How to lose belly fat....

Today's post:  Thursday, 9-22-2016

For appearance and health losing inches of fat off your waist is more important than losing pounds on the scale.

That’s because part of it is inside you and is called visceral fat.  Too much of it tends to squeeze your lungs and heart and stomach.  That reduces your ability to breathe well and tends to increase your blood pressure and can cause or worsen acid reflux.

Not only that but visceral fat when tends to release compounds that cause heart disease I’ve read.

For appearance, fat elsewhere tends to make you look bigger overall; but belly fat sticks out and is very visible so it makes you look fatter.

The good news is that there are many things that do help you remove excess belly fat.  And, not only does removing it have health and other benefits, most of these methods have health benefits in addition to removing belly fat!

1.  The most important method is in Mike Matthews advice on how to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time.

He says and has pictures to prove it that if you add muscle and lose fat enough to lower your bodyfat percentage enough, you CAN lose your belly fat.

Though this table says that higher percentages are OK than Mike’s actual pictures show is the case, I found it on Google and list it here mostly to show the significant range of percentages and to show that the percentages for women are higher than for men.

Acceptable Body Fat Percentage

Description      Female      male

Athletes             14-20%              6-13%

Fitness                 21-24%        14-17%

Acceptable      25-30%            18-25%

Obese                  31%+           26%+

Body Fat - Does Yours Measure Up? - Bodybuilding.com

www.bodybuilding.com/fun/measure_up_body_fat.htm

Mike has found studies showing that women who have much under 18 or 19 percent fat can have menstrual or fertility or health problems.  And men much under 8% tend to have health problems.

But the people who don’t show excess belly fat are just above that!  About 20 to 23 % fat for women and 9 to 12% fat for men.

So getting rid of all your excess belly fat can be a challenge because it’s a high bar to get over.

The good news is that it is doable.  The bad news is that what this lists as acceptable shows fat bellies in the pictures of people at that percentage of body fat.

My waist is 4 to 8 inches too big as a man and I’m at about 18 to 20% fat.

This shows that to lose my belly fat without gaining more muscle, I have to lose about half my remaining excess fat.  That way instead of instead of 18 to 20 % fat I’ll be 9 to 10% fat.

As some of you know who have been following my posts, I’m currently trying partial intermittent fasting using Bulletproof Brain Octane to avoid excess hunger and mental energy drop off. 

(I also limit my calorie cut back to be just above my metabolism level for the week and eat a high protein, high organic vegetable diet or food plan the rest of the time.)

Those days once I’ve had my high protein breakfast to maintain or add to my muscle mass, I only eat lightly and eat only vegetables.  I’ve also reduced my intake of sugar and organic dried fruit every week.

I’m at about 162 now and to get to 10% body fat from 19% by only losing fat, I need to lose about 16 pounds to 146.

Or I can lose about one pound but gain 15 pounds of muscle.  That’s my preference but at my age and not yet being able to lift heavier weights in the gym, my current focus is on fat loss.

2.  There are some other things that either help remove belly fat or turn off things that add it:

a)  It’s harmful for the people who eat the food but until recently factory farms routinely “finished” meat animals by feeding them extra grain and penning them up.  This reliably made them fatter.

What this means in people who work at their desks for long hours and then watch TV for long hours is that they are inadvertently penning themselves up.

That keeps them fatter and tends to be effective at adding belly fat.

There are two cures for this. 

Watch far less TV, less than 10 to 15 hours a week, and what you still watch exercise on an at home exerciser while doing so.  Note that this does NOT need to be strenuous only that you stay in motion and avoid sitting totally still.

When it becomes available get a low key exerciser you can use at your desk and keep it in motion as many minutes in your work day as you can fit in.

Working while standing or walking is somewhat available in some workplaces but is not as good or usable by most people as a way to exercise while sitting at a normal sized desk.

The devices sold for that are not very good yet.  But given the importance we now know they have, I believe that is temporary.

I have more space at my desk than most and have managed to get a recumbent bike set up. 

Currently after reading that excess sitting reduces the lipase you need to use and get rid of excess fat, I’ve been making a real effort to triple the amount of time I spend pedaling this bike.

In fact, I am doing it now!

b)  Excess stress that you don’t quite relieve adds belly fat and also makes it hard to get rid of.

Getting better at running your life without excess stress does work.  But it often is not enough.

Exercise does help you relax anyway, particularly walking or exercising moderately at your desk.

Yoga and Tai Chi do work to relieve stress for some people. 

But the device that was in Medical News Today a day or two may be both more effective and much more time efficient to use.  The researchers found that people who don’t relax enough after being stressed stay too amped up AND the hemispheres of their brain get out of balance.  But by using this device and real time feedback from it, people were able to lower stress and balance their hemispheres too.

The people they tested it on had high blood pressure and by using this device they cur that y 16 over 13 to readings that were completely out of the high blood pressure range.

When this becomes available, it likely will help cut belly fat too!  Here’s the article itself:

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/312914.php

Innovative sound therapy treats hypertension and migraine   by Tim Newman    Saturday 17 September 2016

Reducing migraines too was a desirable effect!

Another way I’ve found effective is to have a support network of good hearted and competent friends, relatives, or co-workers.  This both helps you overcome the problems that stress you and enables you to relax more when not actively working on them.

This has been tested to be true for most people.  And, when I’ve had it, my high blood pressure readings become normal.

Conclusion:

1.  Doing the basics of fat loss and adding strength training and properly done intermittent fasting can lower your percentage bodyfat enough to remove your excess belly fat.

2.  Moving enough more and sitting totally still less can help remove belly fat and turn off a known cause.

3.  Reducing excessive stress, getting good support from other people, and using a practice or device that enables you to relax between stresses turns off another known cause of belly fat.