Having a firm and flat stomach can be one of your greatest assets. For men, six pack abs are the goal. For women, six pack abs aren’t necessarily the goal but a flat stomach is the dream. The benefit of having a flat stomach is not just superficial. It comes with health benefits too as it can help you prevent diseases like diabetes and high blood.
With the kind of lifestyle we have nowadays, it can be a challenge to achieve such a feat, but it is very possible and achievable. Whether you call it a beer belly, love handles, or you’re still using the excuse of being “big-boned”; a big belly is never good for you.
Here are some ways to transform your spare tire into a muscle car.
Exercise is always a must
This may not come as a surprise but exercising is an important element to do in order to flatten your stomach. In particular, you need to up your game in terms of cardiovascular or aerobic workouts. These types of exercise can help your body to enter the fat burning stage wherein it burns carbs and fat in order to compensate for the used energy.
Doing a light-to-moderate aerobic exercise over an extended time can help power up your metabolism, while a moderate-to-vigorous exercise can effectively reduce fat in your system, even without cutting back on your normal food intake. But if doing these workouts is too much, there are non-surgical ways to help with stubborn fat.
Drink Moderately
If you are gaining weight you need to cut back your alcohol intake and drink moderately, or better, once every couple of months.
Our liver processes alcohol before carbs and protein, and depending on the amount you drink it can severely hamper the way your body process these things and thus you develop fat deposits quickly. Try to minimize your alcohol consumption to just 12 ounces of beer, or five ounces of wine.
Befriend Fiber
Check out your usual food items and see if there is enough fiber in them, if not then you need to include these nutrients to your daily meal set. Fiber helps your digestive system to function efficiently and eliminate waste, reducing the instances of bloating and keeping your stomach firm.
And fiber, like soluble fibers which comes from oat bran, barley, fruits, strawberries, seeds and beans can help slow down the process of food digestion right in your tract. This can help delay the emptiness of your stomach and makes you less hungry over the day.
Take In Good Bacteria
Live, good bacteria can help you achieve weight loss and maintenance. Lactobacillus fermentum, amylovorus, and gasseri are known strains of good bacteria that can effectively reduce your belly fat. According to a research, there is a significant difference between the gut flora of obese or overweight person that a normal weight people. Normal weight people have a healthier population of good bacteria in comparison to bad ones.
Make sure to include food like yogurt, kimchi and pickles in your diet to help boost the number of good bacteria in your stomach.
Stay Away From Salt
Well, you can enjoy the salty sea water in summer, but you should be wary about the sodium content in your daily food intake. Too much sodium in our body can cause us to retain water in our system thus makes us look bloated from head to toe, especially our belly.
Switch to natural sea salt or kosher salt to make sure you have low-sodium intake. Be aware about the amount of sodium in your soy sauce as they are known to have some of the highest sodium content.
Salt is widely used to enhance the flavor of your food, but instead of these fattening and bloating condiment consider using tomato salsa, cayenne pepper or zest of lemon. Apart from adding some flavor, they can help in your metabolism as well.
