Six ways to shrink your belly

Here are six ways to shrink that belly - from nutrition expert Dr. Mercola - and only one includes exercise...

If you're looking to shrink and tone your belly, there's a better way to do it than trying to do crunches. In fact, research has shown that doing abdominal exercises alone - even when performed five days a week for six weeks - has no effect at all on subcutaneous fat stores and abdominal circumference.

Burn cortisol to reduce fat

In an op-ed piece for Forbes Magazine, Jennifer Cohen suggests using strategies that burn up cortisol instead. Cortisol is a hormone in your body that depletes lean muscle and holds on to fat in the abdominal region.

Reduce stress and reduce your waistline

One of the most important ways to help this process is to reduce stress in your life, because stress causes cortisol levels to spike.

Cohen also delves into a number of other strategies that help reduce your cortisol levels, such as the following:

• Getting enough sleep

• Reducing or eliminating refined sugars from your diet

• Slowing down your breathing

• Doing short bursts of exercise (high-intensity interval training)

• Supplementing with vitamin C

• Eating fats - the good kinds such as the omega 3s found in salmon, avocados and walnuts

The KEY strategy for reducing belly fat

Cohen certainly brings up some good points. Getting sufficient amounts of sleep, for example, not only helps normalize cortisol levels, it's also important in order to optimize your circadian clock, which can have a profound impact on your metabolism and weight.

As an example, a couple of years ago researchers at the University of Chicago found that dieters who slept for 8,5 hours lost 55 percent more body fat over the course of two weeks than dieters who only got 5,5 hours of sleep a night.
But the master key really lies with your diet, followed closely by the type of exercise you engage in.

Fat loss is 80% what you eat and 20% exercise and lifestyle change

About 80 percent of your ability to reduce excess body fat is determined by what you eat, with the other 20 percent related to exercise and other healthy lifestyle habits such as sleep and stress reduction.

What this means is that if your diet is based on sugar/fructose and processed junk food, your chances of getting flat, ripped abs, even if you work out religiously, are quite slim...

You simply will not see defined abs unless you reduce your overall body fat

A poor diet will cause your body to hold on to excess fat, despite all your exercise efforts. Cohen mentions two of the most important dietary factors in her article, namely:

Reducing or eliminating sugar from your diet:

This includes ALL forms of sugar and fructose, whether refined or "all-natural" such as agave or honey, as well as all grains (including organic ones), as they quickly break down to sugar in your body  

Increasing healthy fats in your diet, such as healthy saturated fats and animal-based omega-3s

The primary (and most surprising) dietary offenders

Fructose, primarily in the form of high fructose corn syrup hidden in processed foods and beverages is the primary contributing factor to widespread and seemingly out-of-control obesity.

The top offenders in this category include:

• Grain-based desserts (cakes, cookies, donuts, pies, crisps, cobblers, and granola bars)    

• Soft drinks, energy drinks, and sports drinks

• Breads

• Juice drinks and fruit punches

• Breakfast cereals

• Fast food and pre-packaged dinners

• Pre-packaged, processed lunches

• Coffee drinks

There are also a number of foods that are typically considered healthy that you might not suspect would contribute to your weight problem.

But while considered "healthy" by the mainstream, these foods are actually loaded with sugar and/or fructose:

• Yoghurt    

• Condiments, sauces, and salad dressings

• High-fructose fruits: apples, pears, grapes, watermelon, persimmon, and mango    

• "Diet" foods and snacks

• Dried fruits: raisins, figs, apricots    

• Infant formula

• Enhanced waters (such as VitaminWater)    

• Jarred baby foods and teething biscuits

Finally, it's time to address the exercise factor

So what's the best fat-busting exercise?
Once you've addressed your diet, exercise can truly begin to work its magic on your physique, and help boost fat loss even further. The trick to achieve flat abs is to incorporate the correct types of exercises.
High-intensity interval exercises are at the core of my Peak Fitness routine.
This short intense training protocol improves muscle energy utilization and expenditure due to its positive effects on increasing muscle mass and improving muscle fibre quality.
Muscle tissue burns three to five times more energy than fat tissues, so as you gain muscle, your metabolic rate increases, which allows you to burn more calories, even when you're sleeping.
Further, several studies have confirmed that exercising in shorter bursts with rest periods in between burns more fat than exercising continuously for an entire session.

You can actually lose more weight by reducing the amount of time you spend on exercise

This is because when doing high-intensity interval training you only need 20 minutes, two to three times a week. Any more and you'll overdo it!
    
For more details on ab-reducing and strengthening exercises, check out the videos here 

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