HOW TO START LOSING BELLY FAT
I’m very thankful to Carla Delgado for the opportunity to have contributed to Insider on the topic of belly fat. Here are some of the highlights from the article:
“Maintaining healthy levels of visceral fat is beneficial to your health,” says Maricris Lapaix, a NASM-certified personal trainer and nutrition coach. Excessive visceral fat is a major contributor to cardiovascular diseases and other health conditions, so losing belly fat is important.
Since there’s no way to control where your body loses weight, to lose belly fat you have to reduce overall body fat. “The best practices to lose belly fat will be a balance of an active lifestyle, a nutritious diet, and maintaining low stress levels,” says Lapaix.
“It is important to reduce the consumption of foods high in trans fat, refined carbs, and highly processed foods with added sugars,” says Lapaix. However, avoiding food groups to burn belly fat is only a temporary solution caused by a caloric deficit, and the real key to keeping belly fat off in the long run is to create an individualized balanced diet that you can maintain long-term, she says.
“A mix of resistance and aerobic training will be beneficial to increasing one’s total body strength, and help reduce overall body fat,” says Lapaix.