2. Talk to ... ]]> There are plenty of reasons that you might be looking for ways to quickly trim belly fat. Perhaps you want to look good for an important occasion. Perhaps you have decided that it is time to start working on getting back in shape and you want to get a jump start on your stomach region.

It is likely that you’ve been exercising on a regular basis and doing your best to eat a healthy diet, but you still have some pudge. Here are a few ways to help you trim your belly fat:

1. Stop lying around! Instead of simply watching television or movies when you get home from work, use that time to exercise while you watch! Exercises like squats, lunges and crunches can all be done at home and without any special equipment. You need to work your whole body to really burn belly fat, but focusing a little bit of extra attention on your abdominal region isn’t going to hurt anything.

2. Talk to your doctor about cutting your calorie intake for a little while. This will make your body burn its fat reserves to keep your energy level up while it adjusts to a drop in calories. You don’t want to keep up this drastically low calorie count for very long and you should talk to your doctor before you do the cut, but this can be a great way to jump start your body’s fat loss.

3. Do your best to sit and stand up straight all the time. Instead of slouching or hunching during a meeting or while you are at work or even while you are hanging out at home, sit up straight! Sitting up straight requires energy and energy requires the burning of calories. While it’s true that sitting up straight won’t burn as many calories as a workout, it will still burn a few calories a day. Plus, proper posture can do quite a bit to mask the appearance of body fat.

4. Try sticking to a raw food diet for a while. This is an especially good idea if you are wary about drastically cutting your calorie intake. Raw food is far more nutritious than cooked food. Raw food is also easier for your body to process than cooked food. There are even plenty of foods that can be eaten raw that have gained the reputation as “fat attackers.” Fruits and vegetables are your first line of defense when you want to get healthy and lose fat.

Keep in mind that it is possible to trim belly fat without doing anything drastic. Truly getting rid of your “tummy” will take time and effort but it is possible. Do some research and talk to your doctor. You’ll find a great belly fat loss program in no time!

4. Machine-based ab exercises

All of these abdominal exercises do not burn belly fat and some of them are even dangerous!

1. Sit-ups

Sit-up is the ... ]]> Are you wasting time performing countless of ab exercises that don’t help you lose belly fat or develop six pack abs? Do you know that some of these abdominal exercises do more harm than good?

Exercise is important. But it’s not the only determining factor in developing ripped or six pack abs. Everyone has abdominal muscles. If they are covered with fat, no amount of ab exercises can get rid of it. If you want to see visible abs, the fat has to go. Nutrition or diet is the key to losing belly fat. Ab exercises only condition the underlying muscles.

Here are 4 abdominal exercises to avoid:

1. Sit-ups

2. Crunches

3. Torso twists or machine-based twisting exercises

4. Machine-based ab exercises

All of these abdominal exercises do not burn belly fat and some of them are even dangerous!

1. Sit-ups

Sit-up is the most popular and yet, the worst abdominal exercise. Why is it so? When performing a sit-up, the ilipsoas muscle often does the majority of the work while the abs are not optimally recruited.

The ilipsoas muscle originates on the lower back. The sit-up pulls on the lower back with each repetition, especially when the feet are held down or anchored, or the repetitions are performed quickly in a jerky manner. Too many sit-ups can result in strength imbalance between ilipsoas muscle and abdominal, poor posture and lower back pain.

2. Crunches

Crunches are another popular ab exercise, but they do not get rid of belly fat or develop six pack abs. Doing too many crunches, too often, can be harmful. Whenever you crunch, spinal flexion causes compression of disks between your veterbrae. Over-crunching can lead to hunch back (poor posture) and herniated disc (lower back pain). This can be compared to someone rounding his back without bending knees when picking up something from the floor, and thus hurting his back.

3. Torso twists or machine-based twisting exercises

Contrary to what many people believe, torso twists, either with stick or machine, and side bends with dumbbells, do not get rid of love handles or burn belly fat. Hence, they are no good for reducing the waistline and are not effective for developing obliques.

4. Machine-based ab exercises

Like any of the above mentioned exercises, you don’t lose belly fat or develop sexy abs by working with ab machines. Typically, machines with grabbing handles on the side or in front of your body for support are ineffective. As you become tired, you tend to use your arms and lower back (prone to injury) to perform the abdominal exercise while leaving out your abs. As the machine stabilizes the body, your stabilizer muscles are not trained to work together with other core muscles. Excessive use of ab machines can lead to strength imbalances and injuries.

Often people starve to lose belly fat, thinking that starving will help in burning calories in the body. It is wrong thing to starve yourself and exercising with a great ... ]]> Are you one of the persons who are struggling to lose belly fat and trying to find out the best way to lose fat quickly? Accumulation of the fat in you belly may result due to many reasons. While you try to lose the belly fat by doing exercises, you must simultaneously consider the type and amount of intake of food that will add to your body fat. It has been proven by the science that your metabolic rate accounts to burning of fat. Increasing the metabolic rate can greatly help in losing belly fat or any other fat on your body. Here are some the best ways to lose belly fat quickly and effectively in 30 days.

Sit up’s: Doing sit up’s can be an easiest and less time consuming way to lose belly fat for achieving good results. Belly fat is nothing but a stored energy. If you want to lose the fat you have to burn excess calories than your actual consumption. For getting fast results and lose fat, sit up’s can be considered as an effective exercise for every type of body.

One of the most common reasons for increasing the fat is the intake of fried food. Fried food contains less nutrient value and mostly empty calories, which finally add up in increasing fat in your body. Hence in order to stop the increase in body fat or to lose belly fat, stay away from taking fried food as far as possible.

Usually people have habits to take late night snacks. This habit mostly adds up in increasing the fat especially the belly fat. Because after taking late night snacks people usually do nothing that will be considered as physical activity that helps in burning fats. So if you are one of the people having such habit of taking late night snack, avoid taking late night snacks, which will help to lose belly fat.

Often people starve to lose belly fat, thinking that starving will help in burning calories in the body. It is wrong thing to starve yourself and exercising with a great effort, since it will not help in burning the fat but on the contrary you will find yourself hungry and drained.

On the other hand many people adopt the strategy to take little food but do no exercise. This will also not help to lose belly fat because with insufficient food intake your body metabolism is slowed down to compensate the lack of food and the rate of burning fat is also slowed down. Instead, if you avoid taking food that is rich in calories and make a habit of regular exercise, it will help a lot and you will get desired results in losing the fats. At the same time, try to intake protein rich diet, which helps in developing muscle mass with no superfluous fat, which will help in burning more calories. Drinking lots of water can also be considered as an important factor in burning calories, since hydration helps in burning more calories along with developing muscle mass.

A similar way to lose fat is to take food in reduced portions and doing exercise daily. As long as the food that you eat is nutritious and its amount is smaller, you can eat what you like. As you are eating in smaller portion you can enjoy all the tastes that you like and since you are eating less and doing optimum exercise, your body will burn fats without having any side effect as in the case of starvation.

Another effective method to lose belly fat is to perform full body exercise. Your metabolic rate can be increased up to 48 hours by doing multi-joint exercises that include legs, back and chest. In this process the fat burning hormones in your body are released which prevent the fat from accumulating.

Once your plan for right workouts to lose belly fat is ready and you are daily going on accordingly it, you should also take care to eat right. When you feed your body with right food that contains more nutrients and fewer calories, you will be sure that you will lose belly fat in 30 days. Also the energy required by your body in doing exercise can be provided from this type of food.

It’s a common mistake in most people who want visible abs to do abdominal exercise only. Sure, you develop abdominal muscle but it’s only hidden under a layer of fat. In fact, you may find your ab getting bigger as a result of the increased muscle mass.

If you want visible abs, your focus should be on reducing excess body fat.

Low body fat = ripped abs

You achieve low body fat by burning more calories than you consume.

Here are 4 tips for losing belly fat effectively and permanently.

1. Interval training

Research has shown that interval training is more superior to slow, steady cardio for fat loss. Your metabolism remains elevated post workout, thus resulting in the after burn effect. Effectively, you continue to burn calories even after an interval workout but not after a long, steady cardio workout.

Also, if you don’t have long hours to spare in the gym, interval workouts enable you to achieve the most fat loss in the least amount of time. Some examples of interval workouts are wind sprints, hill sprints, swimming sprints and speed rope jumping. You can also do intervals on a treadmill, stationary bicycle, stairclimber, rower and elliptical machines.

2. Nutrition

Proper nutrition is the key to fat loss. No matter how much or hard you train, you’ll never get visible abs if you live on crisps, sodas, fast food, cookies and other crap. Don’t fall for any of the low carb, low fat, high protein and other fad diets. Instead, eat a healthy and well balanced diet that includes various food groups – carbohydrates, protein, fats, vitamins and minerals.

Eat 5-6 small meals a day to keep your energy levels stable. Choose wholesome, natural foods, preferably organic, and avoid processed foods. Avoid refined and simple carbs that contain white flour and white sugar. Your main sources of carbohydrates are fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

Include a source of high quality, lean protein with every meal. There are several benefits to consuming lean protein. Your body burns more calories from digesting protein than carbs or fats. Protein keeps hunger at bay and gives you a feeling of satiety. It is also necessary for building lean muscle that controls your metabolism and burns calories.

Drink plenty of water to stay hydrated and to speed up fat loss.

Consume healthy fats from avocado, flax seed (or flax oil), nuts, seeds, fish (or fish oil), etc. Essential fatty acids help to regulate appetite and burn fat.

3. Resistance training

Resistance training not only sculpts your body but is important for building muscles. Like interval training, it raises your post workout metabolism so your body continues to burn calories even when you are doing nothing.

Aim for low rep resistance training, i.e. 8 reps per exercise, as it has been shown to boost metabolism after the workout.

If your goal is to burn fat, don’t isolate your body parts by training certain muscle groups using single-joint movements. Isolation exercises such as leg extension, bicep curl and tricep kickback burn little body fat. Shift your focus from single-joint to multi-joint muscle movements such as squats, lunges, split squats, pushups, chinups, rows, step ups and deadlifts. These are full body movements that work many muscles at one time, burn more calories during each workout and increase your metabolism post workout.

4. Reduce stress

Stress has been associated with belly fat. In stressful situations, your body releases a stress hormone called cortisol. Excess cortisol production leads to build up of belly fat. A fat belly is more than ugly looking. Accumulated fat in the abdomen increases your risk of developing high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and stroke.

Be aware of your stress level and learn to manage it through yoga, meditation, qi gong, tai chi and other stress reduction techniques. The truth is there’s no quick fix for losing belly fat. Forget about ab gadgets, diets or magic pills that promise to give you lean abs. They are nothing but scams.

The good news is that you can attain a set of lean or six pack abs through a healthy diet plan and effective training program that promote fat loss.

You make the choice.

The Take-Home Message is: The very best way to burn belly fat is with a combination of effective strength training and fat-blasting intervals.

It's quick, it's effective, and best of all, ... ]]>  

As a rapid fat-loss specialist, I’m often asked, “What is the best way to lose fat and flatten my belly?”

Everyone wants to know if resistance training is better than aerobics. Or if intervals are more effective than traditional cardio. To say that we’ve experimented with them all would be an understatement. Working at so many college research facilities as well as commercial gyms has given me a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn’t.

Now, we have put together some amazingly effective programs. The rub is that most people have about 45 minutes 3 times a week to exercise. So everything in this article is geared for the working man or woman who has only a few lunch hours a week to devote to exercise.

Since most people don’t have ten hours a week to devote to exercise, the programs they find in mainstream fitness rags won’t cut it. No fat loss method in the world will work if someone can’t find the time to do it.

But here’s the good news: We don’t need ten hours a week to lose all of that stubborn belly fat! Read on to find out how…

First, warm up with bodyweight exercises. Second, use resistance training to create a very high metabolic demand. Third, finish your workout with interval training to burn as much fat as possible. This whole plan gets you out of the gym in less than an hour!

Start with five minutes of bodyweight exercises to prepare your body for the workout ahead. This is far more effective than sitting on a bike for five minutes, which won’t get you ready for anything except more sitting on a bike. During your warm-up, I like to include bodyweight exercises that fix any postural imbalances from work or sports. This means you not only get warmed up and lose fat, you also eliminate low back pain!

And then you’ll head on over to resistance training. Perform these in a “superset” style. What “superset” means is to perform two exercises back to back, with very little rest in between.

Supersets will greatly reduce the amount of time you need for your workout, while giving you even better fat loss results! Resistance training for fat loss takes about 20 minutes. You’ll use basic exercises, such as lunges and bench press. And sometimes you’ll even use more bodyweight exercises. It all depends on what YOUR body needs.

To finish up, you’ll go for about 20 minutes of interval training. A quick warm-up, followed by short intervals interspersed with lower-intensity recovery periods. Cap it off with a quick cool-down and you’re done.

Add that all up: 5 minute warm-up plus 20 minute resistance training plus 20 minute intervals equals a complete workout in just 45 minutes.

Go ahead an compare this to what most people will do in the gym. They’ll spend their whole 45 minutes on one piece of cardio equipment. That might burn calories, but it doesn’t build a better body. Really, think about the “Cardio Crew” at your gym. I’d be willing to bet that many of them have spent hours on the treadmill for the past two years, yet they look exactly the same! (And sometimes even heavier!)

Cardio has a lot of downsides, such as poor results and injuries from doing too much work. Which would you rather do? A fun, effective, 45 minute workout or long, boring cardio sessions?

You make the choice.

The Take-Home Message is: The very best way to burn belly fat is with a combination of effective strength training and fat-blasting intervals.

It’s quick, it’s effective, and best of all, it’s fun!