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Why your tummy fat ain't going nowhere

Fitness
 Photo: Courtesy

Why your tummy fat ain't going nowhere

If you are one of those people who have been having problems banishing belly fat, they are a few things you need to know about why it won’t budge.

Your exercise isn't challenging enough

To remove stubborn fat around your tummy area, you need to increase your exercise beyond what you are used to. Exercise at full intensity because the end goal is to burn more calories, and high intensity does just that. Take your exercise and especially cardio up a notch and for as long as you can.

You are consuming a lot of processed foods

Meals like chips, pizzas, crackers, refined grains like white bread, donuts as well as refined sugars in sweetened drinks and desserts somehow increase inflammations in our bodies. Stomach fats is highly associated with such inflammations, so eating too much of such processed foods will hinder your ability to lose tummy fat. Natural meals like whole grain, vegetables and fruits are full of antioxidants, which also have anti-inflammatory properties and may therefore actually prevent bulging tummy because of fat deposition. This is to say, you need to increase your natural food intake and completely reduce consumption of what is considered as junk foods, refined grains and sugars in any food product.

You are not doing the correct exercise

As much as cardio is good for you, that nice regular jog, swimming, cycling or skipping; all these won’t do much for your waist line alone. You also need a combination of strength and toning exercise using weight and cardio-vascular training. Strength training increases your body toning process which also sets your body up to burn more fat. A highly recommended workout time for all these are around 250 minutes of moderate intensity workout or 125 minutes of highly intensity exercises a week. This should be a three to four day programme of moderate to high intense workout per week to be precise.

Also, stop doing so many crunches in your workouts. You need to focus on doing functional exercise that uses all muscle groups around your tummy area like the abdominal, pelvis, lower back and the obliques (muscles on the sides of the abdominals). The more you use these muscles, the higher your chances of burning more calories while you exercise.

Stressful situations

Whatever your stress may be, be it your kids or bills, too much of such can hinder you from dropping a few kilos. This is because the hormones (cortisol) in response to such situations, increases the rate at which fat clings to your body as fat cells become bigger. Exercise regularly, eat well, and always have a good night sleep for at least seven hours.

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