Friday, May 16, 2008

How To Melt Belly Fat Away Forever

The best way to get rid of belly fat is not a pill, or some plan to restrictive to maintain. If you are looking for some pill or restrictive diet plan, you will not experience the forever part. Research has shown maintaining weight loss long term requires that you develop the proper diet and exercise habits.

Have you ever heard the saying, 'Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you have fed him for a life time.' Pills and restrictive diets are like giving you a fish. If you want to keep the fat off you must learn the habits it takes to do it.

Every person is different and will require a different combination of foods and exercise to achieve results. That being said there are some basic truths that will work for everyone.

The first is plain old calorie restriction. However do not exceed a restriction of 20% below your maintenance level. What is that level? That is the point at which you do not gain or lose weight. It is different for everyone. the American College of Sports

Medicine (ACSM) has suggested 1200 calories as the minimal daily calorie level for women and 1800 as the minimum for men.

Why do you not want to go below that for any length of time? Your body will go into starvation mode. That means your metabolism slows down, you feel tired and you burn muscle as well as fat. Some studies have shown that resting metabolism can become depressed by as much as 45%, during severe calorie restriction.

So now we know about the diet side, what about the exercise side? You can not spot remove fat from the body. I wish it were not so, but it is. The only way to lose the belly is to lose fat in general. Some people it will com off the stomach faster then others. If you need some reasons to exercise and not just diet:

1. Exercise - aerobic and weight training - raises your metabolic rate.

2. Exercise creates a caloric deficit without triggering the starvation response.

3. Exercise is good for your health. Dieting is harmful to your health.

4. Exercise, especially weight training, signals your body to keep your muscle and not burn it for energy. Dieting without exercise can result in up to 50% of the weight loss to come from lean body mass.

5. Exercise increases fat-burning enzymes and hormones.

6. Exercise increases the cells sensitivity to insulin so that carbohydrates are burned for energy and stored as glycogen rather then being stored as fat.

Exercise can be anything that gets you up off that couch and keeps you moving. DO NOT work your abs every day, though. They need time to recover just like any other muscle. For you in a hurray I would suggest high intensity interval training, known as HIIT for short. You use this with running, jogging, tread mill, any aerobic work out. An example routine I would be:

Level 3: 5 minutes (warm-up)

Level 4: 1 minute (rest interval)

Level 7: 1 minute (work interval)

Level 4: 1 minute (recovery interval)

Level 7: 1 minute (work interval)

Level 4: 1 minute (recovery interval)

Level 7: 1 minute (work interval

Level 4: 1 minute (recovery interval)

Level 7: 1 minute (work interval)

Level 4: 1 minute (recovery interval)

Level 7: 1 minute (work interval)

Level 4: 1 minute (recovery interval)

Level 7: 1 minute (work interval)

Level 3: 5 minutes (cool down)

Why HIIT? Your metabolic rate stays elevated longer after the workout is over than steady state cardio. Yep you keep burning at a high rate longer that with normal cardio and therefore burn more calories!

There you have it some basic truths that should help anyone melt away that belly fat away and keep it gone.

Alton Morris has struggled with weight problems his whole life. I have been actively researching an answer for several years now. Interested in reading more? Come to my web page Secrets of Permanent Weight Loss

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