If you are searching for an easy method to get rid of the stubborn belly fat and fit into your glam outfits for the wedding season, then begin with incorporating a few of these tips into your routine to get a toned-down glam look!
Body Fat Anatomy:
Before flooding this article with the tips to tone down the body. Let’s understand the body composition and the kinds of fats present inside the body. Because chances are, that you might know nothing about the other types of fats except the typical “white fat”.
There are four types of fat present in our body.
- White Fat
- Brown Fat
- Beige Fat
- Essential Fat
1. White Fat:
White fat is the type of fat we immediately think of when someone says “fat”. People usually work hard to get rid of this kind of fat. It’s made up of large, white cells that are stored under the skin or around the organs in the belly, arms, buttocks, and thighs. These fat cells are the body’s way of storing energy for later use.
The composition of white fat in a normal male should be from 14 to 24 percent, while in females the normal range should stretch from 21 to 31 percent. If the body fat percentage exceeds the recommended range, then the risk for health issues enhances tremendously.
An enhanced percentage of white fat could lead to various health conditions like type 2 diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure, coronary heart diseases, kidney diseases, and cancer.
2. Brown Fat & Beige Fat:
Both these fats burn fatty acids by the process of thermogenesis. They function quite differently from the typical white fats. These kinds of fats are integral for burning the white fat cells and lose the stubborn body fat. However, there are certain hormones & enzymes that trigger the conversion of Brown & Beige fat into white fat. These hormones or enzymes are either released via exercise or drugs.
3. Essential Fat:
This fat has no role in your typical fat-burning mission but they are essential for a healthy body. It is found in the brain, bone marrow, nerves, and the membranes protecting organs. The normal percentage of essential fats ranges from 10 to 13 percent in a typical woman, while it should range from 2 to 5 percent in men. The percentage of essential fat should not go below the recommended range, or else it could lead to various health problems.
Scientifically Proven Tips to trim your Body Fat:
Now that you know about the different kinds of fat present in your body, I would like to shed some light over the importance of a Calorie deficit diet and keeping an eye over the Total Daily Energy Expenditure. By Total Daily Energy Expenditure, I mean the calories you burn each day.
You need to look closely into the number of calories you consume normally and the number of calories you burn subsequently because no matter how many tips you follow without keeping an eye on Total Daily Energy Expenditure, that tummy won’t go back in. Moreover, if you feel that you are consuming more calories than you are burning so, either switch to a calorie deficit diet or burn greater calories via weight training, walking, cycling, jogging, running, dancing, Zumba, aerobics, swimming etc. Now, back to business.
Let’s get to the 3 tips.
1) Exercise:
It may sound very cliché to include exercise in this list but, this list would be incomplete without ‘exercise’ judging from the tremendous amount of calories burnt via exercise. It takes 4 hours for the calories to be converted into fat but it is going to take a few weeks for those calories to show a difference in your body shape and symmetry. So before the body fat starts showing up, one needs to burn those calories. Here are some of the different physical workouts and the calories burnt by them in 30 minutes.
- Running: Burns 280-520 calories per 30 minutes.
- Squats: Burns up to 175 calories per 30 minutes.
- HIIT: Burns 261-374 calories per 30 minutes.
- Cycling: Burns up to 298 calories per 30 minutes
- Swimming: Burns 300-444 calories per 30 minutes.
- Walking: Burns 100-300 calories per 30 minutes.
- Cardio exercises: Burns 140-295 calories per 30 minutes.
- Jumping rope: Burns 300-450 calories per 30 minutes.
So, you see that running wins this game of who-burns-the-greatest-amount-of-calories fair and square. However, there are many associated benefits of a particular physical exercise other than burning calories and the associated benefits of a specific workout may vary for individual body time. Exercise also triggers the release of a protein named irisin. This protein incites the conversion of white fat into brown fat. Hence it is integral to note that, a greater concentration of brown fat enables the burning of calories (or white fat).
2) Add These Potions into your Routine:
Add these super-drinks into your routine and see the magic happen.
I) Whey Protein:
Familiar with this term? No? Okay, so when milk is converted into cheese, two products are produced. Casein and whey. The casein part of milk is converted to cheese while the whey part, which is loaded with important proteins, is left unused. There are many brands that convert whey into powder form and sell it commercially. Whey slims us down by speeding up metabolism and reducing appetite.
II) Green Tea:
Green tea is loaded with caffeine and an antioxidant epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) which promotes the burning of fat and calories. This anti-oxidant also boosts metabolism. Studies have shown that drinking green tea before a physical workout can burn calories by two folds.
Green tea is loaded with caffeine and an antioxidant epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) which promotes the burning of fat and calories. This anti-oxidant also boosts metabolism. Studies have shown that drinking green tea before a physical workout can burn calories by two folds.
III) Apple Cider Vinegar:
Another honorable mention. A few years back, social media was fawning over the use of apple cider vinegar for weight loss. But does this drink actually have any role in weight loss and burning of calories? Yes, it does. According to science, apple cider vinegar promotes weight loss and carving of belly fat by triggering the feeling of fullness. It triggers an enzyme namely AMPK, which promotes the burning of fat and production of sugar in the liver. Moreover, it enhances the expression of a gene that is involved in the loss of belly and liver fat.
3) Spot Reduction Exercise for Belly Fat?
For a long time, people believed that the fat loss in a specific region could be targeted by building muscles around it. But is it true? Let me burst your myth bubble because it is nothing more than a myth. Spot reduction exercises don’t work. One can’t splice that fat out of the body with a targeted exercise. It takes so much more than that to get a perfect body. Our body is made to lose fat all over. When we perform an exercise, it will affect every part of our body. So, if you want to lose that tummy, make sure that the calories going in are equal or at least somehow equal to calories burning out. So, if a trainer is making you believe in the effectiveness of spot reduction exercises then he is selling lies rather than service because there is no direct way of losing fat from a specific area. Our body loses fat on the basis of “All or none” rule.
Bottom Line:
I have seen people restricting their diet and consuming nothing except salads to lose weight and fat but consumption of calories is not a bad thing. It doesn’t matter if you consume 10 times more calories than your colleague if you know how to burn them. Restricting your diet could never be a permanent solution to this problem. Eat all your favorite meals but learn to burn them after consumption. These few tips above, are scientifically proven and could work differently for different people. However, directly or indirectly all these tips are destined to tone down your calorie count.
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