Lower belly fat is one of the most notorious body fats to tackle, and losing it isn’t an easy task. The lower belly pooch is easy to gain and stubborn to shrink.
But there are some effective steps you can take to completely get rid of the lower belly.
Everyone’s body carries excess body fat in different places. But one most common place is the lower belly.
The real danger of that is that lower belly fat gets stored deep inside the abdomen near the essential organs.
When you have too much of it, it can have a negative impact on your health, leading to diabetes, cardiovascular issues, and many more.
If you have this type of body fat, it’s always recommended that you take immediate measures to reduce it for your health.
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What Causes Lower Belly Fat
So what exactly causes your belly fat? The belly fat is like any other excess fat stored in your belly. It’s one place many people’s body stores fat.
There are many things that cause belly fat, but the most common factors are genetics, lifestyle, and diet.
While it’s a stubborn kind of fat, there are many actions you can take to get rid of the excess belly fat and the associated health risks.
If you are ready to get rid of your belly fat for good, here are the effective steps you can take now.
How to Lose Lower Belly Fat
While you can’t spot reduce fat or target one fat over another in your fat-burning efforts, you can see a huge reduction in belly fat with certain efforts.
Those efforts include exercise, diet, and lifestyle choices. A total wholesome, holistic approach should be the main focus in your approach to losing your lower belly fat.
Exercise is permanent in building lean muscles and burning fat. It also boosts your metabolism and helps with fat burning and fat loss.
Following a clean diet is all about fueling your body with the right nutrients and keeping your calorie balance in check.
Other lifestyle factors like stress, sleep, and activity can also yield a huge result in lowering your belly fat.
1. Eat Nutrient-Dense Foods
The quickest way to lose that tummy fat is to think about the amount of food intake and the type of foods.
A great way to add high amounts of nutrient-dense foods is to increase veggies and real foods significantly.
The increase in veggies creates a balanced diet, increasing micronutrients and macronutrients.
All vegetables have a combination of micronutrients such as vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals.
Phytochemicals are made by plants to fight off fungi, bacteria, and viruses. Because there still needs to be more research on its benefits to humans it is typically not recommended to buy as supplements.
By increasing real foods, such as fruits like pear, avocado, aand apples; whole grains like pasta, bread, lentils, crackers, and quinoa.
You add carbohydrates in simple and complex forms, this type of carb intake in moderation is the way to increase nutrient-dense foods.
These provide energy for the body to function and energy for the brain to think.
With some lean meats like chicken breast, lean beef, and some fatty fish.
You add nutrients that help with tissue repair and a feeling of fullness. You are well on your way to a healthy weight and a lower belly.
2. Add More Fiber
There are two types of fiber. The soluble fiber and insoluble fiber.
The type of fiber with the most health benefits is soluble fiber, it helps the digestive system, blood sugar levels, cholesterol levels, and weight maintenance.
Unfortunately, most people do not get enough fiber in their diet.
In your digestive system, this type of fiber can dissolve in water creating a gel-like consistency. This gel absorbs the water along the digestive system and allows for the bulking of your stools keeping you from becoming constipated or having diarrhea.
Fiber also helps lower blood sugar levels by slowing down the absorption of sugar into the bloodstream.
Cholesterol levels are improved by soluble fiber, specifically the bad LDL cholesterol by trapping the fatty molecules and not allowing them to be absorbed into the bloodstream and rather be excreted with the stool.
Weight maintenance can be achieved with soluble fiber with the feeling of fullness.
Vegetables are a great source of fiber and should be a key component of your diet even if you’re not trying to lose body fat.
But you can also find soluble fiber in grains, oats, nuts, apples, beans, blueberries, quinoa, brown rice, and potatoes.
The fiber intake recommendation is 25-30 grams of soluble fiber per day.
3. Increase Protein Consumption
To help with weight maintenance, high protein intake is essential for long-term results. What is important to know is that the healthiest protein is lean protein.
Proteins have multiple functions, such as keeping you full longer which in turn controls your appetite.
It also helps with balancing sugar levels in your blood, amino acids as building blocks of tissue, and as another type of energy source.
By balancing the sugar levels in your blood, you minimize fat storage. And by controlling your appetite you decrease any excess calories.
Good sources of protein, legumes, Greek yogurt, nuts, seeds, eggs, fish, chicken, and lean meats.
You can also find protein in beverages, milk, soy milk, and almond milk.
The recommended grams of protein is usually 0.8-1.0 grams of protein per kilogram.
4. Decrease Foods That Cause Inflammation
All foods in balance are healthy, but there are a few that cause inflammation in our bodies.
Which can then increase lower abdominal fat.
Some foods that promote inflammation include the saturated fat found in meat and dairy products, fast food, junk food, fried food, palm oil, and foods with trans fats (usually processed foods).
The good news is that some foods aid the inflamed body. Lowering inflammation can be achieved by increasing unprocessed foods.
Good diet tips: Choose foods with unsaturated fats, such foods are the oil in fish oils, nuts, and flaxseed these carry the famed omega-3 fatty acids.
Also, olive oil, avocado oil and fruits and vegetables, mushrooms, legumes, whole grains, teas, and spices.
5. Add Physical Activity to Your Day
Exercise goes hand in hand with nutrition. Daily movement helps make you feel good, clear-minded and help you reach your weight loss goals.
By moving every single day, you allow your body to increase muscle mass in turn for your body to burn energy, that may have been consumed in excess.
If you are nervous about weight management with a fitness plan, a consult with a personal trainer can help you to identify areas of your body that need help with starting position or correct form, build muscle, increase lean muscle tissue, and improve your overall physique.
There really isn’t a lower belly fat workout but the following kinds of exercise that can help with fat loss aerobic exercise (cardio), strength training, resistance training, and HIIT workouts.
6. Add More Cardio to Your Routine
It is recommended to get at least 150 minutes of cardio sessions per week, this is an effective way to get you in a routine but also to help your cardiovascular health.
Aerobic exercise can be as simple as walking, walking on a treadmill, a jog, a low-intensity long run, using a jump rope, or any other activity that gets your heart rate up.
Regular cardio workouts will not only help you burn abdominal fat (visceral fat) but will also decrease your risk of heart disease.
7. Add Strength Training to Your Routine
Besides helping with fat loss, strength training does more. It helps with bone health, improved metabolism, and reduces risk factors for chronic conditions.
According to the Centers for Disease Control guidelines, strength training workouts can be done at least twice per week, focusing on the major muscle groups.
Muscle groups to focus on:
- Chest, back, and lower back muscles (torso)
- Arm and shoulder muscles
- Ab muscles
- Glutes, Quads, Hamstrings
With this type of workout, you can use your own body weight, free weights, and weight machines.
You can do a 15-minute total-body workout with a combination of pushups, pull-ups, planks, knee planks, squat jumps, lunges, Russian twists, crunches, burpees, mountain climbers, and hips flexors.
All of these exercises work your entire midsection. They help burn and get rid of abdominal fat.
You can also lift weights like barbells, and dumbbells or use a medicine ball and a kettlebell.
With the weight machines, where you can do leg presses, chest presses, and seated leg extensions.
Exercises that include barbells for example:
- Barbell back squats
- Barbell front squat
- Barbell lunges
- Deadlifts
Working with a set of dumbbells:
Exercises with dumbbells:
- Dumbbell squats
- Goblet squats
- Lunges
You can also use a kettlebell:
- Kettlebell swing single-handed
- Kettlebell swing two hands
- Kettlebell swing changing hands
8. Add Core Exercises to Your Workout
The wish is to be able to work out only the target muscles for spot reduction, unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.
To target your abdomen, you need to do a whole-body workout. But you can do abdominal exercises to help strengthen it.
Workouts that target all angles such as the upper abs, lower abs, obliques, rectus abdominis can be performed. Also, an overall workout like Pilates can be helpful for abs.
These core exercises can be crunches for the upper abs, plank knee-to-nose or mountain climbers for the lower abs, side planks for the obliques.
9. Include High-Intensity Exercise (HIIT)
One way to help decrease overall body fat is to try out a high-intensity exercise like the well-known high-intensity interval training (HIIT) several times a week.
This type of training alternates from intense bursts of movement to lower intensity or rest periods, thus the intervals.
The point is to get your heart rate up during those bursts.
Because you’ll be burning a lot of calories in the form of energy, you’ll see your lower abdomen flatten and your overall body fat percentage goes down as well.
Good examples of HIIT workouts:
- Burpee
- Mountain Climbers
- Running
- Squat jumps
- Medicine ball slam
Keep in mind that high intensity during workouts can be dangerous, consult with your doctor first before starting this type of fitness routine.
10. Change Your Lifestyle
Other very important factors in lower belly fat loss, are related to your lifestyle.
A good idea is to start thinking about healthy habits, they are essential to be on a routine that helps your body stay away from temptations.
Therefore, healthy changes to your lifestyle are just as important as eating and moving.
Consider these lifestyle changes:
- Drink plenty of water.
- Get more hours of sleep, avoid sleep deprivation
- Don’t drink so much alcohol
- Acknowledging that cravings may be actual hunger
- Quitting with smoking
Drinking plenty of water helps your body control that lower belly and keeps your body in balance.
Getting enough hours of sleep is also important, a lack of sleep can trigger the stress hormone cortisol, the elevated cortisol levels are known to increase fat cells.
From the topics mentioned above, alcohol consumption can be the most worrying.
These liquid calories can easily contribute to so much belly fat if excess alcohol is consumed. A lot of alcohol has contributed to the typical ” beer belly”.
Cravings can also be important to manage, it adds to a person’s sugar addiction. Usually, a person with cravings will want large amounts of sugary food, junk food, and sugary drinks.
The Final Take On How to Lose Lower Belly Fat
Lower belly fat can be the most stubborn but not impossible to get rid of. Follow the tips mentioned above and stay consistent.
Overall weight loss caused by long-term lifestyle change is the only way to lose abdominal fat in a healthy way.
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