Alt-text: A woman measuring her waist managed to get rid of stubborn fat.
If you’re stuck with belly fat, it means that either you’re not doing anything to get rid of it, or you’re not doing something right. The question pops up: who’s the stubborn one here?
Luckily, it is not too hard to form good habits. With proper motivation and assistance, a balanced diet, and exercise, everything is possible.
We’re helping out with some insight into the most common reasons that keep the flab around. Once you understand what you did wrongly, it becomes a lot easier to fix it.
A flat stomach will be within your reach again!
What causes and how to get rid of stubborn belly fat?
Excess weight comes at different points in life to different people for various reasons, although they all have a common denominator. It is called imbalance. A healthy diet without full-body exercise, and vice versa, won’t give the results you expect. Even if you believe you know what you’re doing, if your belly fat stubbornly persists, you are missing something.
Browse weight loss tips carefully; while none of them are necessarily bad, they might not specifically apply to you. This is partly because genetic predisposition to weight gain varies from person to person. Your age, gender, health status, lifestyle, and body type all influence the amount of fat and area where it accumulates in your body.
The most common reasons you can’t get rid of stubborn fat include
- You’re too stressed out. Stress triggers cortisol, known as the stress hormone, which in turn boosts your appetite, food cravings, and more.
- Inadequate workout or lack thereof. It is not enough to do targeted ab exercises. Only whole-body activities will do the trick.
- You can’t resist sugared drinks and alcohol. These drinks are associated with weight gain and belly fat as they contain a lot of calories.
- Not getting enough sleep. Long-term lack of sleep is confirmed to stimulate hunger hormones, eventually leading to overeating.
- Improper diet. You’re either eating too much or too little, or all the wrong foods, or at the wrong time of the day.
- Lack of motivation. If you’re trying to lose weight for all the wrong reasons, stubborn belly fat is here to stay. The most powerful and meaningful motivation should be your health.
Constant stress is closely related to weight gain and abdominal fat
The production of the stress hormone cortisol, a steroid hormone that is our first stress response, is closely related to weight gain. It influences your appetite as well as blood sugar levels. As a result of continuous stress, you are at higher risk of diabetes and overeating. The best way to eliminate this risk is to work on stress-reducing techniques. These include yoga and meditation combined with aromatherapy.
You don’t have someone to supervise your workout
It is vital to have someone oversee your training. Beginners often perform exercises incorrectly and easily overexert or sprain a muscle. That stubborn belly fat remains where it is as another consequence of unsupervised exercise. Doing the wrong workout has more disadvantages than benefits, and focusing solely on one group of muscles, namely abdominal muscles, won’t produce the expected results.
Sufficient, good quality sleep helps you get rid of stubborn belly fat
Researchers say that the optimal amount of sleep is between six and eight hours. What is also important is that a good night’s sleep is related to belly fat and, by regulating sleep, you help eliminate abdominal fat. Specifically, sleep deprivation triggers the production of hormones that boost your appetite as a way to compensate. Moreover, it is less likely you will find the will to exercise if you’re constantly losing sleep. Make your sleep environment comfortable and relaxing, keep regular sleeping hours, and set aside your devices before going to bed.
Choose your beverages wisely
One of the things that seem difficult to eliminate is soda drinks. These beverages, including supposedly diet ones, are among the responsible for that stubborn belly fat. Specifically, artificial sweeteners in diet drinks are believed to slow down metabolism. At the same time, alcohol and especially alcoholic beverages mixed with soda drinks add to the calorie count, among other disadvantages. Whenever you can, swap these drinks with water to get rid of the stubborn belly fat faster.
You haven’t adjusted your diet adequately
Both overeating and not eating enough can cause belly fat, although for various reasons. Surplus calories are not your only adversary; strict sudden diets can put your hormones off balance, causing the opposite effect. Before you design your diet, check your health status first. Then, it is advisable to get familiar with foods that help with weight loss with the help of a professional nutritionist. Avoid processed food, refined sugar and grains, and saturated fat.
Finding the right motivation
We all get painfully aware of abdominal fat when summer comes knocking. But purely aesthetic reasons and your figure in a swimming suit are not the best of motives. If you don’t achieve your flat abdomen goal in a few short weeks before the holidays, you will easily give up. And besides, summer will come and go, and you will still struggle with that stubborn fat in the remaining fifty weeks of the year.
On the other hand, if you set up your health as a priority, you’re more likely to get motivated to change your lifestyle. Belly fat can be a by-product of your hormonal status, stress levels, and unhealthy living in general. Visiting a physician, nutritionist, and personal trainer will make you invest, and no one gives up on investments quickly.
A few final notes
Before you start with any diet or exercise, consult your physician. Doing otherwise means being even less responsible for your health than doing nothing. No matter how good your intentions, sudden changes to your lifestyle can wreak havoc on your metabolism and hormones. That said, getting rid of stubborn fat does not have to be a nightmare – you just have to have the right support.
