How to Lose Unhealthy Belly Fat: Exercise Matters

A healthy diet is only part of the answer to losing unhealthy belly fat, exercise matters. You have to be able to lose the accumulated fat and more importantly, you have to be able to keep it off. Most people say that they lose pounds on a certain diet and then they almost always gain it back. For most people, gaining belly fat is far easier than losing that the excess fat. In order to burn fat, you have to eat right and exercise since they both can raise your metabolism.

Exercise Matters to Lose Belly Fat

You’ve done millions of stomach crunches and still no loss in the size of your waist. Don’t stop doing the crunches; you will be happy you did them. 

You have built up your abdominal muscles (abs); you can’t see them because the belly fat that is still there hiding the muscles. Stomach crunches won't burn off the belly fat. But once you do get it off, you will be able to see the muscles that all those crunches built.

Belly fat is stored energy. Calories are energy and are measured in kcals of energy. If you eat fewer calories than your daily energy requirements are, you will then start using the reserved or stored belly fat for that energy. In addition to a healthy diet, exercise helps you reduce belly fat.

You will read that exercise doesn’t matter, that you cannot possibly exercise enough to burn off that Big Mac you had for lunch. That is true. A half-hour of walking at 3.5 mph (1 mile in 17 minutes) will burn off 154 calories or equal to about one and a half slices of bread.

So exercise alone isn’t going to get rid of the belly fat. You have to combine lower calories with exercise, every day. And the lower calories have to come from healthier foods, nutrient-dense foods. 

There just aren’t magic diets that alone will automatically drop the excess fat from your middle. I’m not entirely sure some of these diets are even healthy, especially for a life-long way of eating.

You have to become more active and lower the number of calories, to a healthy amount. 

Do not starve yourself. Your body needs food, calories, and nutrients. Calories are energy, so when you consume energy, you need to use that energy or it will be stored as fat.

A woman shouldn’t eat less than 1200 calories per day and a man shouldn’t eat less than 1500 calories per day. You will lose weight the fewer calories you eat, but your body starts to think you are in a famine and will start to store fat.

Get active, even when watching TV or reading a book, use the exercise bike or treadmill. Walking is a great way to start working off the excess belly fat and calories. 

Build up to more strenuous aerobics. Exercise studies showed that men and women walking on a treadmill for 11 miles a week, for 8 months were able to stop further accumulation of belly fat.

The second group in this study walked for 17 miles on the treadmill for 8 months, prevented belly fat and also lost 8% of the belly fat. 

A third group who didn’t exercise saw body fat increase by 9% in the same time frame. Even a simple amount of exercise each day matters.

Strength Training

Strength training is as important if not more important as aerobic type exercise. As we age we start losing the muscles we had. Strength training will keep your muscle tone, which also burns fat.

Doing any type of resistance training as simple as dumbbell exercises and pushups can help you lose weight and cause you to not only gain muscle but also a lean body mass. Having more muscle also raises your metabolism, which means you will be burning calories even as you sit quietly or sleep.

Using weights to exercise is also very important for health as it builds bone density. As we age, our bones become less dense with makes us susceptible to bone breaks and even osteoporosis.

By lifting weights, we build our bone density and can greatly reduce the risk of getting osteoporosis. And you do not need to go to a gym, there are plenty of dumbbell and core exercises you can do at home.

Food Matters

There is an old saying that abs are made in the kitchen. All the exercise in the world will not help you if you continue to eat junk food, processed foods, and too much fat. 

 

The proper healthy food is what will fuel your body when you exercise. Make your food count.

Eat foods that are high in all the nutrients we need for health. Try to get most of your calories from plant foods like lentils and legumes and carbs like quinoa, brown rice, whole-grains and all kinds and colors of vegetables and fruits.

Lean meat can be healthy but does contain a lot of saturated fat, and fat is fat, so limit meat. If possible, in order to lose weight, use olive oil very sparingly if at all.

Oil is nothing but pure fat and will really add on the calories. Oil and fat have twice the amount of calories as do protein and carbohydrates. 

 

Don't worry, you will get plenty of protein and nutrients eating this way. You will also feel full and satisfied.

Watching Your Progress

When you start to lose weight and belly fat, you will want to see progress. Bathroom scales can be helpful and they can also be annoying. Other factors can change your weight through the day like water retention. You often hear the saying that muscle weighs more than fat.

That is not exactly true since 5 pounds is still 5 pounds. But 5 pounds of muscle takes up less space than does 5 pounds of fat. 

 

As you exercise while eating a healthy diet, you are reshaping your body. The scale might not show much change, but I would guess you look better and feel a lot better.

Measure your belly with a measuring tape and keep track, this will show you the best progress since you are trying to lose your belly fat in the first place. 

 

You will not lose belly fat quickly, but over time you will along with exercise lose it and feel much healthier.

Starting a healthy diet along with a simple to stick to fitness program will really help you lose the unhealthy belly fat and possibly start to reverse common health issues like diabetes and other inflammation-related illnesses.

Talk to Your Doctor First

Before you start an exercise program or a strict diet, talk to your doctor. Hopefully, your doctor can recommend an exercise program to go along with your healthier diet.

About the Author

Sam Montana is a certified Food Over Medicine instructor from the Wellness Forum Health Center and certified in optimal nutrition from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

© 2010-2019 Sam Montana