Is Your Stomach Flat or Fat?

Belly Fat. Love handles. Muffin Top. Fat

Whatever you want to call it, excess belly fat around the waist can be the most difficult fat on a woman’s body to lose.

It is also more dangerous to your health than those extra pounds that accumulate on your hips or thighs.

The fat around your stomach is an outward sign of deep, internal fat surrounding your organs. Fat around your stomach causes an increase of hormones that raise blood pressure and increase bad cholesterol, putting you at risk for heart disease, stroke, and premature death.

Stomach fat has also been associated with an increased risk of dementia, Alzheimer's, osteoporosis, type 2 diabetes, colorectal cancer, and metabolic syndrome.

What's to blame for belly fat? Stress, age, poor lifestyle choices, and genetics play a role—but so does your diet.

Here's what not to eat and what to eat if you want to banish belly fat.

Recipe for a Fat Belly

It is fair to say that weight gain around your belly and anywhere else on your body is caused by consumption of too many calories. That being said, there do seem to be certain foods and drinks especially associated with an increase of fat cells in the abdominal area. 

ALCOHOL

While you may use it playfully, the phrase "beer belly" is an accurate description of what goes on when you down too much alcohol.

Drinking too much may make it difficult to fasten your jeans.

Why does this happen? When you drink alcohol, your liver goes into overdrive to burn it off instead of working to burn off the high sugar content of most alcoholic beverages instead. 

Your body is now preferentially using alcohol for fuel, this means the calories from food are not being used and instead get stored as fat. 

Alcohol can also make you hungrier, causing you to consume more calories than normal. 

TRANS FATS

Foods containing trans fat are another contributing factor for belly fat. Trans fat is a man-made fat created with partially hydrogenated oil. This unnatural fat leads to belly fat and moves fat from other parts of the body to the abdominal area.

Where can you find trans fat in your diet?

• Biscuits

• crackers,

• pastries,

• crisps,

• margarine,

• fried foods, and

• packaged foods all have this unwanted intruder.

SUGARY DRINKS

Sugar-sweetened beverages and sodas are another possible culprit for abdominal fat. The empty calories and high amount of high-fructose corn syrup (a manmade sweetener) can cause abdominal fat due to an easy over consumption of calories.

High-fructose corn syrup is also a sneaky bugger and is found in foods such as ketchup, mayonnaise, jam, canned fruits, yogurt, bread, and even fruit juice. 

Recipe for a Flat Belly 

Shifting that belly fat starts with a calorie deficit, a well-balanced diet and regular exercise. A recipe for a flat stomach starts with a diet rich in fruits, veggies, low-fat dairy, whole grains, and lean meat.

Moving toward a trim waistline also requires you to move away from (but not eliminate for sanity reasons) the fatty foods and drinks listed above.

A truly flat stomach comes from a combination of a consistent, challenging exercise routine coupled with a flexible dieting approach of tracking macros and calories. 

Hi, I’m Aaron Schiavone, owner of Mind Muscle Personal Training. Over the past 5+ years I have helped women increase their self confidence, improve their relationship with food, improve their health, become stronger, fitter and happier.