4 Mistakes Stopping You from Losing Your Belly Fat and Love Handles
Belly fat is no joke! For some guys, no matter how much exercise or dieting they do, those stubborn love handles never budge.
Is it just your imagination? Maybe not. Science has proven that belly fat is much harder to lose than other places where fat accumulates in your body. And if science is working against us, do we stand a chance? This is why treatments like SculpSure are the only way that some people can reach their body goals.
Having optimal health and being fit is about making conscious, daily choices and better habits. If you’re experiencing weight loss issues, especially with belly fat, read on to see if you’re guilty of making the following mistakes.
1. Eating the Wrong Kind of Food
Marc Madilson knows how disappointing it can be when all your efforts to lose fat seem futile. “It was very frustrating—things that would have worked great in my early 20s weren’t doing anything,” he recalls.
Marc soon found out that the problem was not with his exercise program, but in the kitchen. “I realized I needed to make drastic changes to my diet.” He taught himself how to cook healthier by watching cooking tutorials and making wiser food choices in the grocery store.
The result? In only three months, his abs were enough to wow his friends. “My friends were shocked. They couldn’t believe what I had done in a few months,” he says. He now posts recipe pics and food plating suggestions along with his fitspo feed on Instagram.
So what are the worst types of food for your stomach?
If you, like Marc, want to change the way you eat, in order to change your body, go easy on the following:
- White bread, white rice, bagels, pretzels
These yummy, but carb-dense, foods can upset your gut flora and trigger inflammation. Opt for eating potatoes (preferably roasted; not fried!) instead.
- ·Processed and packaged fats
Unhealthy fats are obvious belly fat culprits. They are also linked to inflammation. The World Health Organization recommends limiting the intake of saturated fats to less than 10% of all the food you consume in a day.
Processed meat, such as too many hot dogs for breakfast, can lead to heart disease, and are not that great for digestion. “Processed meats are very difficult for many people to digest. They can sit in the intestines for longer because they are difficult to break down,” says Julie Rothenberg, MS, RD, LDN.
2. Timing Your Crunches Wrong
Does the order of your gym exercises really matter? Trainer Mike Wunsch told fitness buffs at Men’s Health that it does.
“We test everything in our gym,” said Wunsch. “And we’ve seen that people achieve far better results when they do core exercises at the beginning of their workout instead of at the end.”
The key to giving your belly the best workout is to do all your abs and core stuff before your cardio. If you train your stomach muscles when they are fresh and not worn out by other cardio exercise, you’ll notice quicker results. Along with your crunches, try planks, another great belly fat blaster. Next, you can slip in push-ups, before moving on to more active HIIT (high-intensity interval training) or going for a run. Research conducted on young men in several universities including East Tennessee State University, Baylor College of Medicine, and the University of New South Wales showed that even small bursts of high-intensity cardio training were effective for fat loss.
3. Not Limiting Alcohol Intake, and Eating Out Too Much
Josh Ingraham, a 33-year-old chef from Cleveland, Ohio, was once 222 pounds. After making the commitment to lose weight and realizing that alcohol was the main culprit, he was able to change his habits and reach his fitness goals. The thing is, Josh wasn’t just into drinking any alcohol. Good wine was also a passion.
“There was a point in my life that I even got really into wine, and considered becoming a sommelier,” he says, “but I realized that it was something that I needed to cut if I wanted to see the results I was hoping for.”
The turning point came when Josh decided to cook his own meals at home, instead of going out. Besides being able to guarantee only healthy ingredients, he could create recipes that looked as good as they tasted. (Check out some of his meals on his Instagram.)
Can cooking your own meals at home help you lose weight? Science backs him up: In
one study, U.K. researchers analyzed over 11,000 people and found that the folks who ate home-cooked meals were less prone to obesity.
4. Stressing Out Too Much
Yes, “stress belly” is a thing. It happens when you are in stressful situations too often, and the body goes into fight or flight mode. Callum Melly, a personal trainer, puts it this way: “Stress is a natural defense mechanism that encourages an influx of adrenaline boosting hormones to help us fight or flee, you see that is what our brain thinks is happening when we undergo chronic high stress, that we are in a life or death situation and need a rapid surge of energy to survive. The body then also releases cortisol that tells your body to replenish that energy that you often haven’t even used.”
This sounds great on the overall picture. But cortisol also promotes fat storage, which has the exact opposite effect of what you may have been hoping for. That stress-induced food binge you’ve probably devoured more times than you’d like to admit? Blame your brain.
What to Do: Breathe Better for Stress Relief
The Japanese are among the world’s fittest people, with a life expectancy 83.7, the highest on the planet. From this eastern comes the “Long Breath Diet,” which devotees say can indeed help you lose weight. If you want to breathe better and experience less stress, watch the video and techniques here.
Jill Johnson, the creator of the Oxycise, has a more scientific explanation: “The more oxygen our bodies use, the more fat we will burn,” she says, explaining how proper exercise and breathing does, in fact, boost your metabolism, resulting in weight loss.
What Is SculpSure and How Can It Help?
If you have tried everything and still nothing is working out in your favor, it may time to inquire about SculpSure.
Looking for a trusted place to go for help to get rid of your belly fat? SculpSure is the only noninvasivee fat reduction treatment we offer at BSG. It has the ability to target stubborn belly fat that just won’t go away. SculpSure has been cleared by the FDA, and at BSG, we have seen many success stories. Call us today to schedule a consultation, or find out how we can help you to achieve your fitness goals. Read our dispatch for more tips and suggestions for fitness and health.