A most common and saying that most middle aged people don't want to be associated with is the "Middle Age Spread" - a term referred to picture fat deposits formed around the body's mid-section as we hit the middle aged mark. It isn't a desired look some might want to reveal with the shirt off. Years ago this was just believed to be a normal indicator of sedentary mid-life phase that goes along with a more stable career and a relaxed family lifestyle. However this is now a mistaken theory as we now have a better understanding how excess storage of abdominal fat can cause all sorts of health problems as a person gets older.
Extensive medical research concludes that there is definite linkages with excessive abdominal fat and diseases such as heart disease, hypertension, Diabetes (Type 2) and even various forms of cancer along with several types of internal organ function issues.
So taking this all into account, we should be using the above as very good motivators to go along with improving appearance when trying to reduce body fat. There are two types of abdominal fat: Subcutaneous, the fat type you can grab around your waist (love handles) just under the skin line and the type referred to as Visceral - the fat surrounding the intestines and abdominal organs. Visceral is a lot more damaging to your body and the causes many diseases as listed above. So the excessive fat around your waist is usually a good indicator of excessive internal fat - Visceral.
Luckily, fat loss in these 2 types can be achieved quite easily with the proper diet and a good fitness program. Simply by changing what we eat and how much of it we eat, our bodies will begin to make a transformation in burning up the excess fat stores.
Add to this exercise will do two things increasing abdominal fat burning - 1. Speeding up our metabolism (i.e. starting using more fat to burn as energy) and 2. Develops, grows more muscle tissue which also needs more energy to function which triggers more fat burning. So you can see exercise plays a major role to losing both types of abdominal fat.
Dieting to Lose Abdominal Fat
One of things many people do by mistake is go on an excessively reduced calorie diet plan, thinking this is the fastest way to lose weight and keep it off for good. This is not the case it's actually counterproductive. What happens when we eat much less than normal is the body replies to this reduction by going into a state commonly known amongst diet experts as the 'Starvation Mode'. So what this mean is that our body goes into a responsive state which reduces calories expenditure by slowing down the body metabolism and then storing more fat because full starvation may be very close - think of it as like a 'back up' for the body.
Keeping the above in mind, it's much smarter approach to reduce your calories to just below maintenance levels. On average this reduction of calories is normal between 1,800 and 2,000 calories. It's vital you keep a diet log or diary so you keep track of your eating - it's the only way for sure to keep a precise record to see the measure the intake of calories. To prepare yourself for this, make up a log say a week out from your fat loss diet, then reduce calories according to a level just below the minimum needed for your own personal maintenance level.
Another important habit to start developing is not eating 'bad' carbs or oils. Simple carbohydrates such as refined or processed sugars, starches and grains will hinder your diet plans and slow down losing weight. Avoid flour based bread, pastas and white process rice. Stay clear of eating of prepared/processed foods, i.e those foods which can be re-heated or warmed before eating. These types of foods are 9 times out of 10 full of artificial preservatives, which in a lot of cases contain corn syrup - which is a main fat burning blocker.
A fat burning diet plan ought to contain plenty of fruits and vegetables (both fresh), non-processed meats, poultry and fish. Consuming of Alcohol should be kept to a bare minimum and if your really serious about losing body fat - cut off alcohol all together. At the end of the day alcohol is just empty calories converted to sugar by our metabolism so any chance of you burning fat while consuming alcohol is about zero.
Limit your carbohydrate intake when first start dieting to help your body burn fat and get your weight to start dropping. Usual safe level is approximately 50 to 100 grams per day depending on bodyweight (to assist you buy a calorie and carbohydrate counter). You should then lift back up your carb consumption slowly up to a point where you stop losing abdominal fat. Once your weight gets to your target, you may start to eat the normal levels of carbs. Reaching this target point is an indicator you have reach your maintenance point.
Once commencing an exercise regime, protein intake can elevate to approximately 25% of total calorie intake. Excellent protein-based food sources are: Eggs, organ meats, red meat (unprocessed), chicken, turkey, pork, fish (salmon and tuna are best), beans and other legumes.
In general, soy is not regarded as a good source of protein because it doesn't really match biologically to human muscle tissue. To match it properly would need a massive intake of soy based food sources to collect all the essential amino acids required for muscle tissue building and mobilization of fat stores.
Exercise You way To Lose Abdominal Fat
Weight or resistance training will build muscles and give you the boost in calorie consumption you need to start burning more fat. This is because muscles burn a lot more energy than fat - 3 times more to be precise. A lot of people are scared of putting on too much muscle when starting working out with weights. They think they will get too bulky or 'muscle bound'. Put on large slabs of muscle requires eating massive quantities of food every 3 hours and lifting extremely heavy weights. It takes about 25 pounds of muscle tissue to actually start to look really muscular or bulky (this can depend on your height or natural build) while all you really need is about 5 - 10 pounds of muscle to assist in burning fat. You will get the added benefit of a leaner, toned athletic look with just this amount of muscle growth (which appears once the excess body fat is burnt off).
In general, it's usually better to sign-up at a local gym or fitness center and get a personal trainer to design you a program of resistance training aimed at building enough muscle for enhancing fat burning. Steer clear of cardiovascular exercises while trying to lose body fat since they won't assist you to really burn a great amount of fat, and you'll just end up with injuries along with a loss of valuable muscle tissue. Steady walking of about 30-40 minutes every 2nd day is the ideal (either treadmill or outdoors).
No comments:
Post a Comment