Weight around the stomach area is often hard to shift and linked to diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.
Belly fat is known as visceral fat and churns out stress hormones such as cortisol and cytokines which can spike insulin levels.
But ensuring that your waistline doesn’t blow out, is not only important for your overall body confidence, it’s also crucial for your health.
The best way to have an understanding of your belly fat is to measure around your waist with a simple tape measure.
Abdominal obesity is considered anything above 102cm for men and 88cm for women.
Q: What causes belly fat?
A: There are a number of things that can cause belly fat. It can be stress related but it’s mainly to do with bad diet and lack exercise. Eating sugary and processed foods and drinks are the number one culprit but it may also be because you are consuming too little protein and too many carbohydrates. Eating a low fibre diet can also attribute to abdominal fat.
Q: How do I get rid of belly fat?
A: Reducing your sugar intake and upping your protein intake will definitely help reduce belly fat.
Eating more protein in your diet has shown to boost metabolism by 80-100 calories per day and apparently help you eat up to 441 fewer calories per day.
One study showed that those who ate more protein had less belly fat.
Carb restriction is another way to reduce belly fat. One study found that those on a low carb diet had a reduction in appetite and therefore ate less calories.
If you drop your carb intake by 50 grams per day, you can put your body into ketosis, making your body burn fats for fuel.
Eating food rich in fibre is another method of beating the belly bloat. One study showed that eating 10 grams of fibre per day was linked to a 3.7 per cent reduction in abdominal fat.
You can get more fibre into your diet by consuming legumes, fruit and oats.
Studies also indicate that undertaking regular exercise such as swimming, running or aerobics is beneficial for reducing belly fat.
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