Exercise to Lose Belly Fat
"I want to clarify here the best exercise to lose belly fat.
There is a strategy that causes constant belly fat loss and
it is very contrary to what a lot of people think."
Technically, with all things compared and all things equal, the exercise that causes you to lose belly fat fast is intense training. Specifically training with short bursts.12 But this is not always going to be the case for you. This is true for fit and healthy people under good conditions. The exceptions to these studies is where many of you are finding yourselves in.
Review of Belly Fat
Before learning how to exercise to lose belly fat, you have to understand where belly fat comes from in the first place. Cortisol is the hormone that directly causes belly fat. You can read about cortisol on the page, Cortisol and Weight Gain If cortisol levels are too high for too long fat will be deposited in the midsection. Specifically it will be deposited within the abdominally cavity. This fat within the abdominal cavity is called visceral fat. You can read about it on the page, Visceral Fat. This visceral fat is dangerous to your health and the trigger of the Metabolic Syndrome - the cause of heart disease and the #1 killer of Americans today. So there are two things that need to happen to destroy belly fat for good. You have to reduce your excess cortisol levels AND increase the fitness level of your nervous system. Cortisol is a stress hormone. So there is a two pronged approach that is needed for long-term success. It is a Catch-22. If the fitness level of your nervous system is low, you and your body will get stressed out easier. Then when you get stressed out easier, you create more cortisol easier. Downward spiral. Here is the clincher - intense exercise, like what I stated above, causes stress as well! If a persons fitness level has gone too low, intense exercise will cause an initial drop in water weight but after that there will be a plateau and midsection measurements will start to increase AND you will feel the effects of over-training. You will feel dehydrated, fatigued, lethargic, weak, loss of appetite, inability to sleep or relax physically. Guess what? These are all the symptoms of excess cortisol.
Exercise To Lose Belly Fat: Recovery
What this person needs is low intensity exercise that will oxygenate his or her body and build up the fitness level of his or her nervous system. Intense exercise that is anaerobic will overwhelm your nervous system and cause it to clamp down and store fat. So how do you tell how intense, how long to exercise, whether you are aerobic or not, when to start intense exercise, etc? Believe it or not, there are scientific reasons to organize different exercises in a certain sequence to keep belly fat off for good! There is a sequence to exercise to lose belly fat. Well, I developed an exact system that uses your heart rate and scientific studies to show you how to adjust your exercise exactly to answer these questions about how to exercise to lose belly fat. But I will give you the broad strokes here.
Exercise To Lose Belly Fat: First Step
The first thing is to check for the health of your adrenals. If your adrenals are weak, then they have to be fixed first or else you will create too much cortisol no matter what. Once this is done or if this is not an issue then you need to determine your Max Aerobic Threshold. This threshold is the point where your exercise switches between using oxygen and not using oxygen. When this is done you will have a definite bench mark.
Exercise To Lose Belly Fat: Aerobic Conditioning
The base of your exercising will be low intensity exercise staying below this heart rate threshold. You need to do it for over 30 minutes and you can do this as much as you want. If you can go for 2 hours every day or even twice a day, then do it! What you will find is that you can barely move or run without your heart rate spiking up. This is an indication that your fitness level has dropped to very low levels. With even a little exertion, your heart rate jumps high! If you can work harder and NOT have your heart rate jump or go up, you will see a TRUE level of fitness. It is an objective measure of the strengthening of your nervous system to handle stress placed upon it. Lets say you are on a treadmill, and when you stay UNDER your max aerobic threshold, you end up walking 1 mile in an hour. You cannot walk more than that distance without raising your heart rate too high. Then over time you start to be able to walk 1.5 miles in the same time. Then 1.8 then 2.3 and you are doing a slight jog. All while keeping your heart rate low. This is a very clear indication that your body is much more efficient at using oxygen to create energy. You will also feel much better in general and you will start to see your waistline shrink. Then you will notice that you plateau. You will reach a speed that you cannot increase without increasing your heart rate. This is a sign you have gotten to a state of equilibrium. Now it is time to incorporate high intensity exercise.
Exercise To Lose Belly Fat: Incorporate High Intensity
You need to follow the rules outlined in hormone restoration. You dont even have to use resistance training. You can just do high intensity interval training. But no matter what, you do high intensity exercise only three days a week and/or do it every other day. Always give at least one day of rest or low intensity the following day. When you add this layer of exercise, your bell fat will start melt off pretty fast. To maximize your exercise to lose belly fat at this point, you have to focus on intensity. During the low intensity exercise I asked you to go for longer periods of time and try to be relaxed when you do it. But when you do the high intensity exercise you are going to be focused on how to increase the intensity every time. If you are going to stay on a treadmill, you will want to focus on increasing your speed and see how fast you can go. You will sprint and then walk, then sprint and then walk. This is the essence of high intensity interval training. What we want to see is your speed when you sprint start to increase over time. This will be a sign that your body is capable of exerting more and more effort over time. On the page, Interval Training Workouts you will see different routines for high intensity interval training that you can do. But go through the first phase of increasing your aerobic fitness. Over time you will see your resting heart rate lower, your heart rate recovery will also decrease. You can learn about these fitness tests on my page, Fitness tests Again these are the broad strokes of how to exercise to lose belly fat. There are many ways to tailor this to fit your preferences, situation, budget, etc. There are so many other exercises to chose from and ways to do it. If weight loss is all you are after you can just stick to running or this type of exercise.
Exercise To Lose Belly Fat: Body Transformation
If you want a total body transformation you take it all to a new level. You can change your routine to 3 days of weight lifting of resistance training a week and on the in between days, do high intensity interval training and have one day rest a week. This will accelerate your fat loss dramatically and start making you ripped. (All assuming you are following the guides for a fat loss diet)
Exercise to Lose Belly Fat
References
- Irving; Davis, C.; Brock, D.; Weltman, J.; Swift, D.; Barrett, E.; Gaesser, G.; Weltman, A. (2008). "Effect of exercise training intensity on abdominal visceral fat and body composition". Medicine and science in sports and exercise 40 (11): 18631872.
- Coker; Williams, R.; Kortebein, P.; Sullivan, D.; Evans, W. (2009). "Influence of exercise intensity on abdominal fat and adiponectin in elderly adults". Metabolic syndrome and related disorders 7 (4): 363368.
Metabolism Makeover
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