Best way to reduce belly fat?

[Tenacity]

Get it done buddy . Create your MP3 music list strategically. Whatever music pisses you off, pumps you up and makes you want to jump through a mountain....put those tracks together. When you are doing that Zone Training you should literally "zone out" (no pun intended) with the music and before you know it you will be at 20 minutes in with like 5 minutes remaining thinking to yourself, "DAMN that went by fast!"

 

[:-)]

That's 2 months away. Consider posting every week or two at the least. The more you write this shiat down, the more you commit yourself to the goal.

OK. I'll post bi-weekly reports.

 

[AttackFormation]

That's 2 months away. Consider posting every week or two at the least. The more you write this shiat down, the more you commit yourself to the goal.

Absolutely agree and support this advice.

 

[Sam N]

If you want to try an amazing product designed to help you lose weight are carve your core, check out this link. http://accfdkp7095bw8qsg4z9mipxzr.hop.clickbank.net/ It shows you an amazing weight technique that was originally designed for the wealthy. It's now available for you!

 

[marmel75]

Okay OP, allow me to lay it out for you buddy. These are my opinions and recommendations, but as I say you might need to try out a couple of different theories to see which one works for your body, desires, etc. But if I were YOU, this is what I would do:

To begin, I would forgot about the concept of reducing "belly fat" right now because your body is too overweight with too high of a fat percentage. I believe that in order to "show muscle" you have to be at a solid bodily base in order to do so. That means having low enough fat and having your weight in a generic proper "range" so that you can then lay into the weightlifting aspects so the muscles can tear down, repair, and grow larger, and you would be at the bodily base to SEE the muscles.

So, what would I do?


1.) The First 60 Days

* Only cardio, no weightlifting.

* Let the cardio be at least 25 - 30 minutes and I want Zone Training, and I want it 5 days per week in the morning on as little food as possible (empty stomach). I need Zone Training, not walking. Get on the Stairmaster, Treadmill, LifeCycle, or Bikes and just program it for Zone Training. I would use the LifeCycle. Get you an MP3 with some good, kick a.ss music that you love and that makes you want to take down the world. Listen to that shyt while you workout and you will FORGET you are working out, and will instead be focused on kicking a.ss.

* I want the eating plan to the point where you are consuming no more than 2,500 calories per day, I prefer the range of 2,000 - 2,300. And I would use intermittent fasting rather than the "eat a small meal every 3 hours rule". I would eat a moderate meal every 6 - 8 hours, the meal should have a baked meat source, veggie source, and fruit source, with at least 40 oz of water. Also one meal can just be a protein shake. Try to lay off a lot of BREAD, matter of fact, just eliminate BREAD.

* Get some supplements but they should only be the protein shake, a good men's multi-vitamin, omega 3 fish oil and green tea extract. I use ON Whey Gold Standard, Opti Men's Multi, Nature Made Fish Oil, and BB.com's Green Tea Extract. The Green Tea is an excellent tool to help curb food cravings and get you to take control over when you eat food.

* For these 60 days, you are going to do very little cheat meals. You would only do 1 every two weeks, or two a month. When you do a cheat meal, it's just a cheat "meal", it's not a pig out day.


2.) After The First 60 Days

* Your body fat and weight levels in general should have dropped all the way down. Take pictures and post them here to confirm this. You should be at Your Base and now can start laying out building muscle because you would be at the point where you (and the world) can SEE the muscles.

* Now we are going to take the Cardio sessions down to 3 days a week, still at Zone Training with 25 minutes per session. When you do the Cardio sessions, add in now doing Ab Exercises but try to focus on doing Ab Exercises that have a "weight" component tied to them. So it could be the Ab Curl machine at the gym, it could be doing leg lifts but having weights tied around the ankles, etc.

* You are going to also add in 3 muscle building sessions per week where you hit of course Chest, Biceps, Triceps, Shoulders, Back and Legs. Depending on your schedule, you might do "two-a-days" where you would do a Cardio session in the morning and then do the muscle building session later in the evening.

* Keep the eating plan and supplements the same, but you can add in one cheat meal a week now rather than just one cheat meal every two weeks.


3.) After Those 60 Days

Take another slide show, you should look totally different and have somewhat of a "leaned" appearance. At that point, you would just stay on the same plan and within another 45 days, you should be at the point where you could start showing some of your shirtless pics off to chicks. Also during this time you can now do 1 cheat meal every 4 or 5 days, which breaks down to (within a monthly cycle) 22 - 24 days where you eat the normal health based eating, and 6 - 8 days where there's a day when you consume a cheat meal. Again, no pig out cheat DAYS, just a moderate cheat meal.

Also note this is a lifestyle change, not a diet. This is not about "losing 10 pounds," or "losing 20 pounds," this is about getting to the body, health and fitness level you SHOULD BE and STAYING THERE.

As soon as you recommended cardio and no weightlifting I can tell you clearly don't understand how hormones and your body actually works. This is just flat out horrible advice.

 

[Tenacity]

As soon as you recommended cardio and no weightlifting I can tell you clearly don't understand how hormones and your body actually works. This is just flat out horrible advice.

It worked for me buddy. When I first started to bring my weight down, I focused mainly on doing a lot of cardio and eating right. I didn't add in the consistent weight training until I got the body fat levels down.

Now do I truly understand all of the science behind why it worked? No I do not.

 

[marmel75]

It worked for me buddy. When I first started to bring my weight down, I focused mainly on doing a lot of cardio and eating right. I didn't add in the consistent weight training until I got the body fat levels down.

Now do I truly understand all of the science behind why it worked? No I do not.

Did it? Weight loss is irrelevant. It's how much fat you lost versus how much muscle. Your way tips the balance towards losing more muscle than fat. Lifting weight means you keep most of the muscle while losing fat.

And lifting weight burns far more fat than doing cardio. Period. Cardio(other than HIIT) is a very poor mechanism for burning fat when you really dig under the hood and see what's really going on both on a body composition and hormonal level.

The best way to drop pure fat is alternate day fasting. It tips it 90/10 fat/muscle. Virtually every other way is 50/50 fat/muscle at best...

 

[Tenacity]

IT fasting is incorporated into my eating plan. When I first started I was out of shape, so I spent a couple of weeks focusing on solid cardio and changing the eating plan w/ IT Fasting incorporated in. When I got down to a decent size, that's when I started adding in the weight training which was April '15, then by July '15 I was toned up.

Did I lose some muscle during the all cardio stage? Most likely, but my body looked horrible so any muscle that I had would have been irrelevant anyway don't you think?

Today I don't do any cardio. I started with cardio only, then went to cardio and weight training, then weight training w/ light cardio, to now today with 100% weight training w/ no cardio.

 

[Tenacity]

BTW, what ever happened to the OP? He was supposed to update this thread in September lol?

 

[marmel75]

IT fasting is incorporated into my eating plan. When I first started I was out of shape, so I spent a couple of weeks focusing on solid cardio and changing the eating plan w/ IT Fasting incorporated in. When I got down to a decent size, that's when I started adding in the weight training which was April '15, then by July '15 I was toned up.

Did I lose some muscle during the all cardio stage? Most likely, but my body looked horrible so any muscle that I had would have been irrelevant anyway don't you think?

Today I don't do any cardio. I started with cardio only, then went to cardio and weight training, then weight training w/ light cardio, to now today with 100% weight training w/ no cardio.

Muscle is never irrelevant. In fact its the MOST relevant thing in regards to training there is. Muscle is metabolically active. Every pound of muscle you have requires 50 calories to maintain it daily. So if you lose 3 lbs of muscle, there goes 150 calories a day your body would be burning by doing nothing. Fat on the other hand is not, as it only requires 3 calories a day to maintain.

Also, weight lifting helps to increase Testosterone and Growth Hormone, two hormones that help shed body fat---testosterone by shifting insulin sensitivity in favor of muscle while basically turning fat cells insulin resistant, growth hormone by causing the release of fat for energy. Cardio lowers both of these hormones and instead increases cortisol(the body's stress hormone). Cortisol causes your body to hold onto fat while burning muscle.

In addition to this, lifting weights also causes something called EPOC or Excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, aka "afterburn" effect. What this means is that after you lift weights, as long as its intense enough, your body goes into a state of disarray and freaks out trying to get itself back to "normal" from the stress it just endured. While this is going on, you are burning extra calories, all of them coming from fat. This can last 24 or more hours from the time you worked out, whereas when you exercise by doing cardio, the calories burned end with you stopping the cardio activity.

In no ways am I saying that cardio can't help you lose fat. It can combined with proper diet, but in the grand scheme of things its 85% diet and 15% cardio that's helping you lose the weight. What I am saying is that for me personally, I always want to do what most effective and efficient giving me the best results in the least amount of time. Cardio only is pretty much exactly the opposite.

 

[AttackFormation]

Muscle is never irrelevant. In fact its the MOST relevant thing in regards to training there is. Muscle is metabolically active. Every pound of muscle you have requires 50 calories to maintain it daily. So if you lose 3 lbs of muscle, there goes 150 calories a day your body would be burning by doing nothing. Fat on the other hand is not, as it only requires 3 calories a day to maintain.

I recall reading that this is a myth (which makes sense if you think about it logically too). Muscle does require more calories to maintain than fat, but it is such a small difference that it is practically insignificant.

 

[Tenacity]

Marmel,

While I admit that I do not have all of the scientific terms down pat like you do in this area lol, are you telling me that you would tell a guy that's extremely overweight (let's say 275 - 300 lbs) to just LIFT WEIGHTS and that will burn all his fat off? Is that what you are telling me?

You can't be saying that Marmel because that makes no sense. Cardio works, as long as you do the right type of Cardio which is one that focuses in on a high intensity set rather than a long, steady, set. Cardio is there to boost the metabolism back to higher fat burning levels and burn off pounds during the exercise as well.

My advice to the overweight person is to fix their eating plan and to do nothing but HIGH INTENSITY cardio for at least the first 45 - 60 days. After that, we would change up the workout to include high intensity cardio and weight lifting. Eventually once they get to the body they want (like where I'm at), they can just solely focus on doing weight lifting with little to no cardio.

I do not believe doing little to no cardio at the beginning when the person is significantly overweight makes any sense Marmel. Again, speaking from my own personal experience, I started off doing a lot of HITT cardio to get my weight down, then I focused on weight lifting to build muscle.

Today, I do hardly no cardio, just weight lifting.

 

[marmel75]

Okay OP, allow me to lay it out for you buddy. These are my opinions and recommendations, but as I say you might need to try out a couple of different theories to see which one works for your body, desires, etc. But if I were YOU, this is what I would do:

To begin, I would forgot about the concept of reducing "belly fat" right now because your body is too overweight with too high of a fat percentage. I believe that in order to "show muscle" you have to be at a solid bodily base in order to do so. That means having low enough fat and having your weight in a generic proper "range" so that you can then lay into the weightlifting aspects so the muscles can tear down, repair, and grow larger, and you would be at the bodily base to SEE the muscles.

So, what would I do?


1.) The First 60 Days

* Only cardio, no weightlifting.

* Let the cardio be at least 25 - 30 minutes and I want Zone Training, and I want it 5 days per week in the morning on as little food as possible (empty stomach). I need Zone Training, not walking. Get on the Stairmaster, Treadmill, LifeCycle, or Bikes and just program it for Zone Training. I would use the LifeCycle. Get you an MP3 with some good, kick a.ss music that you love and that makes you want to take down the world. Listen to that shyt while you workout and you will FORGET you are working out, and will instead be focused on kicking a.ss.

* I want the eating plan to the point where you are consuming no more than 2,500 calories per day, I prefer the range of 2,000 - 2,300. And I would use intermittent fasting rather than the "eat a small meal every 3 hours rule". I would eat a moderate meal every 6 - 8 hours, the meal should have a baked meat source, veggie source, and fruit source, with at least 40 oz of water. Also one meal can just be a protein shake. Try to lay off a lot of BREAD, matter of fact, just eliminate BREAD.

* Get some supplements but they should only be the protein shake, a good men's multi-vitamin, omega 3 fish oil and green tea extract. I use ON Whey Gold Standard, Opti Men's Multi, Nature Made Fish Oil, and BB.com's Green Tea Extract. The Green Tea is an excellent tool to help curb food cravings and get you to take control over when you eat food.

* For these 60 days, you are going to do very little cheat meals. You would only do 1 every two weeks, or two a month. When you do a cheat meal, it's just a cheat "meal", it's not a pig out day.


2.) After The First 60 Days

* Your body fat and weight levels in general should have dropped all the way down. Take pictures and post them here to confirm this. You should be at Your Base and now can start laying out building muscle because you would be at the point where you (and the world) can SEE the muscles.

* Now we are going to take the Cardio sessions down to 3 days a week, still at Zone Training with 25 minutes per session. When you do the Cardio sessions, add in now doing Ab Exercises but try to focus on doing Ab Exercises that have a "weight" component tied to them. So it could be the Ab Curl machine at the gym, it could be doing leg lifts but having weights tied around the ankles, etc.

* You are going to also add in 3 muscle building sessions per week where you hit of course Chest, Biceps, Triceps, Shoulders, Back and Legs. Depending on your schedule, you might do "two-a-days" where you would do a Cardio session in the morning and then do the muscle building session later in the evening.

* Keep the eating plan and supplements the same, but you can add in one cheat meal a week now rather than just one cheat meal every two weeks.


3.) After Those 60 Days

Take another slide show, you should look totally different and have somewhat of a "leaned" appearance. At that point, you would just stay on the same plan and within another 45 days, you should be at the point where you could start showing some of your shirtless pics off to chicks. Also during this time you can now do 1 cheat meal every 4 or 5 days, which breaks down to (within a monthly cycle) 22 - 24 days where you eat the normal health based eating, and 6 - 8 days where there's a day when you consume a cheat meal. Again, no pig out cheat DAYS, just a moderate cheat meal.

Also note this is a lifestyle change, not a diet. This is not about "losing 10 pounds," or "losing 20 pounds," this is about getting to the body, health and fitness level you SHOULD BE and STAYING THERE.

Stop advising people to only do cardio...that is horrible advice. Cardio does NOT burn fat efficiently. It is close to a waste of time. OP will see very little difference between changing his diet and doing cardio and simply changing his diet. Not sure why people think cardio is great for losing fat when study after study after study show that it is one of the LEAST efficient ways to do it. Circuit training with weights would burn fat much faster than Cardio alone and will have the added benefit of increasing lean body mass.

 

[marmel75]

Marmel,
While I admit that I do not have all of the scientific terms down pat like you do in this area lol, are you telling me that you would tell a guy that's extremely overweight (let's say 275 - 300 lbs) to just LIFT WEIGHTS and that will burn all his fat off? Is that what you are telling me?

If he does circuit training with weights absolutely, and he would lose more fat and much quicker than doing it by cardio only without the associated loss of muscle.

You can't be saying that Marmel because that makes no sense. Cardio works, as long as you do the right type of Cardio which is one that focuses in on a high intensity set rather than a long, steady, set. Cardio is there to boost the metabolism back to higher fat burning levels and burn off pounds during the exercise as well.

It absolutely makes sense because training with weights has a far bigger effect on your body than cardio does, regardless of what type. Circuit training combines weight lifting with cardio, which means you get the best of both worlds.

My advice to the overweight person is to fix their eating plan

Fixing your diet is the key ingredient to any weight loss and you would see little difference between fixing your diet versus fixing your diet and doing cardio.

and to do nothing but HIGH INTENSITY cardio for at least the first 45 - 60 days. After that, we would change up the workout to include high intensity cardio and weight lifting. Eventually once they get to the body they want (like where I'm at), they can just solely focus on doing weight lifting with little to no cardio.

You can say whatever you like, but again it's horrible advice.

I do not believe doing little to no cardio at the beginning when the person is significantly overweight makes any sense Marmel. Again, speaking from my own personal experience, I started off doing a lot of HITT cardio to get my weight down, then I focused on weight lifting to build muscle.

See circuit training. He is doing a form of cardio, but with weights. The term cardio simply means getting your heart to a certain BPM range and keeping it there for a period of time. He can accomplish this just as easily with weights but still get the added benefits of lifting weights at the same time. This is simply a no-brainer.

Today, I do hardly no cardio, just weight lifting.

Finally we are on the same page about something.

 

[Tenacity]

Marmel,

Okay, circuit training I agree with because that's similar to high intensity cardio just using free weights in replacement of a "stairmaster" or lifecycle. I just think that if a guy is significantly overweight, he's going to have to fix the eating plan, but also do something to increase his metabolism WHILE directly burn fat from said procedure.

Circuit training can work as well, but the HITT Cardio worked for me though. Why did it work? Again, I'm not that savvy on the technical terms or science behind it, but I know I didn't slim down initially based solely on the eating plan.

 

[Yewki]

Wow. This thread is way too complicated. Look...

It doesn't really matter what you eat.
It doesn't really matter how often you eat.
It doesn't really matter what exercises you do.
It doesn't really matter how much of said exercises you do.

What matters is that you're at a consistent day to day, month to month calorie deficit. Count everything you eat. Everything. Make sure it is a few hundred less than what your body requires based on whatever it is that you currently do. Use a credible calorie calculator to estimate this. If you want to make the weight loss easier, then do more cardio to raise your metabolism even more.

This is what it comes down to... if you want it badly enough, this is what you'll do. When you get to 10% BF, you're not not gonna complain about your belly fat anymore. Good luck.

 

[marmel75]

Wow. This thread is way too complicated. Look...

It doesn't really matter what you eat.
It doesn't really matter how often you eat.
It doesn't really matter what exercises you do.
It doesn't really matter how much of said exercises you do.

What matters is that you're at a consistent day to day, month to month calorie deficit. Count everything you eat. Everything. Make sure it is a few hundred less than what your body requires based on whatever it is that you currently do. Use a credible calorie calculator to estimate this. If you want to make the weight loss easier, then do more cardio to raise your metabolism even more.

This is what it comes down to... if you want it badly enough, this is what you'll do. When you get to 10% BF, you're not not gonna complain about your belly fat anymore. Good luck.

This is simply wrong. No other way to put it.

It DOES matter when and how often you eat. Hormones control weight loss to a large extent and when and how often you eat controls hormones to a large extent.

It's been shown in studies that if you confine the time you eat,for example 8 hours of the day, that you Will have less body fat than someone who eats the exact same food and the exact same calories but eats throughout the day.

Why? Hormones. Namely insulin which shuts down fat burning while it's active in the body. So common sense will tell you if you eat for 8 hours and let's say insulin is active for an additional 2 hours that you have more fat burning potential that someone who eats for 14 hours with insulin active an additional 2 hours. 14 hours of fat burning potential versus 8 hours. Doesn't seem like much but when you multiply this on a weekly and monthly basis it adds up to a significant difference. Monthly you are looking at 180 extra hours, yearly almost 2100 extra hours.

This doesn't even go into the fact that confining the time you eat reduces the inflammation load on the body and increases insulin sensitivity among many other positive effects on the body, including being the best way to lose weight because it will be 90% fat and only 10% muscle that comes off versus all other methods which are 50% fat and 50% muscle.

http://www.ergo-log.com/confining-time-in-which-you-eat-makes-you-slimmer.html

http://www.ergo-log.com/slimmer-healthier-with-part-time-fasting.html

http://www.ergo-log.com/rapid-weigh...-combine-intermittent-fasting-and-cardio.html

 

[Sprayarc]

So I work out Mon/Tues and Thurs/Fri, a combination of resistance training and cardio (45 min jogging Tues and Thurs). Body fat in the region of 25% mostly on the belly. Any ideas on how further to kill that belly fat?

An example of my diet consists of:

08:00 - Breakfast:

Muesli with natural yoghurt and fresh chopped banana.

10:30 - Brunch:

2 x Chicken wraps with grated cheese, dollop of sour cream, salsa.
Protein shake

14:00 - Snack

2 x Chicken wraps.
Apple
Nuts

17:00 - Dinner

Turkey breast
Two baby potatoes
Broccoli

21:00

Protein shake.

Compound lifts, high protein diet, complex carbs.

 

[Yewki]

This is simply wrong. No other way to put it.

It DOES matter when and how often you eat. Hormones control weight loss to a large extent and when and how often you eat controls hormones to a large extent.

It's been shown in studies that if you confine the time you eat,for example 8 hours of the day, that you Will have less body fat than someone who eats the exact same food and the exact same calories but eats throughout the day.

Why? Hormones. Namely insulin which shuts down fat burning while it's active in the body. So common sense will tell you if you eat for 8 hours and let's say insulin is active for an additional 2 hours that you have more fat burning potential that someone who eats for 14 hours with insulin active an additional 2 hours. 14 hours of fat burning potential versus 8 hours. Doesn't seem like much but when you multiply this on a weekly and monthly basis it adds up to a significant difference. Monthly you are looking at 180 extra hours, yearly almost 2100 extra hours.

This doesn't even go into the fact that confining the time you eat reduces the inflammation load on the body and increases insulin sensitivity among many other positive effects on the body, including being the best way to lose weight because it will be 90% fat and only 10% muscle that comes off versus all other methods which are 50% fat and 50% muscle.

http://www.ergo-log.com/confining-time-in-which-you-eat-makes-you-slimmer.html

http://www.ergo-log.com/slimmer-healthier-with-part-time-fasting.html

http://www.ergo-log.com/rapid-weigh...-combine-intermittent-fasting-and-cardio.html

This is exactly why people think losing weight is complicated.

Aside from your post having no real, meaningful numbers in it (2100 extra fat burning hours per year!)...

Everything you posted is inconsequential and entirely misses the point. You're arguing for some <1% slice on the pie chart that's not even worth discussing.

99% of the struggle of losing weight comes down to having the discipline to count calories and limit your food intake to maintain a constant calorie deficit.

If you do that, guess what? There's no need to switch up your entire eating schedule in pursuit of these obscure optimizations you speak of. Why? Because you get results, and if you want more results... you eat less. Rocket science.

 

[marmel75]

This is exactly why people think losing weight is complicated.

Aside from your post having no real, meaningful numbers in it (2100 extra fat burning hours per year!)...

Everything you posted is inconsequential and entirely misses the point. You're arguing for some <1% slice on the pie chart that's not even worth discussing.

99% of the struggle of losing weight comes down to having the discipline to count calories and limit your food intake to maintain a constant calorie deficit.

If you do that, guess what? There's no need to switch up your entire eating schedule in pursuit of these obscure optimizations you speak of. Why? Because you get results, and if you want more results... you eat less. Rocket science.

Up to a point yes you will. Then you get to a point with your method where no matter what you do you won't be able to lose weight. You simply cannot just "eat less" to lose weight after a period of time. If this were true there would be no "fad diets" because people would just simply lower their caloric intake and keep losing weight. Obviously it doesn't work because so many people are "stuck" at a weight they can't get under.

Your method will work fine for a 300 lb obese guy who wants to get to a 250 lb still fat guy, taking body fat from maybe 40% to 25%. Great, you lost 50 lbs but you are still fat. It simply will not work to get him from 25% to 10%. Maybe he gets down to 22-23% body fat but it's not going much lower by "eating less".
The body will stall out...leptin will plummet along with thyroid and the body will fight as hard as it can to hold onto fat. They might actually GAIN fat at that point by burning muscle. Talk about a complete failure.

What I am saying will, and much quicker than most other methods. How do I know this? Because I've tried all of these methods on myself, and because numerous other trainers and fitness related people have also with clients. It's pretty clear now that simply "eating less" is as outdated as a horse and buggy.

People want to think in these oversimplistic terms. Eat less and you'll lose weight forever. It's complete and utter bullish!t. You'll lose weight for a while, but then you'll lose no more and be "stuck" following that method. Not to mention losing "weight" is irrelevant, it's how much of that weight is fat that counts. I'm not talking in regards for how to go from 30% body fat to 20% body fat. Yes, eating less will accomplish that for mostly anyone. So what? You are still fat. I'm talking about taking a person at 30% and getting them to 11-12% or lower. Your method will NEVER accomplish that unless you want to look like a concentration camp survivor.