fatty tissue covering it all up. So, keep doing those important exercises and include these tips into your diet and you’ll have those rock hard abs before you know it. Good luck.