It’s summer. The hunt for the elusive flat tummy starts again. The microwear of summer turns up the intensity of the search. Two things can help diet and exercise. A healthy diet helps in two ways. It can help you lose subcutaneous and visceral fat. You can also focus on foods to avoid and ones that help you achieve your goal to have abs you’ll be proud to show off.
Eliminate highly refined, high-carb foods.
What puts inches around your middle and a few scoops of fat on your tummy? Simple carbs are the answer. You probably have a weakness for many foods in that category. Freshly baked bread, donuts, cookies, cake, candy, pizza, and bagels contain processed simple carbs. If you want a flatter stomach, skip the simple carbs and focus on protein and complex carbohydrates. Choose whole-grain bread instead of white bread. It has more nutrients and keeps you feeling full longer. Cutting food with added sugar is hard, but it makes a huge difference. When you skip the sugar, you’ll notice weight dropping more quickly.
Don’t forget to include healthy fat and skip the special diet foods.
When people hear they should eat fat, they freak out. That doesn’t mean you eat the crispy fat off a steak or deep-fried food. Eat fatty foods like tuna, avocado, full-fat yogurt, or olive oil that contain the fat that helps you burn more fat. Eating more healthy fat and fewer simple carbs goes a long way to helping you shed belly fat. Fat is necessary to transport the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K.
Eat more soluble fiber foods.
Soluble fiber feeds your body’s beneficial microbes. The fiber changes to a gel when it mixes with water. That gel slows the absorption of sugar, so your blood sugar doesn’t spike. Without the fiber, sugar rushes to your bloodstream causing a spike in blood sugar followed by a spike in insulin. The massive increase in insulin makes changes that can cause an increase in belly fat. Soft drinks are one source of sugar content most people fail to recognize. Even if you drink sugar-free soft drinks, recent studies show they may put excess pounds around your midsection in the form of visceral fat, the most dangerous type of fat and the hardest to lose.
- Fruit juice seems healthy and contains many nutrients, but unlike the whole fruit, it doesn’t contain fiber. It’s full of natural sugar that spikes your insulin because of the lack of fiber. Switch to whole fruit and water.
- Add probiotic food to your diet to improve your gut microbiome. Probiotic foods include sauerkraut, yogurt, kefir, and kimchi. Eating fiber and other prebiotic foods helps build a healthy probiotic microbiome.
- Eliminating stress can help you shed belly fat. Stress hormones, like cortisol, are linked to belly fat. Exercise, adequate sleep, meditation or other relaxation techniques, and a healthy diet can help.
- Our personal trainers at Rising Fitness can help you with exercises to make your stomach flat and beach ready. They can help you with weight loss by showing off that new-found six-pack.
For more information, contact us today at Rising Fitness Gym