Best Ways To Reduce Belly Fat

Losing a bit of weight is always a good thing, but belly fat is especially harmful to your health. The fat around your abdomen isn't just under the skin – it actually gets in between the vital organs, called visceral fat. Visceral fat ups the risk of diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and sleep apnea, and is dangerous regardless of your weight.

Follow these tips to reduce belly fat and as well as losing weight and looking better you'll feel healthier and be less likely to suffer from a range of diseases.

Avoid carbs

Refined carbohydrates get converted straight into glucose by your body, and then your insulin spikes because of high blood glucose and turns that sugar into fat. When you eat protein the opposite happens; your body produces glucagon, which uses stored glycogen and fat to raise blood sugar.

Eating more proteins and healthy fats and cutting back on bread, rice and pasta is a good way to stabilize your blood sugar and cut out unhealthy foods. Since protein and fat are more filling, people who eat a low carb diet generally find themselves eating fewer calories and losing weight, including belly fat.

If you can't resist eating a few carbohydrates, choose slow release ones like wholemeal bread and pasta and brown rice which keep blood sugar steady.

Eat fiber

Fiber is the part of your food that can't be digested, but it's still an important ingredient in your diet. It slows down digestion, which keeps you feeling full for longer and means you eat less.

Soluble fiber, when combined with water, also appears to feed the good bacteria in your gut that fight chronic inflammation in the body. Inflammation leads to insulin resistance and weight gain, so one way to reduce belly fat is to reduce the inflammation by taking care of your good bacteria.

Good sources of dietary fiber are whole grains (like oatmeal or quinoa), fruits and vegetables (which are also packed with vitamins and minerals) and beans and pulses.

Drink water

While water doesn't have a direct effect on weight loss, drinking more can affect your diet and exercise habits and indirectly lead to reduced belly fat.

Many studies have found that drinking more water reduces appetite. The signals that tell your brain you're hungry or thirsty can get mixed up, and sometimes drinking a glass or two of water makes your feel better. If you're dehydrated in the middle of the afternoon it makes you feel lethargic, and you may find yourself reaching for a snack or sugary coffee to boost your energy levels, when in fact you need to drink some water.

The tired feeling that comes with dehydration will also make you hate the idea of the gym. Make sure you're drinking enough for the heat and your level of exertion, and you'll feel able to push yourself harder and burn more calories.

Cut out alcohol

They don't call it "beer belly" for nothing. Beer is loaded with sugars and simple carbohydrates, and it's easy to forget how many calories you're drinking. And alcohol itself is seven calories per gram, without any nutritional content.

Even if beer isn't your tipple, any amount of alcohol is bad for your waistline. When you drink, the liver switches from burning fat to burning alcohol, impeding your body's ability to use its fat stores.

These two factors combined make it impossible to reduce belly fat without cutting back on your drinking. Try virgin versions of your favorite low calorie cocktails like Bloody Mary, or just switch to drinking tea and unsweetened coffee.

Interval training

Short but intense periods of exercise interspersed with lighter recovery periods are much more effective than steady-state cardio at promoting weight loss and reducing belly fat.

The tough intervals strain the heart and lungs more than steady exercise and improve their strength and efficiency, and fast bursts of exercise build more muscle than slow ones. Just think of the typical marathon runner's body compared to a sprinter's – who has more muscle mass?

If you enjoy running or cycling then you can incorporate intervals into your normal workout – push yourself as hard as you can for thirty seconds then go easy for thirty, or do some reps up and down hills.

Strength training

As well as interval training, you can build muscle with strength exercises. Muscle requires a lot of energy to build, which your body gets by burning its fat reserves. It's also more metabolically active than fat, meaning your body is burning energy and reducing belly fat even when you're not doing anything.

The gym is the obvious place to start, but if you don't much like weights then you can use resistance bands at home or do bodyweight exercises. Both of these are old-school can be done in your living room with minimal equipment – think push-ups, squats, lunges and crunches.

Keep calm

When we're chronically stressed our levels of the hormone cortisol stay constantly high. Millions of years of evolution have taught your body that stress means touch times and scarce resources, so it does everything it can to keep you from losing weight. High cortisol also causes your body to move fat from your thighs or hips and put it on your abdomen, making it impossible to reduce belly fat while stressed.

Exercise is always stress-busting, and even ten minutes at the gym or a quick jog round the block is enough to bring your cortisol levels down. If you find yourself getting agitated at work or during your commute then consciously slowing down and spending a minute taking a few deep breaths will help center you.

Get enough sleep

Believe it or not, sleeping can reduce belly fat! Our bodies produce two hormones to regulate hunger; ghrelin tells your body that you need to eat, while leptin keeps your appetite low. When you don't get enough sleep, your leptin level falls and ghrelin level rises, making you hungry.

Stay away from blue light – the kind that comes from your laptop and phone – an hour before bed, since blue light tricks your brain into thinking it's still daytime. Have soft yellow lights on in your house, and read instead of watching television. Keeping the temperature in your bedroom cool will also aid sleep.

After all the exercise you've been doing you'll have no trouble falling asleep, and your belly fat will melt away before you know it.