We all want to believe all the magazines when the cover tells us that we can obtain rock hard abs in X amount of weeks. Unless you are a very skinny individual then this probably is the case.
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As we go over 40 we notice that it becomes a little harder to lose that stubborn fat and to be able to control our weight or that our workouts seem just a little harder than they used to before. Not everyone will struggle but sometimes it’ll just feel that way.
Here is the biggest truth about how to lose fat: don’t eat so much! Really, is that it? I’m sure a few people might be thinking. Think of it this way. If you asked a child how to lose weight, I bet their answer would be “stop eating” This is the simplistic brilliance of a child’s mind, where as we age we have to then complicate things as we feel that the simple solutions are wrong some how.
Let me make it a little more adult and ‘complicated’ here. Our bodies use a form of sugar for energy, known as glucose. We make this from everything we eat. EVERYTHING! This sugar is stored in our muscles and liver for when we need it, i.e. exercise or if we so happen to skip a meal. The hormone insulin helps glucose into muscle cells for storage. If there is not enough muscle to store it insulin will then store it as fat. After 25 years old, we start losing 1lb of muscle every year. Exercise helps us maintain or build it. Bottom line is we need more muscle as we age to help prevent metabolic diseases from happening.
How does this help you loss fat? All right here goes. As I said in the last paragraph about insulin and fat gain, if we can slow down insulin production or even glucose absorption we can hold off building fat. We can do this by adding fibre to your diet. This doesn’t mean going “on a diet” all you will have to do is come up with ways to add more fibre to each meal. For example, if you eat cereal, you could measure out the recommended amount (35-45g) and add nuts (whole/crushed) and a little fruit. Making such a small change like this could have a huge positive impact on not only improving your health but also in helping you to lose weight too.
By making small changes to your current diet this can become more sustainable than being a short-term fade. As well as adding more fibre it would also be worth looking into ways to reduce the amount of added sugar into your diet. Its recommended that men have no more than 10 teaspoons of added sugar (40g) and woman 9 (37g) A 100g of milk chocolate is approximately 56g of sugar, already with this you will go over and any glucose you make from any other foods will then be stored in fat. The simplistic approach to this could be just by making a few swaps to your current shopping.
A kind of “rule” I have for myself is that I wont eat any processed food if it contains more than 5g of sugar per 100g, whatever it is. Most popular cereals start from 15g per 100g and can go as high as 25g per 100g. You might not want to go down this route at first, you could start with nothing higher than 15g per 100g. Then maybe 6-8 weeks bring it down by 5g until you are only looking for things 5g or less. At first this might seem like a bit of a pain but after some time it’ll become second nature.
It might seem like you can’t eat anything nice but hopefully you’ll be surprised by what you can swap to. For example some baked beans can be anywhere between 6-8g per 100g though there are a handful of really nice tasting ones that are less than 5g which aren’t ‘reduced sugar’ (these have sweetener in them and could taste a little funny)
Just by starting to make some small changes to your current diet, reducing the amount of added sugar you ingest could go a long way in reducing that unwanted belly fat. I hope that this helps in some way.
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