One of the very features in women that often gives them a unique shape is a flat tummy. But in men, you will wonder if a big tummy earns them money.
Well, in some customs, their is an erroneous assumption that people with big tummy are wealthy.
While ladies are expected to have flat tummy, some have got some fat around their belly to battle.
It is not a good health marker, as having fat in the abdomen area increases chances of some chronic diseases.
Indeed, for both sexes, losing belly fat is several times more difficult than gaining it.
But if you do the right things, as we will recommend here, you will be surprised about how simple getting a flat tummy is.
There are different things an individual could do to make the fat in the belly area go away.
We will break these down into 4 and explain how to go about them.
Before we delve into the things to do, understand that you need to know your ideal waistline.
This helps you know the flat tummy size that you are targeting.
Here Are Other Resources To Guide You
- This BMI Chart Will Tell You If Your Current Weight Is Healthy
- See How Many Calories You Should Eat Per Day
- How To Lose Belly Fat After Child Birth
Most importantly, you need to know your target for you to get you ideal result.
1. Food And Flat Tummy
We will begin with talking about food because it is the reason everyone gains belly fat.
Your kind of diet often reflects in how big your tummy becomes overtime.
If you load up calories, eating more than you burn per day, the excess calories stay in your body (1).
Over time, you will begin to gain weight in your belly area and other parts of your body.
Unfortunately, people think that high calorie is only in most high carbohydrate meals.
Processed foods, sweetened drinks and fried foods contain more calories than some carbohydrate meals.
Of course, most people do not know because they do not read the label of what they buy to know the amount of calories in it.
While food can raise your belly fat and make the dream of a flat tummy difficult, adjusting how much calories you take per day would give you the result you seek.
Understand Your Calorie Count
The first thing everyone who wants to lose weight should do is know the amount of calorie they need by day.
To find this out, you need to know what your ideal weight should be.
Basically, your Body Mass Index is one of the reliable markers of what your ideal weight should be.
Once you know this, you will then get to know what your calorie intake should be each day.
Finding this out will help you reshape your diet to meet your new goal.
See how to calculate your calorie requirement per day.
Kindly bear in mind that for you to get the flat tummy you desire, you will begin by going less than the calorie you need per day.
Your body will then draw from the fat load in your body and convert it to energy.
This way, you will begin to experience a drop in your tummy size.
The Right Diets For Flat Tummy
There are diets that promote flat tummy and you should give attention to them to get what you seek.
Remove Processed Foods
First, remove, as much as possible, from your diet, processed foods with high calories. Reduce the amount of oil you use when you prepare your meal (2).
French fries, white bread and other items that are processed should be removed from your meal plan.
Avoid sweetened drinks and instead take more water.
Add Whole Grain, Vegetables, Fruits
High fibre foods (whole grains), vegetables and fruits should be your focus at this time.
These foods will help reduce the calorie you take up and also help your body convert the stored fat to energy (3).
When you increase intake of whole grains, you reduce how much food you eat per day.
Whole grain meals increase satiety, satiation, energy excretion from stool, and energy expenditure simultaneously decreasing energy absorption and fat storage.
Vegetables and fruits are rich in fibre and they help clean the colon, ensuring that fat do not hang around.
They also contain compounds that aid digestion and regulate how nutrients are used in your body.
Also, in replacing your sweetened drinks, add yoghurt, protein shake and smoothies that are not high in calories.
According to studies, protein shakes may help reduce waist circumference (4), (5).
On the other hand, yoghurts are rich in probiotics – live bacteria – that play a big role in weight loss and weight management (6)
2. Cardio, Tummy Targeted Exercises Can Aid Flat Tummy
Furthermore, another thing that aids weight gain is poor movement.
This reduces the amount of calories that an individual is able to use up each day.
In fact, studies have linked sedentary lifestyle to obesity (7).
Low level of exercise makes the system retain most of the food we eat.
Also, a sedentary lifestyle contributes to terrible dietary patterns (8).
The truth is that in situation where people sit for too long, they often snack on unhealthy foods.
This behaviour, in turn, increases their weight.
However, studies have shown that movements aid how much calories your body burns per day.
For instance, cardio or aerobic exercise, cold help burn more calories and lower your belly fat.
In different studies, researchers found that this form of exercise is very effective at strengthening your midsection (9), (10), (11) .
Also, doing different exercises that help you get a flat tummy would be necessary as your pursue a flat tummy.
Planking, sit ups, and lifting small weights would strengthen the muscles in your stomach area and also aid fat burning.
While cardio exercise and aerobics can help you reduce the fat around your abdomen, it is important to note that immediate result may not come.
It takes consistency and diligence for tummy trimming exercises to work.
After the first few days, you are likely to have pains in the areas that are receiving the pressure, but that should not make you quite.
It is a way that nature tests your resilience and this is why we talk about this more elaborately in coming paragraphs.
3. Lower Stress level And Get Enough Sleep
Sadly, not many persons can figure that stress could be the reason they are gaining weight.
Stress can trigger so many diseases. It can make you over eat or consume anything excessively even when you are not hungry (12) (13).
Also, when you are stressed, your body will produce cortisol, a stress hormone.
This hormone increases appetite and make your body store fat in your belly (14), (15), (16).
For sleep, people deprive themselves of sleep in order to meet the demands of life.
But this is another thing that could contribute to why they now have belly fat to battle.
According to studies, if you are an adult that gets less than 5 hours of sleep per night, you would increase the risk of gaining weight (17) (18).
Also, in women, short sleep duration is consistently linked to increased waist size, compared to those who get a good night’s sleep (19), (20).
You see, it is important that you watch your stress level and also get adequate sleep daily.
For adults, an 8-hour sleep time per night is recommended.
4. Stickability
If you put your hands on the plough and look back, you are not fit for the kingdom. This is true for anyone who wants to lose belly fat.
Seriously, the fact that you are not seeing result immediately does not mean that it is not working.
Women often run to the mirror to check results even few days into the application of our recommended solution.
Those who lack stickability often relapse in trying when it seems like result is not coming.
Remember that it took years for your tommy to get to where it is. it will likely not take few days or weeks to blast the tummy.
It is usually a gradual process and this is where persistence and diligence come in.
These two put together, with sustained exercises and diets recommended earlier, will bring the needed result.
Also, you can talk to our health coach on the diet combination here and please, share this article with your friends and loved ones.