9 Steps to Lose Your Belly (BASED ON SCIENCE)

So you’re looking for effective ways to blast away that belly fat? And you don’t want to waste your time on things that don’t work so you can get this done as fast as possible.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of quick fixes all over the internet that just doesn’t deliver the results they promise.

So today I want to give you 9 tips to lose that belly fat based on science. These are steps that scientists recommend you take so you can reduce your belly fat over time.

Check out my client Scott ’s transformation where he lost a whole bunch of fat.

The first step is to concentrate on burning fat from your whole body rather than just your belly. I know it may sound counter-intuitive, but this is the best way to burn belly fat.

Most studies have completely debunked spot reduction or target fat burning. One study looked at the effectiveness of losing fat from one of your arms.

104 participants were required to take part in a weight training program designed to target their non-dominant arm.

Similar studies like this were performed to test if you can target the abdominal region. 40 Overweight and Obese participants stuck to an abs specific weight training routine for 12 weeks,

but experienced no extra fat loss from their belly when compared to dieting alone.

Even though there are a few studies that have reported results that showed that you can target fat burn in certain situations,

this was usually attributed to either flaw in the study or due to the fact that a very small amount of people were studied.

Overall the majority of the scientific evidence is heavily stacked against this idea of spot reduction. So get the idea of target fat burning and spot reduction out of your head.

Now with that said that doesn’t mean that we can’t burn belly fat with things like weight training. It just means we can’t isolate and burn the only belly without also burning the fat from other areas of the body.

So that brings me right to the next step that science recommends we take to burn belly fat and keep it off over time. Weight training. There are many studies comparing weight training to cardio for fat loss.

Unfortunately, most of these studies usually last for a couple weeks or months at the most. The participants and the changes to their bodies aren’t observed for a very long period of time.

However, one study known as health professionals follow up study was done over a 12 year period between 1996 and 2008.

This study also involved a huge amount of participants. Over 10,500 men over 40 years old took part and they were each divided into one of four groups.

Each group either increased the amount of time spent either weight training, doing aerobic activity, yard work or being sedentary. And it turns out the weight training group had the least gain in their waistline over time.

Now I have to say the results may have been totally different if it involved 20-year-old men instead of 40-year-old men. As we age we lose muscle mass and muscle is metabolically active tissue.

Also if you aren’t currently doing some form of strength training by starting a heavy weight training program you can increase the protein turnover in all of your muscles increasing your basal metabolic rate by 7 percent.

This was demonstrated in a study conducted at the University of Maryland in which subjects performed progressive resistance training for only 30 minutes 3 days per week for 16 weeks.

The bottom line is that weight training is the best way to prevent the loss of muscle as we age, and to increase our resting metabolism.

So this may be one reason why the weight training group did so well in the other 12-year long study we just spoke about.

Regardless researchers conclude that both weight training and cardio can be very useful at managing belly fat over time.

Which brings us the right to the next step you can take and that’s cardio. Cardio may not increase your metabolism the way that heavy weight training will,

but when you do cardio correctly you can burn significantly more calories per minute than with a weight training program.

This is especially true with different forms of cardio like High-intensity interval training. One study compared HIIT, weight training, running, and biking.

Each activity was performed for 30 minutes and researchers found that HIIT burned 25 to 30 percent more calories than the other forms of exercise.

25 percent is a significant amount of extra calories, so if you want the most reward for your tough cardio sessions try to incorporate a couple of days of High-intensity interval training every week.

Next, let’s talk about diet. This really should have been the very first step because without a proper diet plan you can do all the cardio and weight training you want, but you’ll still struggle with that excess belly fat.

There are a lot of people that immediately recommend that you cut carbs to lose fat in the shortest amount of time.

Cutting carbs can be a very efficient fast way to lower insulin levels, lower overall calories, and burn fat fast.

However, if you can’t stick to a low carb diet comfortably in which you would have rage roughly under 50 grams of carbs per day then starting a low carb diet may not be the right move for you.

There seems to be endless debate in the fitness industry about whether a low carb diet or a low-fat diet is more efficient at burning fat.

However, the true determining factor that makes a diet plan efficient is if the person on the plan can stick to it consistently.

After a year researchers found that some people in each group lost a lot of weight, others lost a little bit of weight, and some even gained weight.

But both charts for weight loss in the low fat and low carb groups matched almost identically.

This was because some people were able to stick to a low-fat diet with no problems. Others couldn’t stick to it at all.

The same thing happened in the low carb group. The point is that you shouldn’t look for the best diet plan in the world because there is no such thing.

You should start by thinking about what whole single ingredient foods you enjoy eating and then begin setting up a diet plan from there.

If you love carbs it’s very unlikely that a low carb diet will work for you in the long run. And consistency is key here so it’s worth spending some time finding a plan that actually suits your preferences and lifestyle.

Regardless of what diet plan you’re on it’s critical that you don’t feel like you’re constantly starving. And you can satisfy your hunger very effectively by increasing fiber in your diet.

This step is important because it allows you to feel full. Insoluble fiber coming from vegetables is especially good at filling your stomach up and soluble fiber will slow the digestion of what you eat helps you feel full for longer…

Some studies also point out that fiber may decrease the number of calories absorbed from what you eat. Also by feeling full, you’ll obviously eat less.

A couple examples of soluble fiber include things like avocados, Brussel sprouts, and legumes. Another thing that can help increase fullness is…

our next science-based tip to help you reduce belly fat which is incorporating more protein into your diet. Diet’s high in protein doesn’t only help you feel full,

but studies also show that they can help increase energy expenditure during digestion, This is largely due to the thermogenic effect of foods as well as gluconeogenesis.

One study also showed that people that eat more high-quality protein sources will also have less belly fat.

Depending on how you set up your diet plan by keeping your protein intake somewhere between 20 to 40 percent of your total daily calories you’ll be able to experience these great benefits.

Now the exact opposite of protein and fiber as they relate to your appetite and reducing belly fat is sugar.

So our next step is to ensure that we cut out as much sugar as possible from our diet as possible. Sugar is calorically dense but empty of nutrients.

Instead of filling you up it makes you crave more. It can also be hidden in all sorts of different food as well as beverages.

Sugar is also a sure way to spike your insulin levels, decrease insulin sensitivity, and cause insulin resistance all making it more difficult to keep belly fat off.

Get sugar out of your diet and be especially cautious of sweetened drinks because this is an easy way to jack up your daily calories as well as insulin levels without even realizing it.

Sugar isn’t the only thing you want to decrease to lose belly fat you also want to limit alcohol consumption.

Studies show that increased alcohol consumption is related to abdominal obesity. This is due to a number of different reasons.

First is the fact that the alcohol itself has calories. The second reason is that it increases your appetite and causes you to make bad decisions with what you choose to eat.

Studies that only compare alcohol consumption and belly fat are slightly flawed because they don’t take into account that people that drink high amounts of alcohol may not care enough to have a proper diet or exercise plan.

The last step is to decrease stress levels. And I know that’s a lot easier said than done, but stress has been shown to increase cortisol levels and high cortisol levels have been shown in studies to increase appetite and abdominal obesity.

To decrease stress the number one thing I recommend is to remember to not worry about things that happen that are outside of your control.

Applying this shift in perspective to your life alone will greatly help decrease stress levels. You should also aim to get 8 to 9 hours of sleep per night and you can also try meditation,

That’s it guys I really hope these 9 steps have helped you out And if you’re serious about losing that belly fat and you want to try a done for you approach that involves no research nor trial and error on your end try my 6-week challenge. Almost all of my clients that have completed this challenge have lost either a minimum of 20 pounds or 5 percent of their body fat in only 6 weeks.

You get a custom diet plan, a 42-day workout plan, an accountability coach that’ll check in on you every week and much more.

This challenge is especially great for those of you that are going to take your goals seriously and actually commit to sticking to the program for all 42 days because we give you the opportunity to get the whole program for free while motivating you to actually complete it all the way through.