How To Reduce Belly Fat Quickly (How I lose A Kilo A Week)
As a man, I find it easy to lose weight with a little bit of effort much to most women’s dismay/annoyance. By having a little discipline you can easily achieve like I do at least a kilo a week of fat loss doing the following:
- Intermittent fasting
- Calories in less than calories out
- Eating the right foods
- Hydration
- Bodyweight training
- Sleeping
At the end of the article I will show you how and what I do to give you an example but I recommend you consult a qualified physician before making any changes to your diet or fitness regime to ensure it’s safe for you to do so.
What is belly fat? We have 2 types of fat around our bellies so we need to know what they are and why we are trying to get rid of it.
Subcutaneous fat: This is the fat under our skin. While too much of this type of fat is unhealthy we do need some, especially in winter when it helps to insulate us from the cold. When we eliminate subcutaneous fat from out bodies our muscles look more defined and gives us a healthier appearance.
Visceral fat: This is the dangerous fat! This is the fat that sits around or organs. Too much of this can cause many dangerous medical issues like cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and colorectal cancer. It also forces our bodies to produce excess hormones and chemicals, which can have detrimental effects on our bodies
How can we get rid of this dangerous fat from our bodies?
Intermittent fasting
Intermittent fasting is often frowned upon by many, including medical practitioners with old fashioned views, as being unsafe but in actual fact it’s not only safe but highly efficient as burning fat.
What is it? It’s limiting your eating to certain times during the day and not eating for longer periods. For example: Eating breakfast and lunch but not eating dinner, or eating lunch and dinner but no breakfast.
On the days you intend to fast you shorten your eating window. That is, you eat for fewer hours during the day, say between 12 lunchtime until 6pm in the evening. During this time you can eat what you like as long as it falls into the sensible foods listed below.
Outside of these hours you drink water, black, unsweetened tea or coffee. Taking care of course not to drink tea of coffee too late which can hamper sleep.
Snacking is also a no-no outside your eating window as well, you need your body to get into a state of ketosis, that is where the magic happens.
Think of your stomach like a fridge and your belly fat like a freezer. It’s easy to get calories from the fridge as you can just pop something into your mouth and swallow. The problem with this is if you eat too many calories what your body does not need goes into the freezer for later ie stored as fat and this is much harder to get to.
Like a real freezer you cannot get something from the freezer and just eat it (yes, there are things like ice cream but think of a frozen dinner for the purposes of this example) you need to thaw it and then cook or reheat it. Much more effort to get those calories.
When your stomach is empty for long enough then your body goes into ketosis and begins autophagy, which is Greek for self-eating. This means your body starts taking energy from your fat stores as it needs to keep burning calories but it has none readily available
When beginning fasting you can begin gradually before working your way up (or down depending on how you look at it ) to a more stringent fasting pattern. See the end of the article for some suggestions.
Calories in less than calories out
During your eating window you can eat whatever you like and as much as you like as long as you still have a caloric deficit. That means all the calories you put into your body are less than those which you burn throughout the day.
Whilst you don’t need to count calories right down to each individual calorie you do need to have a pretty good idea so try to keep a diary or make notes of what you eat and when.
When you are checking your calories make sure you are eating enough to keep you going throughout the day, especially at the beginning when you are not used to it. Jumping right into a calorie deficit can leave you feeling tired, nauseous and down right annoyed.
Eating right foods
Now we know when not to eat and how much, now we need to look at exactly what to eat. This sounds like it’s going to be really hard but in actual fact it’s surprisingly easy and does not restrict you as much as you think it might.
One of the biggest myth’s when looking at weight loss is that you need to exercise like a madman to make any appreciable losses and this is just not true.
While exercise is important it’s not the primary factor when it comes to losing weight. Your diet is.
Looking at a normal diet you will see it being very carbohydrate focused and for the purposes of intermittent fasting these should be reduced drastically or even eliminated.
A diet geared towards intermittent fasting eliminates carbs as they burn slowly in our bodies and as such prevent us from reaching that fasted state where we begin to burn our own fat reserves.
Main sources of carbohydrates include rice, pasta, potatoes, noodles, bananas, yams, bread, cakes, and pastries. These need to go especially anything which has sugar as well like the cakes and bananas.
Sugar is another thing you need to avoid as well, carbohydrates break down into sugars which we then burn for energy so we need to eliminate sugar too.
The main reason we eliminate carbs and sugars is to keep our insulin levels low (diabetics consult your doctor about this first). Insulin is counterproductive for weight loss as when we eat carbs and sugars our body produces insulin. When insulin is high or spiked in our system it works to allow glucose to enter the cells in our bodies. Glucose we don’t need then gets stored as fat which is then very difficult to get rid of.
So what can we eat? The good news is that proteins and fats are our friends. Proteins like meat and fish can keep us feeling fuller for longer (unlike carbs) and when we are in a fasted state our body begins to burn fat so any fats we eat get pushed to the front of the line.
Eating unsaturated fats, some saturated fats but less and avoiding trans fats is recommended (see helpguide.org article for list of good and bad fats)
In addition to “good fats” and proteins, you should eat plenty of non-carb vegetables. A mix of vegetables will give you many essential vitamins and minerals to keep you healthy.
Hydration is key
Drinking enough while you are fasting is not only recommended but will be essential in helping your body shed those pounds. Drinking a tall glass of water per stone of body weight is ideal (although you may end up drinking more outside of your eating window to keep any hunger pangs at bay)
So if you weigh 200 pounds, that’s just over 14 stone so 14.5 x 200ml = 2.9 liters of water. It sounds like a lot, more so if you drink lots of fizzy drinks and tea or coffee.
Add extra water too if you live in a hot region ( a glass or 2) and add more if you exercise as well (a glass per 5-10 minutes of exercise).
Get some Himalayan pink salt crystals too. When you are drinking you can pop a couple into your mouth, these will help with any headaches you may get as they will help your salt intake from your dietary changes.
If you are not so keen on drinking just water you can swap out a glass of water here and there for an unsweetened black tea or coffee. What I do is make weak black Chinese tea and pop 2 or 3 salt crystals into it. It does not make it salty and the weakness of the tea makes it not bitter either.
Body weight training
If you are used to exercise then you can keep your exercise regime but if you don’t really do much then now is a good time to start.
You don’t need to go crazy as your diet will do most of the heavy lifting for you, but you do need to get yourself to a reasonable level of fitness.
Walking briskly is not the best calorie burner, but it does not have to be. It is a great way to get exercise and fresh air at the same time though.
Good bodyweight exercises you can do at home are pushups for your chest, squats and lunges for your legs, bent over rowing (with a bag holding something heavy if you don’t have weights, curls for your arms and situps for your stomach
I’m not going to go into great detail here as there is so much information on this subject it could be website on it’s own.
I use personally resistance bands and a yoga mat (The yoga mat to soften the floor for situps and crunches as I have a tiled floor)
Sleeping
Now for one of the good ones, especially if you like sleeping. Getting a good nights sleep is essential so it’s important to try and get at least 7-8 hours of quality sleep per night.
Sleep is paramount as it’s the time where your body goes into standby mode and repairs itself. By not allowing yourself enough sleep you can also risk getting heart disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure, diabetes or having strokes.
Good sleep will also help you lose weight too. A good nights sleep will help you produce a hormone called leptin, which is responsible for appetite suppression. With a good amount of leptin in your system fasting will be a piece of cake, or not in this case.
Fasting plan
If you have read this far then great, it shows you are committed to doing something about your health which is always a good thing. To begin a fasting plan is always difficult but the good news is that the withdrawal from all the garbage you eat is the most tricky part, after that it’s plain sailing and just gets easier and more fun, yes fun, you start to enjoy the benefits of feeling great.
What I recommend is a gradual transistion which takes a little time as it’s detoxing your body. But don’t worry. You will be benefiting right from day 1.
Week 1.
Curb snacking. Unless it’s healthy and protein oriented like nuts and seeds then stop it. Crisps, candy and cakes stop here.
It you take sugar and milk in your tea and coffee, stop the milk. Leave the sugar for now unless you put more than 1 spoon of sugar in, if so drop it to 1.
Drink water, tea and coffee as you like
Week 2.
Now your snacking is in check you can eliminate the sugar from your drinks and replace it with a couple of pink salt crystals, don’t worry it won’t taste bad as you are only adding a little.
Reduce your eating window to 8 hrs. If you eat breakfast at 9am then your last meal should be no more than 8 hrs after that, in this case, 5pm.
Halve the carbs in your meals and replace the carbs dropped with proteins and healthy fats.
Drink water, tea, and coffee any time but only drinks are allowed outside your eating window,
Week 3.
Reduce your eating window to 6 hrs this will allow your body to spend more time in a partially fasted state
Reduce carbs to either 25% or zero, as you prefer and replace dropped carbs with non carb vegetables.
Drink water, tea, and coffee any time but only drinks are allowed outside your eating window,
Week 4.
Reduce your eating window to 4 hrs this will allow your body to spend more time in a partially fasted state.
If the eating window is too short then switch from 3 to 2 meals ensuring your calories count for each mean increased to balance switching from 3 meals to 2.
Drink water, tea, and coffee any time but only drinks are allowed outside your eating window,
How long will it take?
If you take 1 pound of fat it is about 3500 calories. If you want to lose this regularly then you need to have a calorie deficit to make this happen. The deficit will be greater as well if you take some from of exercise as well.
I recommend your deficit for a week be no more than 7500 as your liver will be working hard to process the extra fat you are losing and 1kg is an optimal amount, Anything between 5000 and 7500 will be a good target for you to aim for without bothering you too much.
If you take some moderate exercise like a 1 mile brisk walk per day in addition to intermittent fasting with a small calorie deficit you can do it.
For example: A moderately active 40 year old guy needs about 2600 calories a day. If he starts to walk for 2 miles a day and drops his calorie intake by 300 a day then he will have a 500 calorie a day deficit. This works out to 3500 per week so it means he will lose about 1 pound per week.
If he then decides to add 30 mins of bodyweight exercise and to also drop his calories by another 100 per day then he will have a deficit of around 750 per day or 5250 meaning he will lose 1.5 pounds per week.
Another point to note is that as you become more muscular from exercise then you will naturally begin to burn more calories, you will also begin to increase your testosterone levels which will give you many health benefits.
My plan – How I lose belly fat fast
I fast by eating twice per day most days, and twice per month I fast for a full 48 hrs. I also keep my carb intake to a minimum, I sometimes cheat but if I do I don’t feel bad as I know I’m on the right road long term.
I have a normal food calorie deficit of 500 per day and I try to do bodyweight exercise every day as well as walking 2 miles, making my overall deficit about 800. As I am 52 I need about 2570 but I have a sedentary job so I need less from this hence my high deficit.
Calculating everything I lost about 1kg per week bases on the following:
800 calorie deficit per day = 24,000 per month
2 x 48hr fasts per month = 11,000 per month
Total monthly deficit = 35,000 calories
35,000 calories = 10 pounds = 4.5 kilos = 1 kilo per week.
In conclusion:
It’s not easy at first but after you get used to it you will find you not only feel better but you have more time and save money too. Less time eating is less food and less cooking leaving you more time to enjoy other things too.
