How to Lose a Pot Belly

How to Lose a Pot Belly? A pot belly is a collection of fat around the abdominal area. If you're tired of having those extra pounds hanging over your jeans or are getting sick of beer-belly quips from friends and relatives, you may want to take steps to reduce (or hopefully even lose altogether) this unwelcome pudge. Here are some tips for how to lose a pot belly.
Difficulty: Moderately Challenging 

Step 1 - Limit your intake of beer and other alcoholic drinks. 

Step 2 - Develop proper posture. Stand erect, walk tall, sit straight and avoid slouching. 

Step 3 - Eat dinner at least 2 to 3 hours before going to bed. 

Step 4 - Add exercise to your daily routine. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. 

Step 5 - Walk as much as you can. Brisk walking is considered the best exercise for all age groups. 

Step 6 - Do abdominal crunches and stomach exercises to tone your muscles and help trim the area. This won't get rid of the fat, but it can start to improve your stomach profile. 

Step 7 - Sign up for an appointment with a fitness specialist or personal trainer to set up an exercise schedule designed especially for you. 

Step 8 - Improve your eating habits. Minimize fat intake. Eat out less. Avoid junk foods and fried foods; instead, choose salads, lean proteins, whole grains and fruits. Drink lots of fluids (8 to 10 glasses of water a day) while avoiding sugary carbonated sodas. 

Step 9 - Tell a trusted friend or family member about your efforts. Once you tell someone else, you'll feel more committed to making a change, and you can check in that person with progress reports as your belly shrinks. 

Tips & Warnings; Avoid crash diets; they're harmful for the body and the results are usually temporary.

CONTROLLING YOUR CALORIES INTAKE

Weight loss is about controlling your calories intake versus the calories you burn or use up. In simple terms, calories are the units of energy contained within any food. When we consume food the energy within the food is released and is either used up or stored in your body as fat. The body needs certain amount of fat reserve to survive or the body can not function properly (in extreme cases it can even be fatal). Therefore, it is important to balance the calories you take in against the calories you burn. A a safe weight loss diet will almost always cater for the ratio between calories intake and the amount used.

How do you count the calories you eat or drink? 

Counting calories is important to any effective weight loss diets. Most foods we buy from supermarkets have their calories per 100g shown on their packaging (whether it is meat, chicken, duck or bread etc.). So there really is no excuse for over consumption of excess calories.

If, however you tend to purchase raw foods or vegetables that do not have their calories displayed on them, then you can either visit Calorie Calculator, or, there are plenty of books in the market that detail exactly how much calories each raw ingredient contains. On average women and men's calories intake should be 2000 for women per day, 2500 for men per day.

So, as you go about your daily routine, you will be burning either 2000 or 2500 calories per day (depending on your gender). Therefore to achieve an effective weight loss diet, you would need to make sure your daily calorie intake is less than either 2000 (if you are female) or 2500 (if you are male).

However, if you are exercising (for example jogging for weight loss, swimming for weight loss or just normal walking to help you loose weight) then you will need to increase your daily calorie intake slightly more than the recommended daily calories intake stated above.

For a weight loss program to be safe, your daily calories intake should only slightly be less than the daily calories you burn (about 200 calories is ideal). If you create too big a gap between the calories you burn and the calories you take in then you will ultimately either harm your body and/or would more than likely put the weight straight back on as soon as you are off the diet!

Also, do not be tempted to achieve the "calorie deficiency" in your body by starving yourself. Weight loss achieved through too great a calorie deficiency in your body will result in some serious health consequences. A drastic deficiency in calories will have the following consequences:

a. The body's metabolic rate slows down to conserve energy (and its for this reason that wrong weight loss diets will actually cause you to put on weight as soon as you come off them). Once your metabolic rate slows down then as soon as you eat any food, a large amount of the food's energy will be stored as body fat! This is because the body is trying to safe guard itself from the stages listed below.

b. Your body will then start to "cannibalize" its muscles, any carbohydrate in your body and the stored fat to sustain its normal function.

c. Then the body will drastically reduce the supply of nutrients to non-essential organs and parts (such as nails, hair etc).

If the calorie deficiency is still too great for the body to cope with, it will then start to shut down more vital organs to ensure that the critical organs can at least survive for a little longer. So the body will sacrifice organs such as liver or kidneys to sustain the heart and the brain.

Ultimately, it will not have enough energy to sustain the heart or the brain either, and they too will eventually fail to function. This is exactly why people who are anorexic are at risk!

GUIDE TO LOOSING FAT

Loosing fat is about burning more calories than you take in. However, Fat Loss can be accelerated if you adopt a Weight Loss Lifestyle. 

If you would like to significantly accelerate your fat loss program, there are a number of changes you need to make to your lifestyle, these are:

a. Give up Alcohol ; Alcohol acts as a prohibitory in your bloodstream, stopping your body burning fat as fuel. Alcohol also leads to muscle loss, which results in the lowering of your metabolic rate.

b. Eat fresh fruit rather than fruit juice ; Although fruit juice is healthy, it is not recommended due to its sugar and the excess calories. Its much less fattening, and healthier, if you got your vitamins and minerals from the actual whole fruit rather than the fruit juice.

c. Stop eating out ; When we eat out, we have very little control over the ingredient used in your order. In addition, we tend to try to finish our plate when we eat out. However, when you cook at home, you not only know exactly what ingredient is used, you also tend to eat smaller portions.

d.Eat food with low Glycaemic Index (GI) value ; Using Glycaemic Index for weight loss is a very safe and effective way of loosing weight. Refined foods such as white bread, white pasta, white rice etc. have high Glycaemic Index (GI) value which means you will feel hungry soon after you have eaten. This means you will get a craving to eat more often which effects your daily calorie intake.

e. Do not eat carbohydrate after 5PM ; Most people tend not to exercise enough in the evening, and considering the metabolic rate slows down in the evenings, eating carbohydrate after 5PM is not a good idea. This is because the energy in the carbohydrates would not be used up (as it would in mid day when you are still active) before you go to bed. This therefore will result in the excess energy being stored as fat.

f. Eat often and a little ; The best and the most important fat loss tip is to eat often but a little. This will result in your body speeding up its metabolic rate and burning the stored fat. So loose weight by eating often and a little! It also puts less of a strain on the digestive system.

g. Eat a healthy breakfast ; Research has shown that the people who skip breakfast tend to find it hard to shift their stored fat. This is because eating a healthy breakfast will help to speed up your metabolic rate.

h. Drink iced water ; Drinking iced water will help you loose weight in several ways. Firstly, your body needs to burn calories to heat up the iced water to your body's temperature. Secondly, quite often people feel hungry not because they are hungry but because they are thirsty. Thirdly, it helps to keep the kidneys functioning properly which stops the liver working over-time to help the kidneys function properly.

i. Exercise before a meal ; By exercising before a meal, you will speed up your metabolic rate, which will result in your body not storing the calories you are about to eat as fat.

j. Drink Green tea ; Research has shown that drinking Green Tea will slightly increase your metabolic rate. Its therefore good idea to drink green tea half an hour before a meal.

k. Relax ; Stress produces the hormone Cortisol, which causes the body to store fat.

l. Exercise often and regular ; Stay away from ready made meals and junk foods which effect weight loss!

m. Eat weight loss foods ; Weight loss foods are foods that promote weight loss by speeding up your metabolic rate.