How to Lose Stomach Fat

Learning how to lose stomach fat starts with understanding how your stomach fat got there in the first place. As a general rule (keeping in mind almost all general rules have their exceptions), fat grows on your stomach - and other places - because you consume more calories than your muscles burn off. So, to lose stomach fat, all you have to do is make sure you burn off more calories than you take in.

Oh, if that could only be as simple as it sounds.

Losing stomach fat is tough because we live in an age in which our muscles don't get as much work as our ancestor's muscles did. A lot of jobs today don't require any more physical activity than tapping your fingers on a keyboard or holding a phone to your ear (and now, with earpieces/microphones, we don't even do that).

Ways to lose stomach fat

You already know that exercise burns fat and also provides a lot of other health-related benefits like lowering both your blood pressure and your cholesterol levels. But no matter how well appreciate its importance, you just can't seem to find the time to do it. So what dietary and nutritional options are open to you?

Let's assume you're not interested in becoming a vegetarian, which is probably the healthiest, most effective, and quickest way to lose stomach fat.

Your best bet is to identify the foods and eating habits that pack on the pounds. Avoid these - or do your best to limit them - and you can lose stomach fat without giving up everything you like all the time.

Here's how.

Know the difference between good fats and bad fats

Saturated fats come from animals. Not only will these give you stomach fat, but if you eat a lot of them you'll probably also get high blood pressure (also known as hypertension) and high cholesterol levels. Keep these to a minimum.

Trans fats are found in pre-packaged foods, processed convenience foods, and most of the fried food you get from fast food restaurants. foods baked goods or fast food. All too often lunch and or dinner consists of fast foods or processed convenience foods that are loaded with trans fats - which not only stick to your ribs, but also expands your waistline while narrowing your arteries. Avoid trans fats as much as you can.

Polyunsaturated fats and monounsaturated fats can are fats that are not as bad for you - in fact, they may have some actual health benefits. These fats come from vegetable oils, fish oils, sunflowers, peanuts, etc. For more detail click on cholesterol lowering diet foods and a healthy blood pressure diet.

Dump the junk

Stay away from candy, cookies, donuts and other baked goods, snacks like potato chips, sodas and other foods that fall into the "junk food" category. These add fat to your stomach while offering very little nutritional value in return.

Junk food is usually high in trans fats, processed sugar and carbohydrates - all of which raise blood sugar levels. Worst of all, they usually increase your appetite.

It's best to leave these foods on your grocery store shelves and not even bring them into your home. Stick to healthy snacks like fruits and nuts. The good news: researchers have found that dark chocolate helps reduce cholesterol. Just make sure it's dark chocolate, not milk chocolate (which is bad for you).

Watch out for white

Foods that are white ort off-white in color tend to be high in starches and bad carbohydrates. Anything made from refined flour is probably going to add to your stomach fat. It can also lead to poor digestion and bloating. Bad carbohydrates also raise your insulin level, which slows down your metabolism. When your metabolism slows down, you burn fewer calories, and add more stomach fat.

Unfortunately some of our favorite foods fall into this category: white bread, baked potatoes and french fries, white rice and many kinds of pasta.

There are some more alternatives that are more healthy: whole wheat bread and pasta, brown rice, and sweet potatoes.

Limit your alcohol consumption

A lot of recent research seems to indicate that drinking a little red wine helps raise your HDL or "good cholesterol" level. But in general, alcohol contains a lot of calories and zero nutrition. All calories that come from alcohol are likely to turn into fat.

2-3 drinks a day - whether beer, wine or "hard stuff - will add hundreds of calories to your daily diet, and make losing your stomach fat that much harder.

Conclusion

It's conventional wisdom that we all tend to add stomach fat as we get older. Finding ways to lose stomach fat also seems more difficult as we age. There's no question that it takes dedication and discipline, especially when we're bombarded by hundreds of commercial messages daily to eat things that are bad for us.

If you really want to learn how to lose stomach fat, it means you have to learn how to resist temptation. That's not easy.

But if you can do it, and also find time to get some regular exercise, you'll be well on your way to a thinner physique and a flatter stomach.