- Eating too many sugary or processed foods like sweets, sodas, juices, and wheat products
- Creating high levels of cortisol in your body from stress and eating inflammatory foods
- Letting your metabolism drop by not including resistance and interval training in your exercise routine
Now that you know exactly how it got there, we can come up with a plan to get rid of it - fast!
1. Eliminate Sugary/Processed Foods
Begin to cut out any foods that come prepackaged in a box or bag. Start looking at the ingredient labels on your food and make sure the sugar content is low and that the protein content is high. By eating more lean protein like fish, chicken, turkey, eggs, and certain red meats you will feel less hungry, have more energy, and keep your insulin and blood sugar levels within a healthy range. This will stop new belly fat from forming.
2. Cutting Cortisol Levels
Cortisol is one word you should get to know. In the coming years you will begin to hear more about its harmful effects on your body and eventually it will become a household name. Basically, cortisol is helpful at certain times and levels, but it becomes a problem when too much of this hormone is being produced for too long by the adrenal glands. You'll often see its effects manifested in inflammatory issues, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, weakened immune system, abdominal fat, decreased muscle tissue, and a suppressed thyroid. The good news is that you can reverse this trend by eating less inflammatory foods and working to reduce the stress in your life by exercising, meditating, listening to music, or any other way that helps you unwind.
3. Exercise
Aerobic exercise will help you burn more calories and resistance training will allow you to add lean muscle which increases your metabolism. Since you lose muscle as you age, it's really important that you add in at least 2-3 days of strength training into your routine. The best part is if you complete your resistance training workouts as an interval style workout you won't have to do your aerobic training separately on those days. You'll get your heart rate up and your muscles working all at the same time. Make sure to include squats, deadlifts, lunges, step-ups, presses, and pulls into your program if you're serious about losing belly fat. Lots of ab and arm exercises won't help you lose body fat in those areas... that's not how it works. You can't spot reduce through targeted exercise. Instead you need to work large muscle groups to burn fat and boost your metabolism, so that you're burning more fat all day long.
If you follow these 3 steps, you will be well on your way to literally cutting inches off your waist within weeks. I see it everyday and I get hundreds of responses a week on what the "magic" of this plan can do for your body and your health.
