How to Exercise to Lose Fat Around your Belly

In the first post of this series about losing fat around your belly, I mentioned that moving your body has a very important part to play. Let’s go into more depth here.

First of all, notice that I’m using the phrase “moving your body” rather than “exercising.” I know it’s obvious for me to say this, but exercise is nothing more than a formal type of movement, and the only reason I point out that obvious fact is because you don’t have to do formal exercise to lose belly fat. You just have to get moving.

This is very important! Why? Because – and let’s be real about this – a lot of people out there don’t like to “exercise.” They don’t like to do stuff like lift weights, run, ride bikes, or join an exercise class or boot camp. And because they don’t like to exercise, and because they might think that you have to have some special exercise regimen to lose weight, they often end up not doing much of any moving at all.

You might be one of these people, and guess what? It’s okay if you are, because you don’t need formal exercise to lose belly fat. I happen to be someone who likes to do formal exercise, and yet, I will be the first person to say that you don’t have to like it yourself. Again, you just need to move.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s talk about how you should move, and how much you should move, if you want to get rid of belly fat.

How Should I Move to Lose Belly Fat?

Believe it or not, there is no real specific way you should move to lose belly fat. Our bodies don’t work that way. In other words, you can’t spot reduce. Doing ab exercises is not going to just burn fat off of your belly. Running is not going to just burn fat off of your legs. Both exercises will burn Calories – which will burn fat all around your body – and both will tone the muscles underneath your fat. That’s the way it works.

Your focus needs to be on consistently moving in a way that utilizes as many of your muscles as possible, while putting a demand on your heart and lungs.

If you’re one who likes formal exercise routines, you should do this with strength training and cardiovascular exercise routines. Strength training includes lifting weights (bench press, squats, deadlifts, rows, etc.), body weight exercise and calisthenics (push-ups, pull-ups, body weight squats, hill sprints, crunches, etc.), and anything that subjects your muscles to resistance. This kind of exercise helps you build muscle, and perhaps more importantly, it helps you preserve muscle, which is extremely important to consider as you age to prevent sarcopenia (loss of muscle with age). Perform strength training exercises at least twice a week if you want to see any benefit from them.

There’s no need for you to “kill it” in the gym. If you like to do that, cool, but it’s not necessary. Keep in mind also that recovery is very important. Too much exercise is actually detrimental for your muscles and can also be detrimental to your immune system.

Now, some of you might have gotten hung up on what I said about building muscle and are thinking, “won’t I gain weight? Isn’t that the opposite of what I want to do?”

No, it’s not! Muscle is very metabolically active – it requires a good bit of Calories to maintain itself – which means that the more you have, the more fat you will burn. You want to lose fat, not just weight. Plus, you don’t just pick up a weight and get big muscles; you have to work at it for a while and you have to really stress your muscles to gain a lot of size. This is especially hard for ladies because the hormonal profile for ladies doesn’t lend itself as much to muscle building.

Cardiovascular exercise routines include things like walking, running, cycling, jump rope, and more. Even lifting weights can be part of a cardiovascular exercise routine, given that you reduce the amount of rest between sets/exercises to about 30 seconds (this is known as circuit training). Whatever you choose, you should maintain it for at least 10 minutes, and it should make you breathe faster, but not so fast that you can’t catch your breath.

Make sure that you don’t overemphasize cardio, though, while underemphasizing strength training. This would be a sure way to sabotage your efforts to lose belly fat, because without some form of strength training, your body is likely to get rid of some of its muscle as well as fat. So you’ll be losing weight, but you’ll still be “soft” because you’re not maintaining your muscle mass.

Finally, if you’re the guy or gal who doesn’t care for formal exercise routines, your goal should be to develop and maintain an overall active lifestyle that involves you taking care of your regular life responsibilities in such a way that you exercise your cardiovascular system and your muscles (honestly, this should be everybody’s goal).

Think about the following examples of incorporating activity into your normal lifestyle and see if you can notice how they incorporate both cardio and strength training:

• push mow your lawn
• walk or ride your bike to the grocery store or other local stores
• always take the stairs
• park far away from the store (it’s easier to find a parking space that way anyway)
• edge your lawn with a manual edger
• rake leaves and use a wheelbarrow to take them to the woods

I’m sure there are plenty more ideas that you can implement, but a good rule of thumb is to pay attention to the modern-day conveniences that you use and consider ditching them. We focus so much on making life easier for ourselves these days, forgetting that such conveniences are often not very good for our health and well-being!

Whether you use formal exercise or activity naturally integrated into your lifestyle (or both), practicing them consistently will allow your body to rid itself of excess fat all over your body while preserving healthy. muscle tissue. And yes, you will eventually notice the results around your stomach.

How Much Should I Move to Lose Belly Fat?

Regardless of how you choose to move, if you want to lose belly fat, you need to make sure that you move enough. If you find yourself wondering why even though you’re active, you can’t seem to lose that much fat, you might want to consider whether you’re exercising enough.

The American College of Sports Medicine recommends that healthy adults engage in at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise every week, or 30 minutes a day, for general health and to prevent weight gain. They also recommend that healthy adults engage in at least two strength training sessions per week.

Now pay careful attention to something I said. ACSM recommends 150 minutes per week to prevent weight gain. This is not even talking about losing weight! In other words, 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week is their recommendation for a bare minimum of exercise for adults. To lose weight, they recommend 250 or more minutes of moderate exercise a week!

So your goal needs to be to exercise almost an hour a day. Are you doing that?

I know that for some of you, it seems like a lot. It doesn’t have to, though. In our culture, we still tend to think of moving our bodies in terms of formal exercise, so some of us dread the idea of being in the gym for an hour or more a day, but you don’t have to do that! You just need to focus on living an active lifestyle!

Going to the gym can be a part of that, but just remember that the rest of the day doesn’t have to be you sitting on a chair somewhere. Do an audit of your life and see where you can be more active. Make your goal to be as active as you possibly can be, and you won’t have to wonder whether you’re exercising an hour a day.

To sum it all up, if you want to lose belly fat, make sure that you’re moving your body, and make sure that you’re moving it enough.

Make sure you also check out my post about how to eat to lose the fat around your belly.

Related Resources

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