belly fat is really easy to gain yet often the hardest area to lose and there's actually two types there's that annoying belly fat we all know that covers your abs but there's also a more dangerous type of belly fat stored deep within your organs known as visceral fat which can create serious health problems to find the most effective way to get rid of both types of belly fat I reached out to five of the world's most qualified phalla scientists and came up with five easy steps anyone can start doing today to lose belly fat for the first and most important step I spoke to lay Norton scientific researcher Champion powerlifter and honestly just a really smart dude who calls out BS when he sees it so why is stored belly fat so difficult to lose once again we don't know the exact scientific explanation for that but it may have something to do with the tissue being a little bit more metabolically active than other forms of stored body fat now the real question is is there any way around that well yes kinda of sadly even though we'd like to think if we do a bunch of crutches and work the area where the fat is stored it will preferentially Target that fat there is no evidence to support that idea and it's unlikely that that would make a difference overall now there is research showing that exercise can reduce visceral fat without actually causing weight loss so it is a good idea to exercise in general but specific exercises are not going to Target preferentially belly fat per se I know people don't want to hear this the real key to losing belly fat is just getting into a caloric deficit consistently and doing it for long enough now the most effective way to create the calorie deficit Lane talked about is by modifying your diet that's where our next expert comes in Alan Aragon Allen is one of the world's top nutrition researchers and Educators with over 30 years of success in the field he recommends first find out roughly how many calories you eat in a day next find out how many calories you should be eating to lose fat which you can do by using the free calculator I've made over at builtwithsize. com calculator then simply try to close that Gap over time with most of your Foods coming from the following sources you have to be eating the foods that you like and look forward to people have an idea of what their 20 favorite foods are that's honestly that that's what they should be eating that's what they should be eating if people freak out when they hear that but hey man if you love the foods that you're eating you're gonna stick to your diet it helps to have an awareness of the food groups as well because when I say your 20 favorite foods I mean your 20 favorite foods that are reasonably healthy choices across the food groups and there's six of them there's the the meat or the high protein group there's the fat group there's the fibrous vegetable group and there's the starch group and then there's the milk group and then there's the fruit group so choose your three favorite foods across like in each of those food groups choose your three favorite three favorite ones you like the most and there's your diet man there's your diet oh oh wait we have two two more Foods left to get those 20 Foods choose your two favorite YOLO Foods your two favorite desserts or whatever or what you like wine okay wine and freaking cookies or something you know brownies and ice cream whatever um and that's a healthy diet right there that'll hold you down for for life and not just a dieting phase I love that approach I've never actually heard somebody put it like that um but now what about protein intake how important would you say protein intake is for losing belly fat just losing fat in general protein intake adequate protein is crucial among the macronutrients it helps you preserve muscle mass it's the most potent thereof because it's protein is a muscle mass is protein and this is sort of a side thing that's a little bit trivial but protein has the highest energetic cost of processing within the body and so um in you know in theory you take a a diet that's a hundred percent protein then your body will spend about 30 percent of those calories just trying to process it and and so it's like that's not necessarily the case with carbohydrate and fat this helps from the standpoint of um a a weight and fat loss perspective it doesn't have to be a a tough thing to to try to accomplish even I mean on the low end if you consume 1. 6 grams per kilogram of body weight which is 0.
7 grams per pound of body weight then you are at an adequate starting point and the last question I had is uh what about visceral fat are there any kinds of foods that promote the storage of visceral fat and are there foods that people can eat to avoid getting that yeah man that is a great question and researchers have been fighting over the answer to this question for a really long time okay so the overarching answer that covers a lot of things is that if you're losing fat um or if you're getting lean there's really no concern about visceral fat because if you're losing overall fat then visceral fat is diminishing as well it's not like that's gonna hold steady you know principle number two is that visceral fat is mainly a concern for people who are who are gaining fat and um there's actually a study by rosquist and colleagues where they compared what types of dietary fat most influence visceral fat they compare to polyunsaturated fat source with a saturated fat Source it was a hyper caloric experiment which where the subjects were eating more calories and the saturated fat Rich diet that resulted in in Greater visceral fat accumulation than the polyunsaturated fat Rich diet alright so you've got your nutrition plan but now let's talk what exercise as Lane mentioned earlier exercise can burn off that dangerous visceral fat even if you don't lose any weight but the right type of exercise can also help you avoid regaining belly fat as soon as your diet is over to explain this is Eric Trexler Pro natural bodybuilder and published scientist with a PhD in human movement science so usually when people are trying to lose belly fat but they automatically think that they have to do a bunch of cardio but how about resistance training like how important is lifting weights for someone who's interested in losing belly fat so I'd say it's really important there are some major benefits of resistance training if you're trying to lose belly fat and really just trying to lose fat in general so first of all if you're lifting during this fat loss phase there's a very high likelihood that you are going to reduce the amount of muscle loss that occurs during that weight loss and that can be great great for two reasons so a lot of people who don't lift weights and just do fat loss they often find that they end up looking more skinny and less shredded than they were hoping at the end so retaining muscle can be great for maintaining definition there's also been some really good research in the last couple years indicating that the more muscle or the more lean mass you lose during a diet the more hunger you tend to experience later on and the higher likelihood that you're actually going to regain some of the fat that you lost later right and then let's say somebody is you know lifting weights regularly how does cardio now fit into the picture I mean it definitely like has a lot of benefits for your health that lifting weights doesn't necessarily provide but how much does it help when trying to lose belly fat the reality is you don't need cardio in order to lose fat or to lose belly fat but cardio can be a helpful thing and one of the reasons for that is energy expenditure has a tendency to go down during a fat loss phase so of course there will be some reduction normally in resting metabolic rate but non-exercise activity thermogenesis is another really key thing that can change during a fat loss phase so non-exercise activity is basically everything that exists between resting and doing structured exercise so walking to the mailbox walking around at your work or your school um you know anything that fits between those two extremes of exercising on purpose office and uh you know just kind of totally resting It's usually the second biggest contributor to Total daily energy expenditure for most people and so unfortunately when we diet a lot of people notice their non-exercise activity thermogenesis goes down pretty significantly uh so cardio can be a really helpful thing in keeping your expenditure higher when that non-exercise activity starts to go down over time so you're just trying to kind of keep things steady by adding some cardio to the mix for some people it's even just purely behavioral we might just say hey use the stairs instead of the elevator and park at the back of the parking lot instead of the front so everything that that gets you moving counts but even with proper nutrition that exercise a recent 2022 study found there's an often overlooked variable that can still prevent you from losing belly fat to explain this study is exercise science professor and body composition researcher Bill Campbell that this new study was very unique in that it was the first ever investigation to assess a lack of sleep and how it affects where body fat is stored they took 12 healthy males and females who on average slept about seven and a half hours per night they had these subjects live in a research sleep lab and then place them into two different sleep conditions the first condition was a sleep restricted condition where they were allowed to sleep only four hours per night the other condition was a normal sleep condition where they were allowed to sleep nine hours per night and during this entire process they were allowed to eat as much and whatever food they wanted to eat so after two weeks in each condition here's what happened the Sleep restricted subjects on average consumed 300 more calories per day and they gained about a pound of body weight when compared to the subjects when they were in the normal sleep stage but here's where things get really interesting the subjects that were sleep restricted they gained eight percent more subcutaneous body fat and then the normal sleep condition they only gained about four percent the other part of our bellies that stores fat is called the visceral region or visceral body fat and that's the dangerous body fat because that's associated with a lot of adverse Health outcomes the Sleep restricted condition caused an increase in 11 of this visceral body fat and the normal sleep condition they didn't gain any now again we would expect they had they ate more calories they gained a little bit more body weight so we would expect a little bit of a gain in body fat but not nearly to the extent that we saw as it was localized to the belly region to the abdominal region so this study suggests that there may be a link to sleep restriction leading to overeating which causes a gain in body fat that is preferentially stored in the belly region so my takeaway from this is to make sure that you prioritize sleep I would suggest that you get about seven hours per night and that you do not Overlook the importance of this now I know some of you might be thinking okay well the subjects were overeating what about if I'm still in a calorie deficit this sleep still matter as much and that's a valid question and a 2010 study actually tested this researchers put two groups of subjects on a weight loss diet with the same amount of calories the only difference was one group slept eight and a half hours per night while the other group slept only five and a half hours per night the result both groups lost a similar amount of total weight both groups also did lose some muscle because they weren't lifting weights but the well-slapped group lost 1. 6 times less muscle and lost 2. 3 times more fat than the Sleep restricted group suggesting that a lack of sleep alone may in fact lead to more muscle loss and less fat loss during a diet so you've now got all the tools you need to lose belly fat but there's one more thing you need to add to your plant failure to do this is why so many people start out strong yet never end up successfully losing their belly fat Lauren conlon a master coach exercise scientist and ifbb bikini Pro will help explain what this missing piece is all right let's go through what commonly happens so a client is going to obsess over losing belly fat even if they have seen some changes on the scale or seen improvements in other areas of the body since there hadn't been much change in their belly fat they are going to feel like what they're doing isn't working or it's not happening fast enough some clients are just going to give up right then While others are going to slash their calories or increase their cardio this increase in their deficit is typically unsustainable though so they're going to fall off plan and inevitably quit first it's important to recognize that unless genetically you have little body fat on your abs and core area that you will probably need to get leaner than you'd think to lose belly fat for many people the belly is the last area we're going to see fat come off but in the meantime you can pay attention and be proud of the progress you've made in other areas like your face and your shoulders and your legs and trust that if you remain patient but eventually you'll start to see more and more progress in these problematic and stubborn areas second take multiple measures of progress you can use scale weight and measurements as quantitative feedback but we also want to look at qualitative feedback such as how your clothes are fitting how you're looking and how much better that you're feeling don't just obsess over your belly and and lastly and probably most importantly out of this entire video be patient and recognize that you're usually quitting right before it gets good okay it doesn't matter how perfect your program is unless you are patient and remain consistent you are shortchanging yourself and your results you owe it to yourself to make this change so don't give up follow or create a great program adjust it when it's necessary and take your time your belly fat didn't get there overnight so you're not gonna lose it in a few weeks either I want to give a huge thank you to all five of the experts who help with the video Guys these five truly are the best of the best I've been following and looking up to them for many years ever since I started my own fitness journey so being able to interview them and share their work with you guys is such an honor and I put links to all their social media websites down below so you can go give them a follow and if you're interested in joining a science-based plan to transform your body as efficiently as possible just take my free quiz at builtwoodside.
