North Americans have an issue with excess abdominal fat. I doubt that's much of a news flash for you!
Even with a growing number of weight loss "experts", celebrity diets, and self-help books, we still have a growing problem with belly fat, affectionately referred to as "muffin tops", "love handles". "beer bellies", and that extra inch we'd rather not pinch.
Whether you've got just an extra couple inches, or many more, increased abdominal fat is not only unsightly and annoying, but it directly raises our risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and every other chronic illness of our modern times. Being overweight, especially if you carry that excess weight in your midsection, can shorten your life.
Sadly, being overweight can also prevent us from fully "living" life and truly enjoying it. It places limits on us, emotionally and mentally, as well as physically.
Unfortunately, with all the diets, gadgets, pills & potions out there aimed at helping you lose the belly fat quickly, there really are no magic pills. There are no quick fixes. We're talking about a health issue here, not a cosmetic one.
It's also nearly impossible to exclusively target your abdominal area - you've got to shed fat overall in order to see the results in your midsection. It's too bad, I know, because all those abs gadgets on the infomercials look like so much fun!
Always remember that the more toxicity you consume and are exposed to, and the more you accumulate, the bigger your fat cells will become. Fat cells harbor toxins as a highly intelligent protective mechanism of the body.
Do you want to lose fat overall? Stop taking in so much toxicity and do regular cellular detoxification protocols to reduce the accumulation.
Here's more you can do to help lose the excess belly fat:
Eat a healthy diet, of course. Eat more nutrient-dense foods like vegetables and real, whole foods.
Don't wait too long between fueling up, don't go on an ultra-low calorie diet, and don't skip meals as strategies for overall fat loss. Short-term, some of these strategies may be successful. As a long-term strategy, however, your body may inadvertently think it's starving and try to do you a favor by hanging onto fat for you.
Drink ample pure water. Well-hydrated cells function more efficiently and make it less likely that you'll accumulate toxins and metabolic by-products.
There's no rocket science here: you've got to take in fewer calories than you burn each day, plain and simple. Be aware of what you're consuming compared to what you're expending.
Eliminate or reduce refined sugars, artificial sweeteners, trans fats/hydrogenated & partially hydrogenated fats, artificial colors & flavors, and all the processed junk from your diet. These are all toxic. More toxicity meeans bigger fat cells. I'm not talking about the "once-in-awhile" stuff here - I'm talking about the things you eat most consistently.
Switch from unhealthy fats & oils, like polyunsaturated vegetable oils, and start consuming healthy fats like grass-fed butter and extra virgin coconut oil, and extra virgin olive oil. The Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA) in fats from grass-fed livestock helps you shed fat and improve your metabolism. Coconut oil is known for its positive metabolic effects, as well.
Add broad-spectrum probiotics, and traditionally fermented, cultured & sprouted foods to your diet. These help restore gut health which relates to proper nutrient absorption, elimination, reduces cellular inflammation, and much more.
Control your fruit intake. It's not a free-for-all with fruit! (Keep this in mind with your kids, too.) Even though fruit contains "natural" sugars, it contains a significant amount sugar nonetheless. Yes, it's better than sugary toxic junk food, but you simply need to be aware of your consumption, particularly if you have issues with insulin resistance.
Investigate gut permeability and food sensitivities. If your intestinal lining has become too permeable through chronic lifestyle 'abuse', it will allow large molecules of food to pass through this important barrier. This creates chronic inflammation, decreased nutrient absorption, and a chronic immune response that can end up being labelled as an autoimmune condition. I recommend taking proper steps to assess the integrity of your gut, take the necessary steps to heal your gut, and identify the foods you're truly reactive to so that you can avoid them.
One of those reactive foods is commonly gluten. Even if you haven't been officially labelled as having Celiac Disease or having an "allergy" to gluten, more and more people are reacting to the gluten in wheat, and to common foods that cross react with gluten. Compared to food from just a few generations ago, our modern food supply has excessive gluten. By avoiding foods with gluten (commonly found in wheat, rye, barley, and malt), you will most likely see an improvement in digestive issues, skin issues, and even bloating.
Reduce your intake of "starchy" carbohydrates. These convert to sugar very quickly in the body. Increased sugar means increased toxicity and inflammation, and you know how that goes! Especially if you have blood sugar issues, insulin resistance, or weight loss resistance, it's best to avoid these starchy carbs. Lay off the bread, cereal, pasta, crackers, pretzels, tortillas, pizza, donuts, muffins, bagels, pancakes, pastries, and white rice for at least a few weeks to see how you do. Load up on "fresh fiber" from vegetables instead, as well as healthy fats, like avocado.
Make sure you consume "clean" protein and fats with your meals and snacks. "Clean" is more important than "lean" - it means the least toxic possible. Don't load up on protein sources that have been loaded up with drugs, hormones, steroids, antibiotics, etc. It doesn't just magically evaporate before you ingest it! Protein and healthy fats fill you up, help you feel satisfied, and they burn off slowly in the body so you don't feel as hungry between meals. Choose clean sources such as grass-fed beef & bison, free-range/pastured poultry and eggs, wild game, and wild-caught cold water fish.
It could be your hormones. If you're doing "everything right", but you're still not losing weight, the problem could be in your hormonal communication system. While it could be a problem with the level of hormones themselves (like thyroid hormones), often the real cause is a problem at the cell membrane where the hormones are attempting to deliver their message to the inner 'brains' of the cells. When chronic toxicity and inflammation have reached their tipping point, critical hormone receptors on the cell membrane can become dysfunctional. The result is skewed hormonal function and skewed test results. Address the cause and get on an appropriate recovery protocol to finally see the results you've been looking for, as well as to correct a myriad of health problems that may have been brewing. Don't just assume that you need "hormonal therapy" if you haven't yet addressed toxicity and inflammation.
Do full body exercise and include high-intensity burst training. Target training or spot reduction for the abs isn't going to cut it. It's helpful, but it's not the answer. Full body and high intensity exercise will increase your Resting Metabolic Rate the most so that you can burn more fat 24/7.
Keep at it. When you do "right" things often enough, for long enough, the end results become more predictable. Try not to compare yourself to others. Just keep making healthy choices and don't give up. Sometimes belly fat is the last fat to go, especially if you've been toxic for a long time. Just be patient and have confidence that you're making choices that will help you lose the abdominal fat and add to your future health.
Start implementing some of these tips and strategies right away and you'll begin noticing improvements in no time. Save some pennies, too. You'll need to buy some new jeans!
Even with a growing number of weight loss "experts", celebrity diets, and self-help books, we still have a growing problem with belly fat, affectionately referred to as "muffin tops", "love handles". "beer bellies", and that extra inch we'd rather not pinch.
Whether you've got just an extra couple inches, or many more, increased abdominal fat is not only unsightly and annoying, but it directly raises our risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and every other chronic illness of our modern times. Being overweight, especially if you carry that excess weight in your midsection, can shorten your life.
Sadly, being overweight can also prevent us from fully "living" life and truly enjoying it. It places limits on us, emotionally and mentally, as well as physically.
Unfortunately, with all the diets, gadgets, pills & potions out there aimed at helping you lose the belly fat quickly, there really are no magic pills. There are no quick fixes. We're talking about a health issue here, not a cosmetic one.
It's also nearly impossible to exclusively target your abdominal area - you've got to shed fat overall in order to see the results in your midsection. It's too bad, I know, because all those abs gadgets on the infomercials look like so much fun!
Always remember that the more toxicity you consume and are exposed to, and the more you accumulate, the bigger your fat cells will become. Fat cells harbor toxins as a highly intelligent protective mechanism of the body.
Do you want to lose fat overall? Stop taking in so much toxicity and do regular cellular detoxification protocols to reduce the accumulation.
Here's more you can do to help lose the excess belly fat:
Eat a healthy diet, of course. Eat more nutrient-dense foods like vegetables and real, whole foods.
Don't wait too long between fueling up, don't go on an ultra-low calorie diet, and don't skip meals as strategies for overall fat loss. Short-term, some of these strategies may be successful. As a long-term strategy, however, your body may inadvertently think it's starving and try to do you a favor by hanging onto fat for you.
Drink ample pure water. Well-hydrated cells function more efficiently and make it less likely that you'll accumulate toxins and metabolic by-products.
There's no rocket science here: you've got to take in fewer calories than you burn each day, plain and simple. Be aware of what you're consuming compared to what you're expending.
Eliminate or reduce refined sugars, artificial sweeteners, trans fats/hydrogenated & partially hydrogenated fats, artificial colors & flavors, and all the processed junk from your diet. These are all toxic. More toxicity meeans bigger fat cells. I'm not talking about the "once-in-awhile" stuff here - I'm talking about the things you eat most consistently.
Switch from unhealthy fats & oils, like polyunsaturated vegetable oils, and start consuming healthy fats like grass-fed butter and extra virgin coconut oil, and extra virgin olive oil. The Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA) in fats from grass-fed livestock helps you shed fat and improve your metabolism. Coconut oil is known for its positive metabolic effects, as well.
Add broad-spectrum probiotics, and traditionally fermented, cultured & sprouted foods to your diet. These help restore gut health which relates to proper nutrient absorption, elimination, reduces cellular inflammation, and much more.
Control your fruit intake. It's not a free-for-all with fruit! (Keep this in mind with your kids, too.) Even though fruit contains "natural" sugars, it contains a significant amount sugar nonetheless. Yes, it's better than sugary toxic junk food, but you simply need to be aware of your consumption, particularly if you have issues with insulin resistance.
Investigate gut permeability and food sensitivities. If your intestinal lining has become too permeable through chronic lifestyle 'abuse', it will allow large molecules of food to pass through this important barrier. This creates chronic inflammation, decreased nutrient absorption, and a chronic immune response that can end up being labelled as an autoimmune condition. I recommend taking proper steps to assess the integrity of your gut, take the necessary steps to heal your gut, and identify the foods you're truly reactive to so that you can avoid them.
One of those reactive foods is commonly gluten. Even if you haven't been officially labelled as having Celiac Disease or having an "allergy" to gluten, more and more people are reacting to the gluten in wheat, and to common foods that cross react with gluten. Compared to food from just a few generations ago, our modern food supply has excessive gluten. By avoiding foods with gluten (commonly found in wheat, rye, barley, and malt), you will most likely see an improvement in digestive issues, skin issues, and even bloating.
Reduce your intake of "starchy" carbohydrates. These convert to sugar very quickly in the body. Increased sugar means increased toxicity and inflammation, and you know how that goes! Especially if you have blood sugar issues, insulin resistance, or weight loss resistance, it's best to avoid these starchy carbs. Lay off the bread, cereal, pasta, crackers, pretzels, tortillas, pizza, donuts, muffins, bagels, pancakes, pastries, and white rice for at least a few weeks to see how you do. Load up on "fresh fiber" from vegetables instead, as well as healthy fats, like avocado.
Make sure you consume "clean" protein and fats with your meals and snacks. "Clean" is more important than "lean" - it means the least toxic possible. Don't load up on protein sources that have been loaded up with drugs, hormones, steroids, antibiotics, etc. It doesn't just magically evaporate before you ingest it! Protein and healthy fats fill you up, help you feel satisfied, and they burn off slowly in the body so you don't feel as hungry between meals. Choose clean sources such as grass-fed beef & bison, free-range/pastured poultry and eggs, wild game, and wild-caught cold water fish.
It could be your hormones. If you're doing "everything right", but you're still not losing weight, the problem could be in your hormonal communication system. While it could be a problem with the level of hormones themselves (like thyroid hormones), often the real cause is a problem at the cell membrane where the hormones are attempting to deliver their message to the inner 'brains' of the cells. When chronic toxicity and inflammation have reached their tipping point, critical hormone receptors on the cell membrane can become dysfunctional. The result is skewed hormonal function and skewed test results. Address the cause and get on an appropriate recovery protocol to finally see the results you've been looking for, as well as to correct a myriad of health problems that may have been brewing. Don't just assume that you need "hormonal therapy" if you haven't yet addressed toxicity and inflammation.
Do full body exercise and include high-intensity burst training. Target training or spot reduction for the abs isn't going to cut it. It's helpful, but it's not the answer. Full body and high intensity exercise will increase your Resting Metabolic Rate the most so that you can burn more fat 24/7.
Keep at it. When you do "right" things often enough, for long enough, the end results become more predictable. Try not to compare yourself to others. Just keep making healthy choices and don't give up. Sometimes belly fat is the last fat to go, especially if you've been toxic for a long time. Just be patient and have confidence that you're making choices that will help you lose the abdominal fat and add to your future health.
Start implementing some of these tips and strategies right away and you'll begin noticing improvements in no time. Save some pennies, too. You'll need to buy some new jeans!
Dr. Colleen Trombley-VanHoogstraat ("Dr Mom Online") is a leading
expert in Natural Health & Wellness. Her unique perspective of the
science of Wellness provides predictable solutions and transformational
results for those struggling with chronic health issues, as well as
those seeking lifelong health. To discover her simple strategies for
creating better health through nutrition, movement and mindset, visit http://www.DrMomOnline.com and be sure to request your free "Top Nutrition Tips" report while you're there, and check out her available books at http://amazon.com/author/drcolleen.
Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Colleen_Trombley-VanHoogstraat
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