Body Express

Belly Fat, Be gone!

Whatever you are doing must not be working. If it is, then why would you be reading this?

          First of all, lets look at some facts. For a man to have his abs pop out from the shame of his spare tire, his body fat must fall at or BELOW 10 percent. For a woman’s abs to appear like a forest out of a fog, she has to have her body fat at 12 percent or LESS. Some women’s abs could appear at 14 percent or less, depending on the thickness of their abdominal muscles.

Now, don’t throw in the towel, you’ll need it soon enough! If you are still light years away from achieving the figures stated above, worry not, below are some tips to ensure that the journey there is not an uphill battle of eternal futility. All it takes here is some dedication and elbow grease to get you closer to your goal, wherever that maybe.

#1 Watch your Sodium Intake -This is probably the easiest, unless you’re swimming in it. Sodium increases water retention to the abdominal region, so if you have a high salt meal one night, expect to notice a difference the very next night. Fortunately, the reverse occurs just as fast. Based on this fact, reducing your salt intake is a very effective way of looking leaner almost overnight if you have a special event or function coming up.

#2 Add Instability to your Workout Program - Simply because when you reduce your stability, your abdominal muscles will be forced to react (contraction occurs) to maintain balance. Andengaging your abs this way helps to strengthen and build the muscle fibres, thus creating more definition to give you that ripped look. This can be done by incorporating an exercise ball or a BOSU ball in your weights routine. However, note that you shouldn’t do ALL your exercises on the ball as you also do want to lift as heavy as possible most of the time, but doing one or two per session would be beneficial .

#3 Drop your Carbs -Carbs work the same way sodium does to your body, so by dropping carbs you will also drop water weight. In addition, the gut flora digesting carbs increases bloating so in tandem with losing water weight, you will also reduce bloating.

Keep in mind that in the first few days of carbohydrate reduction, you might experience higher levels of fatigue in your workouts and feel slighty dizzy as your body tries to adapt to the lower carbohydrate level. Within a week or so, you will feel better provided that you are getting sufficient energy intake in the form of proteins and healthy fats. Examples of carbs that you should be reducing would be grains and wheat based carbs (pasta, bread)  as these have a higher fluid retention factor than leafy greens.

#4 Reduce your Rest periods to 30 seconds – By reducing your rest periods between workout sets, you will be engaging your muscles more often in a shorter period, thus increasing your muscle development potential. The more muscle you have, the more active tissue, resulting in a higher metabolism and higher fat burning potential.

#5 Take ONE week off cardio -If the cardio machines are your best friends, consider taking a week off your cardio routine. In many cases where cardio forms the bulk of a weight loss program, the body actually retains more water than it should. Once cardio training is reduced, the muscles start to look leaner, despite the lower calorie expenditure.

Another thing that may be occurring with this is that since you are creating a large energy deficit with the diet and exercise, your body may be slowing down its metabolism, which doesn’t help much with fat loss. By taking a break from cardio and sticking to a diet, you reduce the calorie deficit and your metabolic rate speeds up again, allowing weight loss to take place once more.

One thing to keep in mind is that when it comes to getting six pack abs, there is nothing more important than sticking to a good diet combined with smart weightlifting. Once you get that down to an art form, then you can move on to some minor details that you can play around with to take your progress to the next level.