Podcast 10

What is the Best Way to Lose Belly Fat?

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SHOW NOTES

Six-pack abs are what most people think of when they think fitness goals, but how hard is it really to get that washboard stomach and lose the stubborn belly fat? Brian and Amy bust the most common myths around losing belly fat and talk about the incredible results that Exercise Coach clients can get, including reducing their belly fat, by joining the Metabolic Comeback Challenge. 

• • A common goal for many people is to lose weight, specifically belly fat. There are two motivations that drive this goal, the first is achieving an improvement to their figure and the second is that excess belly fat is an indication that their health is not improving.
  • Belly fat, also known as central adiposity, is a health issue and a real risk factor. One study showed that each 10cm increase in belly fat in women increased their risk of death from any cause by 8%, for men it was 12%.
  • We know that belly fat is linked to insulin resistance and systemic inflammation, and those things working together worsen overall health. Belly fat is both a sign and a symptom of those problems.
  • Before we learn the best ways to lose belly fat, we need to learn what doesn’t work. For example, the myth of spot reduction where you exercise particular areas of the body to lose body fat in those areas, is not how it works.
  • The truth is the first area that you put on fat will be the last area you lose it. For men, that’s often the abdomen, and for women, that’s usually the hips and thighs. Doing exercises to shrink your stomach is not going to change this reality.
  • When people start to lose body fat, they will notice the results in reverse.
  • In order to actually lose belly fat, you have to combine whole effort exercise with whole food nutrition. It has nothing to do with crunches or sit ups, or even cardio.
  • Combining strength training with sensible whole food nutrition is the best approach to losing belly fat because it results in focused weight loss, where you are only losing body fat instead of both fat and muscle at the same time. This also translates into the best shape for your body as well.
  • At the Exercise Coach, we see people losing significant amounts of body fat, typically 5%, from a focused program of 30 days of whole effort exercise and whole food nutrition.
  • The first 5% of weight loss that people experience in an exercise program delivers the majority of the metabolic benefits. Within one or two months, nearly everyone can experience results that are life-changing from a health standpoint.
  • Most people will see belly fat reduction within the first 30 days of the Metabolic Comeback Challenge. Seeing a flattening of the stomach will depend on the starting point of each individual but the important thing to keep in mind is the progress you’re making.
  • You need to persevere in order to see those results. It may be that you just need to put in another 30 to 60 days to lose that belly fat and reach your body composition goals.
  • It doesn’t take exercising everyday or joint-punishing cardio to transform your body and hormonal health. Smart strength training and whole food nutrition is all you need to fundamentally change your life.

Doing exercises for the muscles in your abdomen will in no way flatten your stomach. It will in no way reduce belly fat. But this is a common misconception.

Welcome to the strength changes everything podcast. I’m Amy Hudson. And today my co host Brian Sagan and I are going to tackle the question, what is the best way to lose belly fat? Often when we meet new people who are checking out the exercise coach, they come in and we sit down with them and we ask them about their goals. And a very common goal that we often hear is people would love to lose some weight in their abdominal section. They love to lose some of the belly fat that they have sitting there.

So today we’re going to talk about what the best way to lose belly fat is and even more deep than that, why it’s important. So Brian, welcome today to the podcast. And I would love to hear your thoughts on this question.

Hi, Amy. Thanks for the question. Let’s address it. I like what you said. First of all, why does it matter? Why does it matter to people to flatten their stomach or to lose belly fat?

And I think there’s two important motivations. First of all, I think a lot of people are asking this question from the standpoint of body shaping. They are just wanting to achieve an improvement in their eyes to their figure. They want to fit back into maybe some genes that used to fit a little bit better. And they also know, I think instinctively, that gaining body fat around the midsection is not an indicator that their health is improving either, that they know that this is also a health issue. And it’s really true.

Health researchers call body fat around the belly area central adiposity, and it’s a real risk factor. For example, in one study, it was concluded that in women, each 10 centimeter increase in belly fat raised the risk of death from any cause by 8 % for every 10 centimeters. And then for men for every 10 centimeter increase in in girth around their belly, the risk of death from any cause was raised by 12%. And we know that central adiposity or belly fat is actually linked to insulin resistance, and also systemic inflammation. And these three things really work together to worsen health.

So does belly fat actually cause inflammation and insulin resistance? Or is it a an indication of inflammation, a consequence or a symptom of inflammation and insulin resistance? And the answer is actually both. It’s both a sign that someone is experiencing insulin resistance and systemic inflammation. And it actually feeds into and causes and worsens these things. So it is really important to address how to how do we lose belly fat?

Yeah, and I think understanding that gives fuel to the fire, right? Like not only for vanity reasons, may I want to lose some belly fat, but knowing how important it is to control that and to see, to not be insulin resistant, to not be in a state of inflammation in my body, seeing that belly fat as a possible symptom of a bigger potential issue down the road. Oh, that really might motivate somebody to, to work on those areas of their health.

Exactly. And so now to shift towards talking about how, what’s the best way to lose belly fat. As I often do, I’m going to start off actually answering what isn’t the best way. It’s just, we just really need to understand. a myth and we need to understand a path in a direction that we don’t want people to go down and so it’s important to point out that you can’t lose belly fat by doing exercises for your stomach for your belly crunches and sit -ups and twists and things doing exercises for the muscles in your abdomen will in no way flatten your stomach it will in no way reduce belly fat. But this is a common misconception.

And it actually is known as the myth of spot reduction. It’s the idea that if we do exercises with the muscles in a certain area of the body, it’s going to somehow reduce the body fat in that same area. And it’s just absolutely not true. And okay, and this principle says, and this is a truism, this is true for everybody. The first place that you tend to store body fat is actually the last place it’s going to come off when you experience body fat loss. And This varies from person to person a little bit.

There’s commonalities for women and then for men. Like for example, men tend to really store body fat first in their belly. And for women, it can be in the lower abdomen, but it’s also often in the the hips and thigh area, this would be the first and the last area. And so first on last off, you cannot do anything to change this. And again, doing exercises for your stomach isn’t going to isn’t going to change this reality.

And I’ve often used an analogy for people to get a picture of how this works. It’s, I call it the swimming pool analogy. It’s imagine a swimming pool with an in -ground pool with a shallow end and a deep end. The idea of spot reduction, the idea that we can, that we could take fat off of, of, off of one specific area of the body without fat coming off the whole body is like saying you could walk down to the deep end of a swimming pool with a bucket and only take water out of the deep end. We can’t do that. You’re actually, you can walk down to the deep end and you can take the bucket and you can pail some water out of the pool, but you’re really taking water from the whole pool.

And what are you going to empty first? The shallow end. Now once the shallow end has actually been emptied of water, now if you’re standing at the deep end, now you have to stand at the deep end to get water out of the pool, right? And you are literally taking buckets out of the deep end. But you have to first empty the shallow end. And the first on last off principle works in exactly this way.

So when people start to lose body fat, it’s the reverse, you lose body fat first from the areas that are the last areas that you put it on. And so people will notice my face is getting thinner, and my arms are getting leaner. But this isn’t what I was worried about. I’m trying to lose belly fat. But again, once we see the shallow end start to empty, then your body will shift towards utilizing the body fat for energy that exists in what we might call the deep end, the belly fat that we’re trying to lose.

Oh, man. So that’s super encouraging. And I think on some level, we all understand that principle or know that deep down inside, right? The first place we put weight on is probably the last place it’s going to come off. But giving it a catchphrase, like you just did first on last off, and explaining that pool analogy is super helpful to understand that I shouldn’t expect just to go to the deep end with a bucket and say, oh, I’m only going to remove water from the deep end. That’s not the way it works.

And in fact, it’s impossible. And any anyone who claims that they are going to do that isn’t working with the biochemistry of the body, the way it works.

That’s right.

That’s super helpful.

That’s right. So in order to actually lose belly fat, the ideal approach is to combine effective whole effort exercise with whole food nutrition. It has nothing to do with crunches and sit ups. And it really also has nothing to do with cardio. It has to do with improving hormonal and metabolic fitness, which is best achieved by building muscle. And for people over 40, we’re really talking about rebuilding muscle that they’ve been losing as part of the usual aging process.

So combining strength training with sensible whole food nutrition is the best approach to losing weight. belly fat because it creates what we might call focused weight loss, meaning you’re you’re not losing weight, which is a combination of losing fat and muscle. and other things, you’re actually losing body fat. Because the nutritional approach you’re taking is actually leading to weight loss, but the strength training you’re doing is preserving and in fact, building muscle at the same time, which prevents that weight loss from including muscle loss. And this translates into the best change in your body, the best change in body shape, and the most efficient path to actually getting to the belly fat.

Yep.

And we’ve talked about this concept in a couple other episodes, and it is so encouraging to understand the healthiest way to lose body fat is through that proven combination of strength training and whole food nutrition. And honestly, Brian, we work with clients in studios doing our program we call the metabolic comeback, which is a combination of whole food nutrition and whole effort exercise. And we do contests where we challenge people to stick to only whole food nutrition for 30 days combined with their twice weekly workouts. And we do see people lose significant amounts of body fat, typically about 5 % of their body weight. But oftentimes it’s entirely body fat during just that focus 30 day effort. It’s not super complicated.

And many of our clients say they’re surprised at how successful they are doing something like that, putting that type of effort in and seeing the satisfaction that comes with the body shape changes that they were looking for.

Yeah, and I’m glad you brought that up, Amy. When people experience the metabolic comeback, when they complete a metabolic comeback challenge, and they lose, as you said, very typically 5, 6, 7 % of their body weight in a short period of time, that is a huge achievement. Now, we just talked about the fact that this might not mean that they’ve started to see their the fat on their midsection change significantly necessarily in those 30 days. But they’ve achieved a ton in a couple ways. One, they’re emptying the shallow end.

Some people depending on where they’re at, they might need to lose 10 pounds, they might need to lose 30 pounds to get to that point where now their body only has one place to turn. And that’s the deep end to take and use that central body fat for energy. And that’s when they’ll start to see their stomach starting to flatten. But another point to make is that those first 5%, that first 5 % of weight loss that people experience, research actually shows delivers majority of the metabolic health benefits that you are going to get from weight loss. This is amazing research. Sam Klein at Washington University in their Center for Human Nutrition has done research and has concluded that the improvements that we see in metabolic health, improvements in insulin sensitivity and things that really matter for longevity, and disease prevention, that the majority of the benefits that people experience come from actually the first 5 % of weight loss.

So it should be extremely motivating to people to hear that in one or two months, they can actually experience results that are life changing from a health standpoint and in trajectory changing in terms of experiencing the changes in body shape that they want and in particular for losing belly fat.

That is awesome. Brian, I’m going to put you on the spot with a question. I’m picturing somebody looking to this episode wanting to know. So let’s say I’m a new client. Let’s say I’m a person who’s new to an exercise program and I do have some weight to lose and particularly belly fat.

And I’m going to put in a great focused effort with my nutrition as I get started exercising. And I’m going to work through the program for several months here. And I’m making this commitment to myself. how long is it going to take me to get to the deep end? If I’m putting that effort in with my nutrition and strength training twice a week as a new healthy habit, what do you, what would you tell me as far as my, how long do I have to do this in order to continue to see the belly fat go away that I’m looking to go away?

Yeah, great question. And in terms of starting to tap into it, that I think for most people is going to happen in those first 30 days, the metabolic comeback, challenge is really designed to be a complete reset of someone’s metabolism. And one of the benefits of resetting your metabolism is just making your body better at utilizing stored body fat for energy. So it really does put people’s bodies in a hormonal in a metabolic state where they start to utilize their fat stores much better. And so you’re definitely going to start to tap into that belly fat with within or around that 30 day mark. But what people will experience in terms of a change in their body shape, and a flattening of their stomach is going to depend on kind of the starting point.

And so there’s just a difference between someone who has really like 10 pounds to lose versus someone who might have a 50 pounds or 70 pounds or 80 pounds to lose it’s just going to be a longer course to get to the point where. we’re starting to notice changes, visible changes in the midsection, but it’s happening. If you’re losing weight while you’re doing effective strength training, it’s happening. You’re getting further down the path towards seeing that change happen in the midsection. And so we just wanna really educate people on the facts of fat loss, so that they never bail out right when they were about to get there, because that can happen. People have experienced, look at the research we just talked about at Washington University.

People have experienced life -changing health benefits and they’ve lost weight and they’re feeling better and they have more energy and yet they can be derailed because maybe for them, the thing that was motivating them most was actually fitting into clothes differently and experiencing a loss of belly fat. And they just they have to know that they’re almost there and they’re going to turn the corner. And they might just need another 30 days or another 60 days to really see transformative results. And that just depends on the starting point.

Thank you for that. That’s helpful and actually very encouraging. And the metabolic comeback that is available at Exercise Coach Studios is designed to teach you to learn to love eating the whole food the whole foods that combined with your exercise efforts will transform your metabolic system, your inflammation levels, your overall health over time. And we offer that program to help our clients learn to build the lifestyle choices that ongoing, repeated over months and years, truly truly put your body into the best state for optimum health and to continue on the positive metabolic trajectory that we know you can get on.

Yeah. And I just want to reiterate, Amy, that it’s it also, I think it’s so important to point out that it doesn’t take exercising every day. It doesn’t take performing long, sweaty, boring, joint pounding, conventional cardio. It’s just not necessary. When we combine, it’s just amazing what people experience in terms of the change to their metabolism and their hormonal health when they experience smart strength training. And when they reverse the muscle loss related to usual aging, it just gets them such accelerated results.

It’s just really an inspiring experience for a lot of people. And it’s why we’ve called this podcast Strength Changes Everything. because it really does.

It fundamentally changes not only every system of the body for the better, but also what’s required for people to experience maximum health, fitness, and fat loss results. I love it. If you are a person who is interested in changing the way your body handles body fat, getting started on a strength training program, combining that with a whole food approach to nutrition in a guided professional private atmosphere, we would encourage you to check out an Exercise Coach location near you. You can visit exercisecoach . com and register for two free sessions. One of our certified coaches would be happy to meet with you, discuss the results that matter most to you, and show you how our unique, one -of -a -kind program can help you get on track to your best health and longevity.

We will see you next week. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast. And remember, strength changes everything.