How to Ditch that Beer Belly Without Ditching the Beer

Everyone likes a drink now and then, so ditching drinking in favour of your weight loss wellness can make you jack in your diet altogether. According to personal chef Diane Henderiks, RD, founder of Dish with Diane, your liver processes alcohol before other it does any other carbs and protein, meaning that the sheer presence of alcohol in your body slows down your fat-burning ability. Your wellbeing won’t be ruined if you have stick to one drink a day (that’s five ounces of wine, 12 ounces beer, or one ounce of a spirit) but if you want to drink AND lose weight, you might need to develop a few of the following healthy habits as well:

 

1. Chill Out: Cortisol is the hormone that encourages your body to store fat—particularly in your abdominal region – and anxiety causes cortisol to be produced in spades. It has been shown that deep-breathing exercises help to lower your stress levels, so pause for some deep-breathing time every hour. Set an hourly alarm on your phone and, when it goes off, take five to 10 deep-belly breaths, inhaling for five counts and exhaling for 10 counts.

 

2. Eat Enough: This is good advice for anyone wanting to lose weight, regardless of whether you ditch the drinks or not. When you don’t eat enough food to satisfy your body, it goes into starvations mode, Henderiks warns. This means that, out of fear of not being fed, your body will store extra fat for energy, rather than burning it off and keeping your belly taut.

 

3. Keep Up Your Strength: The more muscle you have, the faster your metabolism is and the more calories you burn all day long. This is because muscle is more metabolically active than fat, and exercise physiologist Tom Holland, author of Beat the Gym: Personal Trainer Secrets Without the Personal Trainer Price Tag, asserts that you need to do two to three total-body strength sessions a week in order to build that quality lean muscle.

 

4. Eat Wholegrains: In a study from PennsylvaniaStateUniversity, it was found that eating wholegrains instead of refined grains helps you lose more fat around your midsection. Moreover, researchers at Tufts University have reported that including three servings of whole grains and less than one serving of refined carbs in their diets every day helped participants lose 10% more visceral fat than those who didn’t follow this diet.

 

5. Work Your Abs from All Angles…: Celebrity trainer Gunnar Peterson, who works with Sofia Vergara, Kim Kardashian, and Vanessa Lachey, points out that there are three planes of motion you need to target when working on your abs. To challenge and define your ab muscles, you need to hit your sagitall plane (front to back and up and down) with crunches and reverse crunches; your frontal movement (side-to-side) with standing side bends; and transverse action (rotational) with chops or twists.

 

6….But Don’t Overdo the Ab Work: While you need to do ab-specific moves to tone your tummy, Holland asserts that these are the “finishing moves” once you’ve removed excess fat via diet and exercise. The majority of your workout should be focused on the rest of your body, and only 10% of your time should be dedicated to abs work. For the other 90% of your workout, focus on strength training and/or cardio.

 

7. Drink More…Green Tea: There is a whole heap of studies show to show that green tea deals with belly fat. This is due to an antioxidant called EGCG which helps boost metabolism and may specifically target abdominal fat.

Categories: abdominal fat, Alcohol, Belly, body, Deep Breathing, drink, green tea, Lose, Lose weight, nbsp, Personal Trainer, Weight Loss

Could Coffee Cause You to Store More Abdominal Fat?

You may need your morning cup of Joe to get you going in the morning, but you’re damaging your waistline in the process. This is according to a new Australian study, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, which found that five or more cups of coffee a day increases the amount of fat stored in your abdomen.

However, it’s not just your weight, but your overall wellbeing that you put at risk by getting your caffeine fix; even a “moderate intake” of coffee in the average day was found to lead to health problems such as increased risk of heart disease and diabetes. This finding is surprising, as up until now the evidence has suggested that coffee can actually benefit regular drinkers, helping to lower your chances of a stroke and certain forms of cancer. In fact, the new study set out with the aim of analysing how health-boosting compounds contained in the drink could improve your cardiovascular function.

Chlorogenic acid (CGA) is one of the compounds found in coffee which has been linked to health benefits such as a reduced risk of diabetes, lower blood pressure and even combating fat. However, the researchers came to find that too much coffee, including decaffeinated, could be bad for people’s health. According to Assistant Professor Vance Matthews, of the Western Australian Institute for Medical Research, ‘This study proved the opposite in dosages equivalent to five or six cups of coffee per day.’ He explained that even if you look slim, you may still be in trouble: ‘There’s a lot of people who look quite lean but they have accumulation of fat in certain cells around the organs and in the liver. This could be worsened by drinking too much coffee.’

It is safe to drink coffee in moderation, Professor Matthews said, but drinking too much could damage your wellness. He noted, ‘It seems that the health effects are dose-dependent. A moderate intake of coffee, up to three to four cups a day still seems to decrease the risk of developing diseases such as cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes. Everybody knows about the effects of caffeine, but when we’re considering our lifestyle choices it’s important to remember that compounds such as CGA can have an effect on our health if they aren’t consumed in moderation.’

 

Categories: abdominal fat, Coffee, Research

What Can Vitamin D Do for your Weight Loss and Wellbeing?

Vitamin D is essential for your bone health, as helping to protect against colds, fight depression and guard your wellbeing against breast cancer and cardiac death, but what about weight loss? Can vitamin D give your diet a kick in the right direction?

Low levels of vitamin D are often observed in people who are overweight and wellness experts believe that the hypothalamus in your brain (which, among other things, regulates hormonal functions) senses low vitamin D levels in your body and responds by increasing your body weight set point and releasing more hunger-stimulating hormones. Vitamin D also may prevent the growth and maturation of your fat cells.

Published in Nutrition Journal, a 12-week weight-loss study published found that increasing vitamin D levels resulted in decreases in fat mass, while a 2012 study found that supplementing with both calcium and vitamin D led to an increase in abdominal fat loss, albeit without increasing total weight loss. In 2010, it was reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that supplementing with vitamin D did not enhance weight loss, but it did improve other markers of health such as decreased triglyceride levels (a risk factor for heart disease) and TNF-alpha, a cellular marker of inflammation.

From this you can see that keeping your vitamin D levels in the optimum range can have great health benefits, but it isn’t the be-all and end-all of weight loss. Still, what can you do to increase your intake of this vital vitamin? From a dietary perspective, fatty fish are the major source, and fortified juices, milk, and cereals can also contribute to your daily intake. Going outside and getting some sun on your skin can help, as your body synthesises vitamin D from UVB rays.

However, your geographic location plays a major role in the UVB rays that you have access to, and even if you do live in the right place, other factors such as pollution and cloud cover can also impact how much vitamin D you will get while out in the sun. This is why vitamin D deficiency is so common in this country, and so you may need to supplement with 1,000 to 2,000 IU of vitamin D a day.

Categories: abdominal fat, Vitamin D, Weight Loss