When people start to exercise and they begin to live a healthier lifestyle, they usually want to lose their stomach.  Everyone inherently wants to have a flat stomach, this is promoted in the culture when you see male models with six pack abs or female models with flat stomachs.  The reason why this is desired among most people is because having a flat stomach is a sign of healthiness.  Let’s talk about this shows signs of healthiness.

Why Fat around the Stomach is Dangerous

There are two main types of fat in the abdomen, subcutaneous fat which is the fat below the skin and is located all over your body.  The other type of fat is called visceral fat, this fat is located deeper in your body, it cushions the organs in your abdomen, researched has linked high amount of this fat with conditions like type 2 diabetes and heart disease.  The visceral fat in your abdomen is the most dangerous place to have fat, the other places in your body are not as destructive, so you must fight hard to lose the belly fat.

Being able to Lose Fat around your Stomach

For men, a waist circumference below 37in is ‘low risk’, 37-40in is ‘high risk’ and more than 40in is ‘very high risk’. For women, below 31.5in is ‘low risk’, 31.5-34.6in is high risk and more than 34.6in is very high risk.  Many people want to be able to target their stomach for fat loss without losing fat anywhere else, this is not possible, unless by surgery.  You cannot control where you lose fat, like you cannot control where you gain fat, your genetics control these things. But if you continue to lose fat your body will eventually lose the fat where you are targeting, it may lose it 1^st or it may be the 3^rd part of your body that loses fat, but it will go eventually.

                                                     How to Shrink your Stomach

Even though it is not possible to target the fat in your stomach to lose weight, it is possible to shrink the size of your stomach. The way to do this is food portion control.  Your stomach is a muscle that stretches according to how much food it is holding, so if you overeat you will have a big stomach.  When you are overweight you are constantly overeating so your stomach is always filled with food and is always overstretched.  If you significantly cut your food portions where your stomach doesn’t stretch, you will have a smaller stomach.  You will eliminate that extra bulge in your stomach.  This is difficult to do because the nerves in your stomach is attached to your brain communicating when you are full, which depends on how much your stomach has stretched.  If your body is accustomed to your stomach stretching a particular size, and you eat less than that, the nerves will send signals to your brain that you are not full and you should continue eating.  You have to ignore those signals, you have to give your body a little time to adjust to your stomach not stretching as much. Your nerves will then send new signals to your brain that your stomach is not stretching as much and your brain will adjust, this adjustment may take 1 to 2 weeks.  The eating less will quickly shrink the size of your stomach but it will also cut the amount of calories that you are eating overall, which will contribute to long term fat loss.

Foods that Add to Belly Fat

Eating lots of carbs, especially process carbs contribute to belly fat.  The reason for this is it is very easy to overeat carbs. Eating rice, bread, etc, can be difficult to stop eating, therefore it will really easy to expand your stomach and add a lot of extra calories in your body, which contributes to belly fat.  Drinking alcohol contributes to belly fat. Both alcohol and fat are broken down by the liver, but alcohol, since it’s considered poison by the body will be broken down first, and the fat will not be broken down until later.  So if you are constantly drinking alcohol, the fat in your body is not being broken down, which contributes to belly fat retention.  That is why there is a term called beer belly, not only does the alcohol prevent fat from being broken down, the carbs in the beer expands your stomach, which creates a big potbelly. Overall unhealthy eating causes belly fat because it contributes to the gaining of fat all over the body, which does go to the stomach area.

                                               Other things that can Shrink your Belly

Doing core exercise does contribute to a small degree to the shrinking of your stomach.  When you build muscle in the body it does make that body part leaner.  Doing core exercises will not drastically shrink your stomach size like does eating healthy, but it will contribute a small amount. General exercising, specifically cardio, does contribute to overall fat loss, which contributes to stomach fat loss.  It is very difficult to lose fat when you are eating unhealthy, even if you are exercising, but with a healthy diet and exercise, fat loss will happen quickly.