As registered dietitians and certified personal trainers specializing in weight loss for over 15 years, if you’re like our clients, you want to know what’s making it so hard to lose stubborn belly fat…
So today we’re sharing the cause for that stubborn belly fat, why it’s so hard to lose–what can be done about it, and 7 tips to get you started hacking away at it.
So what is the cause of that stubborn belly fat?
Here’s the deal:
There is never just ONE cause for STUBBORN belly fat.
—> READ that again.
If you lose a little bit of belly fat and then it won’t budge, this typically means that it’s not just your subcutaneous (or surface) belly fat, but your visceral fat, which is the fat that surrounds your organs.
This fat is very frustrating because it makes you feel like your efforts aren’t working, but it’s also dangerous because visceral fat becomes an organ within itself that wreaks havoc on your metabolic system.
This means that while having a calorie deficit (NOT a starvation or low-calorie diet!) is important, it’s also about changing the metabolic activity in your body.
Simply cutting calories on its own will not work.
Why Is It So Complicated to Get Rid of Stubborn Belly Fat?
This stubborn visceral fat generally results from problems with your insulin sensitivity. You do not have to have diabetes for this to happen!
Normally, insulin, which is a hormone created in your pancreas, takes sugar in the blood into the cells to be used, because when sugar builds up in the blood it becomes inflammatory and damaging.
But if you’ve been sedentary and/ or you’ve gained body fat, insulin becomes less effective and can’t do its job. So your pancreas pumps out more and more insulin to try to get the sugar into the cells, and soon your pancreas becomes overworked.
So, your liver comes in to support your pancreas and tries to take sugar out of the blood. The liver does this by converting the sugar into triglycerides—aka fats—and this becomes the white, “storable” fat—and while it also contributes to subcutaneous fat, this series of events mostly creates that stubborn visceral fat.
This visceral fat basically becomes an organ of its own and it secretes hormones and chemicals that affect your weight.
This fat secretes leptin that controls appetite, and adiponectin that controls blood sugar and cytokines that cause that inflammation –which we all know is very damaging, and that makes fat loss even more challenging and fat gain even easier. It also constricts blood vessels causing blood pressure to rise and more!
THE REASON THIS PARTICULAR BELLY FAT IS SO STUBBORN IS BECAUSE VISCERAL FAT IS FULL OF TOXINS. YOU SEE, THE BODY WANTS TO PROTECT ITSELF FROM HARM, AND TOO MANY TOXINS ENTER THE BODY, THE BODY PROTECTS THE ORGANS AND SHUTTLES THE TOXINS OFF TO THE VISCERAL FAT.
In other words, this fat becomes a dumping ground for toxins, as the body uses it to shuttle toxins away so they don’t damage the body, ick! This is why calorie-cutting alone will not get rid of this fat! If you only cut calories, it doesn’t address this fat that is full of toxins, hormones, and inflammation (you need to get rid of this too!).
Tips to Start Shedding Stubborn Belly Fat FOR GOOD
So the goal is to start to mobilize this fat and use it for energy while we get rid of all of the toxins and inflammation. There typically are a few major things to address to get this stubborn belly fat out–
- Blood sugar imbalances
- Gut dysbiosis
- Diet and lifestyle factors
- Insufficient nutrients
- A sluggish thyroid
- Inflammation (from stress, toxins, pollution, alcohol, pro-inflammatory foods, etc.)
- and/or so many more.
Here are a FEW TIPS to get you STARTED chipping away at some of those belly fat root causes (culprits!) so you can start SHRINKING your belly fat.
• Drink holy basil tea.
This will help you to naturally manage stress and lower cortisol (a.k.a. the belly fat hormone).
• Eat your salad or veggies first.
Eating high-fiber foods before the rest of your meal will reduce blood sugar spikes.
• Stay away from foods that irritate your stomach or cause bloat.
Foods that inflame the gut impair your ability to activate your body’s natural Ozempic.
• Eat a small healthy meal before you go out to eat, like a small handful of nuts or a tin of sardines
This will cut your appetite and help prevent blood sugar spikes.
• Add organic psyllium fiber to your smoothies or your morning lemon water
This will keep you satiated, stabilize blood sugar, and feed good-for-your-metabolism bacteria.
• Drink 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar mixed into 8 ounces water before dinner.
This will help your muscles take more glucose out of the blood so that it doesn’t spike your blood sugar. You can also exercise immediately before eating dinner.
• Relax in a sauna.
It will improve your cell’s insulin sensitivity, so you can keep your blood sugar on an even keel and protect against spikes and crashes that trigger belly fat. It will also help you to excrete toxins that contribute to inflammation and fat loss resistance.
• Eat high-carb foods like potatoes last.
This will blunt the effect of the carbs on blood sugar dips that trigger cravings.
We have more tips to speed up the process in your body. Check out our blog entry 5 Habits That Slow Your Metabolism and Create Belly Fat, and let us know which one of these you try & how it goes!
There Is More To Losing Fat– Improve Your Overall Health And It Makes It Easier to Rid Stubborn Belly Fat!
If you’re looking to take your body transformation to the next level and achieve sustainable weight loss, we can help!
Imagine…
waking up in the morning and easily slipping into the first outfit you try on, LOVING HOW YOU LOOK & feel.
If this excites you, let’s chat!–
We’ll get a really good understanding of what’s going on for you and see how we can best help you with our 1:1 coaching.
When we work together, we help you to IDENTIFY the causes of YOUR stubborn belly fat, and THEN BLAST your target(s) (whether it’s inflammation, gut dysbiosis, diet and lifestyle factors, insufficient nutrients, a sluggish thyroid, and/or so much more)…
We help you to SHED FAT FOR GOOD.
All while enjoying your favorite foods & learning how to eat for optimal health and longevity.
What are you waiting for?! Let’s chat!
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Coming soon: “11 sneaky things that may be adding to your belly fat”!