Today, I’m going to give you a proven step-by-step plan on how to finally get rid of your stubborn belly fat that’s been living rent free in your body all this time.
I want you to pay close attention to one of the things I’m gonna ask you to eliminate because it might just be the answer you’ve been looking for.
8 THINGS YOU NEED TO DO TO GET RID OF STUBBORN BELLY FAT
Get rid of the mentality that you can somehow spot treat yourself.
That if you just do 100 sit ups every day, it’s gonna melt your fat away and you’re eventually gonna see your abs.
And if you’ve done more sit-ups than you can imagine and you still have that stubborn spare tire around your stomach, you already know that to be true.
Instead, you wanna look at exercise as a way to build and maintain muscle. That’s why you’ll get such a better ROI if you focus on compound movements like the squat, deadlift, pull ups, and press.
Instead of doing bicep curls for example where you’re only focusing on a muscle the size of an orange. I don’t remember the last time I did bicep curls and I think my biceps look okay.
Instead, I do at least 20 pull ups every day. It engages my shoulder, lats, a lot of the back muscles, core, and my biceps. That’s a better ROI in my opinion.
And I’ve talked about the importance of building and maintaining muscle in my recent videos because muscle is the key driver of your metabolism. In terms of fat loss, the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn at rest. It’s your metabolic currency.
For all the females watching this that are scared of lifting, you’ll gonna look better. You’re gonna feel better. You’re gonna be smaller, meaning your clothes are gonna fit better. In short, you’re gonna have a way better body composition.
Stop majoring in the minor.
As the saying goes, you can’t outrun a bad diet. There’s no way around this. 80% of your body composition is determined by what you eat. You need to get yourself on a proper baseline diet that prioritizes protein.
Again, this is why it’s a fool’s errand to do hundreds of sit ups every day to burn belly fat. You’re focusing on a small part of the 20% part of the equation.
The literal definition of majoring in the minor.
This also explains why you see the same people at the gym. They workout every day but they look the same. What’s worse is they start rocking that skinny fat look if all they do is cardio or these overly strenuous group fitness classes.
Now, there’s always going to be a never ending debate on which diet is the best for weight loss and get rid of stubborn belly fat.
This isn’t about arguing the minutiae of specific diets out there. Although I do lean more towards an animal based diet while incorporating plants that your body tolerates.
But feel free to experiment for yourself. Whatever diet you end up following needs to promote metabolic flexibility. Otherwise, whatever initial results you end up getting won’t be sustainable long term.
What is metabolic flexibility?
Metabolic flexibility is where your body is easily able to tap into your fat stores and burn it for energy in between meals.
That’s it. That’s the secret to get rid of stubborn belly fat.
As a quick review, you achieve metabolic flexibility by eating a diet that keeps insulin moderated.
Insulin is your storing hormone. A lot of experts consider it the master hormone, because it’s the hormone that controls your body weight. You only want a pulsatile response throughout the day.
What do I mean by that? Every time you eat, insulin goes up. If your insulin levels are high, you can not access your belly fat and burn it for energy. You just can’t. It gets locked away.
Out of all three macronutrients, carbs, specifically refined carbs and sugar spike the hormone insulin the most. Protein and fat also spikes insulin but not to the extent that refined carbs and sugar does. They also also trigger your natural satiety hormones so that protects you from over eating.
Protein specifically is the most satiating macronutrient and it also has its thermic effect going for it. 20-30% of the calories from protein are spent digesting it.
So if you eat 100 calories of steak, your body only absorbs 70-80 calories of it. Steak is also delicious. That’s why not all calories are created equal.
Whereas, if you open a bag of chips, you can just keep eating it. Next thing you know, you’re staying at the bottom of a “family” size bag. Maybe you are a family.
I’m not saying that carbs are bad. A lot of long lived societies have existed primarily on carbs like the Okinawans and the Kitavans.
It’s the ultra processed, highly palatable, industrial seed oil laced carbs I’m really talking about here.
It’s not uncommon for example for the average American or somebody who’s following a western diet to consume a mind blowing 500-600 grams of fat promoting ultra processed carbs daily.
They’re usually foods that you’ll find at the centre aisle of grocery stores.
They usually come in some sort of packaging with a really long shelf life. Some of these foods don’t even expire.
Here’s a scary picture of fast food that’s 10 years old. There’s no mould. It’s only the wrapping paper that looks old.
Now, I could name a bunch of healthy foods you should eat. There’s obviously a hierarchy. There’s a list of priorities you need to do.
Eliminate industrial seed oils from your diet
But if we’re talking about the 80/20 principle, one of the biggest levers you can pull is to eliminate industrial seed oils from your diet.
Just below that would be to eliminate added sugar and liquid calories. And, that’s saying a lot.
Industrial seed oils are more commonly known as vegetable oils. So I’m talking about canola, corn, soybean oil, sunflower, safflower, or anything else that identifies as vegetable oil.
They’re just insidious oils that you’ll find everywhere. For starters, repeatedly heated industrial seed oils are associated with high blood pressure, heart disease, and intestinal and liver damage.
Did you know that as much as 20% of the calories in the Standard American Diet (SAD) come from soybean oil alone? This stuff is everywhere. That’s why it’s so important to read labels.
You can bet that 99% of fast food joints and even fancy restaurants use this stuff to deep fry their products. They heat and reheat the same rancid oil to cut cost because seed oils are dirt cheap.
They actually used to be considered toxic waste until food manufacturers learned how to recycle them.
If you go to your local grocery store, you’ll see that 60-70% off all processed, packaged, and frozen foods contain one or more of these insidious health destroyers. You can even find this stuff in baby formula.
Plant based meat and dairy substitutes are often laced with them.
When you ingest refined seed oils, they’re not burned for fuel the way other fat generally are because of their unnatural chemical make up.
Instead, their similarity to natural fat molecules confuses the body because it’s an evolutionary mismatch. The body then integrates them into healthy fat cells.
Because of that, they’re very hard to burn for energy and can greatly hinder your overall ability to burn stored body fat over time.
If you have problem fat areas that don’t seem to go away, the cellular dysfunction caused by vegetable oils is most likely one of the causes. This is one of the most powerful levers you can pull to get rid of stubborn belly fat.
According to some experts, they’re basically free radicals in a bottle. Literally no different than eating radiation.
If you’ve ever worked at any restaurant, you’ll now that they heat and reheat the same rancid oil for days until it turns into a dark brown colour.
Get rid of processed sugar.
So get rid of them and get rid of sugars. If you do that, you’re 80% on your way to reacquiring the fat burning metabolism you’re born with. Which will then enable you to become metabolically flexible. You’re not fighting this uphill battle of yo-yo dieting anymore.
Which will then enable you to go longer without eating. In doing so, you don’t have hunger anymore being the main driver of your day.
You need to severely limit alcohol if you wanna get rid of belly fat.
I dare you to find a study that connects alcohol to optimal health. Any study that you do find is only able to establish correlation, but not causation.
However, you won’t have a hard time finding studies connecting alcohol consumption to abdominal obesity. They don’t call it a beer belly for nothing. There’s also this thing called fatty liver disease.
A good friend of mine is on a no alcohol challenge and after two months, he’s lost 13 pounds without chaining anything else from his lifestyle.
Alcohol is a social lubricant. I get it. I bartended for years. But here’s why it’s so insidious when it comes to sabotaging your fat loss goals. You are literally poisoning your body just enough when you drink alcohol. That’s why you get the buzz.
Alcohol, in the form of ethanol which is technically the fourth macronutrient, is also known as the first to burn calories.
Because your body has to prioritize metabolizing the poison you just ingested. Which then pauses the burning of all other calories.
So if you eat and drink at the same time, your body has to prioritize metabolizing the alcohol calories first so you don’t die.
Which means the calories from food immediately gets stored as body fat. More likely than not, around your butt, thighs, and belly.
We also don’t make the best food decisions when alcohol is involved. Nobody craves hard boiled eggs when they’re drunk. The next logical step is usually fast food because they’re usually open late. And I just told you why you should never eat fast food.
I’m not saying you should never drink. It should be in the same category as dessert. It should be considered more as a treat and left for special occasions.
When you decide to indulge, don’t drink beer. It’s basically liquid bread. Instead, go for hard liquor like vodka and tequila. If you like wine, go for the dry red variety because it has the least amount of sugar.
Manage your stress levels.
Stress is a part of life. But you want to do your best to manage it as best as you can.
Your body treats all types of stress the same way. Whether it’s stress from work, a bad relationship, financial problems, or exercise. Your body responds the same way.
It triggers the release of cortisol which is your fight or flight response hormone. One of its main jobs is to flood your body glucose so you have usable energy to fight or flight.
When you exercise, you have a way to burn off all that extra glucose in your system. But if you’re constantly stressed from life with no way to burn it off, all that extra glucose gets stored specifically around your belly.
That’s why you see a lot of overly stressed people rocking a pear shaped body. One of the best ways to manage stress is actually my next tip.
Go for a walk to get rid of stubborn belly fat
If you’ve been following my channel, you’ll know that I’m a big proponent of walking at least 10k steps a day for two reasons.
Number one, it forces you to move your body and you avoid prolonged periods where you’re completely sedentary. I don’t think you need me to tell you that living a sedentary lifestyle and obesity go hand in hand.
Nothing shuts down your fat burning metabolism faster than prolonged periods of stillness.
Number two, walking almost guarantees to keep you below your maximum aerobic heart rate, which is the “fat burning zone”. It’s where your body is burning mainly fatty acids for energy. It’s 180 minus your age in BPM in case you’re wondering.
Yes, walking doesn’t burn as much calories as running. But rest assured, the energy that you do end up using is coming from fat.
You can amplify the stress lowering benefits if you go for a walk somewhere in nature. This is called forest bathing. There’s also a dose-response relationship. The more, the better.
Practice TRE
In case you didn’t know, body fat, is stored energy waiting to be used. Think of it as granola bars or batteries strapped all over your body.
I mentioned earlier that every time you eat, insulin goes up. High insulin blocks fat burning. It puts your body in fat storage mode.
The reverse is also true. Every time you don’t eat, your insulin goes back down to baseline. Your body now shifts into fat burning mode. Again, this is why it’s crucial to keep insulin and cortisol pulsatile and not just be high all day.
If you want to lose your belly fat, you want to spend as much time in fat burning mode. The most logical way to do that is to take a break from eating. The longer you go, the better.
You’re simply tapping into your built in fat burning mechanism when you don’t eat. Your body also activates a cellular repair process called autophagy.
My point here is your body is extremely smart. It knows what to do. Trust me when I say it does not want to carry around excess fat around your belly. Your default factory setting is lean and healthy.
It’s really all about putting your body in the best position possible to thrive and tap into your built in fat burning mechanism.
As always, if this was helpful, share it with a friend who could benefit from it as well!
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