Lose Belly Fat Fast

This post was inspired by something I read on some weight loss blog not long ago. How do you handle your diet during holidays? With Halloween coming up and Thanksgiving not far away this is a popular topic. Trying to resist all that candy on Halloween isn’t easy. And saying “no, no thank you, I am on a diet” when someone tries to hand you a plate at the table during Thanksgiving will be even worse.

So, how should you deal with it? In my opinion you should have at it and enjoy yourself! Come on now, chances are you are still going to eat some candy or what have you during a holiday, it’s just too tempting not to. So instead of trying to stick to your diet, failing then feeling all negative about that, why not take a break from your diet and eat what you want for a day? Obviously don’t go completely crazy with the food but it’s ok to have some sweats and there is no need to beat yourself up about having a slice of a cake.

In fact a number of people advocate having one cheat day a week, where you don’t need to follow a diet and can eat what you want. Doing so will make sure that you won’t have any pent up craving for some none-diet-friendly food. Obviously you still have to control how much you eat and trying to win a pie eating contest is not advised.

So go ahead, take a break from your diet for a day and eat some candy, have some cake and fill yourself with stuffing – it’s alright to do it. In fact it’s probably better to do it this way compared to losing control and going on an eating binge!

Who wouldn’t want to get a great work out in under 15 minutes? I am sure we all would love to be able to get a nice work out in such a short time. And that is exactly what interval training allows one to do! (you may want to read my previous post on Interval Training.) Interval training is of course more of a methodology and less of a work out program, as such you can use just about any type of exercise for it.

Although you can use just about any exercise for this purpose, body weight exercise are probably best – you can do them fast with relatively low chances of injury. Where as say trying to do Olympic lifts at fast pace would compromise technique and increase the chance of an injury. But let’s get a bit more specific and actually list a few quick and simple exercise you can use for amazing work outs:

1) Probably the easiest of them all but amazingly effective tabata squats – do as many squats as you can for 20 seconds, then rest 10 seconds, 8 intervals. (by the way, Tabata was the name of the scientist who did a lot of research on interval training if I recall correctly) The goal is to get the highest total number of squats. What makes this exercise so awesome, aside from its effectiveness is that it doesn’t require any equipment and can be done anywhere, at home or in a hotel room.

2) Running is a great exercise, but if you want to get a great work out without spending a lot of times you can use sprints to do just that. Go to a track field (would look kind of weird if you did this on the street) run a 100 meter as fast as you can, take a short break (up to a minute or so) then run another 100 meters. Do it 5 times and you’ll burn so many calories it’s unreal. not only that but the entire thing will only take you about 6-7 minutes!

3) Getting a bit bored? Why not combine a few different exercise – you can do squats and push ups where you do an interval of squats for 20 seconds, 10 seconds break, push ups for 20 seconds, break etc. for 8 rounds total, so 4 rounds of push ups and 4 rounds of squats. Same as in example 1, the goal is to do the highest number of push ups and squats. Now not only do you have a fun and effective work out but you are working on different muscle groups as well!

Those are just a few examples of how you can combine simple exercise with interval training to get a quick and effective work out. Better yet, no matter how fit you are, interval training will always be effective – it’s just a fit person will have higher numbers. Which makes it one of the very few work out programs that can work well for both unfit people and pro athletes.

You should do a warm up before interval training though (as well as a cool down) and I would also recommend that you get your stamina to a certain level before trying interval training as it does push your heart rate etc up. If you can run for 30 minutes at a moderate you should be good. But do go slow(er) the first time.

Interval training – it’s been a buzz word for a while now it seems. And there is a good reason for it, whether you want to burn fat, gain muscle or improve your stamina interval training works great. What makes it so good? We’ll get there, but first a quick over view of what interval training is: as the name suggests it’s a work out routine where you do exercise in intervals, usually very short (from 20 seconds to about 3 minutes depending on work out) followed by a quick break, then exercise, then break.

There are several reasons why this method is very effective. Firstly it allows you to go at or near maximum effort – something that isn’t possible with a flat work out with no breaks, the rest periods in between allow you to keep going at that maximum level for longer amounts of time. Why is doing exercise at maximum effort matters? Well, just think about two athletes running a 100 meters. One is a sprinter that runs it at a sub 10 seconds, the other is a long distance marathoner who runs it at high but sustainable pace of 6 meters per second. The sprinter can only run 100meters at that speed, marathoner can run for hours. Which one do you think will burn more calories and have a more effective work out? Of course the sprinter. (read: Running to Lose Weight)

Interval training allows you to do exercise at maximum effort which produces much better results than exercising at 70% or some such level of your maximum in the same period of time. Time is the second part that makes interval training so great. At some point you reach a level where your fitness is so good that doing exercise in aerobic regime (sustainable level) hardly produces any results unless you do it for hours. But doing them at maximum level with short breaks in between allows you to get a great work out in a short period of time.

While interval training becomes a necessity for high level athletes (except marathoners) it is a good program for an average Joe or Jane as well. The fact that you can get an amazing work out in just 5-10 minutes is very appealing to many people. Not only that but you can use body weight exercise, combined with interval training you can get an awesome work out in less time than it would take you to get to a gym!

Want to lose some weight? One of the first ideas that comes to mind is running to lose weight. It is after all a very popular method to stay fit and healthy. But is it the best way to go for someone who just wants to drop a few (or quite a few) pounds? The answer may surprise you!

A while ago I remember reading an article on this subject that came to a conclusion that running is bad for weight loss. The reason for such an interesting conclusion was the fact that running (like any exercise) makes one more hungry than usual, and these caused people to eat more, so much more in fact that they would not only make up for the calories lost during a run, but even go over that – in effect making them gain weight compared to if they did not run.

The problem with that conclusion is of course that it’s based on a silly factor – that people who exercise don’t follow a diet. Well, as I mentioned in Weight Loss Is Simple But Not Easy exercising without a good diet is most often a total waste of time – No matter how many calories you burn, you can always eat more. This study however does highlight the importance of a diet when it comes to losing weight.

But back to the topic at hand, how well does running to lose weight work? Assuming your diet is in order and you aren’t going to eat a box of donuts just because you ran a few miles, it works pretty well. How well? Depends on your level of fitness. If you haven’t worked out in years then running will be an awesome weight loss exercise. You’ll burn lots of calories and it won’t take too much time (10-30 minutes should make for a nice work out.)

However as your fitness improves you will find that running for the same 30 minutes no longer produces the same results it used (read: Why Do I Lose Weight So Slowly?) What happened is that your body adapted and you now need to either increase the time spent running or increase speed at which you run, or a combination of both. Which is why I can’t help but be amused by the people at a gym who run on a treadmill for an hour five days a week for years and then wonder why they aren’t losing weight. Doing that might’ve been a great way to burn fat when they first started, but by now their body has adapted and hardly burns any calories.

So if you like running but find that you aren’t getting the kind of weight loss results you used to in the past, it doesn’t mean that you have to quit running to lose weight. It just means you need to increase your speed and/or run for longer periods of time. Although as your fitness gets better and betters you might come to a point where doing other exercise will give you better results than running.

It still works though and should be used as it is a great exercise to keep one self fit and healthy, but you would likely want to reduce the frequency down to about once or twice a week for longer runs.

Are you trying to lose weight and are appalled by how slow your weight loss is? can’t help but wonder: Why do I lose weight so slowly? Well, you aren’t the only one, in fact it’s a very common question to ask. After all, most people want to drop their weight fast and slow results are both annoying and discouraging. So much so that you might be tempted to stop just because you don’t see much progress.

Well, quitting isn’t an option if your goal is to lose weight and look great. However slow progress isn’t that good either. So let’s address why you may not be getting the sort of weight loss results you were hoping for. There are actually a number of possible reasons for this, depending on your situation and where you are in your journey to a less fat you.

If you are just beginning with a good diet and exercise then the reason for a slow loss of pounds is that your body needs some time to adapt. It could take a few days or even a week or two before your body decides that it needs to adapt to the changes you’ve made (ie. lower calorie intake with increased physical activity.) I like to think of it as trying to move a large stone that’s been sitting in a place for a long time. You push and push and it doesn’t even budge, but eventually it starts to move, slowly at first then faster and faster, eventually it reaches a point where you just have to give it an occasional shove to keep it rolling. it’s a similar situation when it comes to losing weight.

The other possible reason is that your body has adapted to your work out routine, and the exercise that used to burn fat really well aren’t nearly as effective now. This situation is likely for people that have been trying to drop pounds for a while. You can read more about what makes for an effective weight loss exercise here. If that’s the case then you need to change things up and improve the amount of calories you burn during work outs by either spending more time or doing something more effective.

The last likely reason for slow (or none existent) progress is something that is often experienced by people who are trying to lose the last few pounds or those who only have a few extra pounds to lose. Usually at this point your levels of fitness has improved to the point where most pure cardio work outs are nearly worthless as far as fat loss goes (unless you fancy a 3 hour long run) and so you had to switch to interval or weight training. The thing about it (especially weight training) is that unlike cardio work outs it will build muscle. And since muscles weight more than fat, you can run into a situation where the scale actually shows an increase in weight.

This isn’t really a problem – you lose fat and gain muscle. But if your only measure of progress is weight scale, then it can be rather annoying when you don’t understand what’s happening. The first email you get when you sign up for Weight Loss Boosters Newsletter will explain what other measurements to take in addition to weight to track your progress.

But an easy way to do it is to see how well your clothes fits, muscles are smaller than fat (with the same weight) so if the scale shows the same result but you lost 10 pounds of fat and gained 10 pounds of muscles, your clothes should fit differently.

There might be other reasons for a slow weight loss, but the above three are the most common and the most likely answers for a question “Why Do I Lose Weight So slowly?” So don’t get discouraged and stick with it, if you do the right things you will lose weight!