One of the most common weight loss goals among humans is losing belly fat. The protruding stomach often makes us feel uncomfortable about ourselves and can hamper our self-confidence as well. From a health perspective also, abdominal fat is harmful to the body as several pieces of research have suggested the link between belly fat and diseases like heart diseases and type 2 diabetes.
How do you measure your abdominal fat? The simplest way to measure your abdominal fat is measuring the circumference around your waist using a tape measure. In men measure above 40 inches points at abdominal obesity and in women if the measure is above 35 inches, they are suffering from abdominal obesity.
With proper dietary measures and exercises, one can easily lose belly fat at home and regain a healthy body. Here are some tips that help in losing belly fat easily –
1. Increase your daily consumption of protein
When it comes to weight loss, protein is considered one of the most important macronutrients. Protein helps with food cravings as research shows that protein decreases cravings by 60%. Protein also decreases your daily calorie intake by 441 further helping you with weight loss. Making changes in your diet and adding protein to it is an effective step one needs to take to achieve his/her weight loss goals.
Protein is beneficial not only in losing weight but also prevents you from regaining the weight you have lost. Especially for losing abdominal weight, protein is abundantly beneficial. One study conducted in this field showed that people who consume a high amount of protein on a daily basis have less abdominal fat than those who avoided intake of protein.
A diet with protein is the best diet for losing belly fat hence try including protein in your diet. There is a range of high protein foods that you can consume to increase your protein intake like whole eggs, legumes, nuts, fish, dairy products, and meat. Vegetarians can opt for these foods to increase their intake of protein – Tofu, chickpeas, beans, lentil, Hempseed, quinoa, oatmeal, soy milk, chia seeds, and wild rice.
2. Switch to fiber-rich foods –
Consumption of fiber helps us in achieving weight loss goals. Before proceeding further into how fiber-rich foods help in losing abdominal fat we should know the type of fiber is important. In weight loss, intake of mostly the viscous and soluble fibers proves out to be effective. Once these fibers go inside your body they start binding water in your body to form a thick gel that sits in your gut.
What does this gel does to help you with weight loss is it slows down the process of digestion by slowing down the movement of the food you consume through the digestive system. This further results in reduced appetite and you feeling full for longer hours.
A fiber-rich diet also helps in losing belly fat fast and the best way to include fiber in your diet and increase your daily intake of fiber is by taking lots of plant-based foods. This includes both green vegetables and fruits. Cereals such as whole oats are a good source of fiber as well as legumes. You can also include glucomannan in your diet which is basically a fiber supplement. Studies conducted on glucomannan suggest that the nutrient is especially effective in weight loss.
3. Decrease the intake of sugar and sugar-sweetened drinks –
Health experts often regard the food that comes with added sugar as harmful for human health. If one mindlessly consumes more of these kinds of products on a daily basis, the end result would often be weight gain.
Studies conducted in this field suggest that because sugar has a large amount of fructose in it, overconsumption of it leads to the accumulation of fat in and around the abdomen and liver. Sugar basically has 50% of glucose and 50% of fructose in it and when we consume the added sugar in excess the liver in our body gets overburdened with fructose and ends up turning it into fat.
Hence in order to lose weight, one should aim at decreasing the daily consumption of sugar and completely refrain from consuming sugary drinks. Sugary drinks include all kinds of high sugar sports drinks, sugary sodas, fruit juices, and sugar-sweetened beverages. Before consuming the packed foods always make sure you read the ingredients list first to make sure it does not have any kind of refined sugar. At times the foods that are marketed as healthy foods have a considerable amount of sugar in them. The best kind of food for losing belly fat is food with no added sugar in it.
Before assuming that all kinds of sugar are harmful to health, you should know that none of the above-written things about sugar applies to fruits and the sugar in them. In fact, sugar in fruits is abundantly healthy for the body as it has lots of fibers in it, and it reduces the negative effects of fructose.
All of these tips allow you to lose your belly fat without interfering with your immunity levels at all which is extremely important in these challenging times of the Covid-19 pandemic. So while you focus on keeping your homes safe and hygienic also focus on building your immunity.
Check out this article on everything you need to know about men’s health
