Why is so hard to lose belly fat?

One of the complaints I hear the most from people is, “I hate this concentration of fat on my belly.” So common is the issue that literally hundreds of products are on the market to deal with it. Tackling the notorious “belly fat” has become a lucrative market for many and an obsession for many more. The irony of it all is that you really do not need any particular product – the solution lies within YOU!

I will begin by mentioning that there is no way to lose fat in a particular area without surgery. Fat is distributed throughout our body in two areas. Some is stored between organs (called visceral fat), while the remaining amount is stored just below the surface of the skin (called subcutaneous fat). How much you store in a given location depends on your genetics.

I like to think of fat as excess energy. If, on a given day, you ate 3000 calories worth of food, yet only burned 2500 calories throughout the course of the day, you created a caloric surplus. Your body is not going to throw that surplus away. It stores those calories for the day that you have a caloric deficit – IT STORES IT AS FAT! The problem is that many people have more caloric surplus days than caloric deficit days and thus fat tends to accumulate on the body.

The ONLY way that you are going to lose that excess fat is by continually creating a caloric deficit. By doing so, you are calling on your body to dip into your stored stash of calories (i.e., fat) for your energy needs. Creating the deficit once or twice a week is just not going to cut it! The surplus created on the remaining days will average it all out and you will stay the same. You have to create a caloric deficit EVERY DAY in order see a difference.

How can you create a caloric deficit? You will need to vital pieces of information: 1. the number of calories you consume each day, and 2. the number of calories you burn each day.

You are going to have to count EVERY calorie that you put into your mouth. Learning to read nutrition labels and properly factoring portion sizes is key. Food databases like http://www.calorieking.com make your research a little easier, but the fact remains that you must have a pretty accurate idea of just how many calories you eat in order for this to work.

Thanks to advancements in exercise science, it is actually easier to calculate how many calories you burn. There are products on the market that, when used as directed, provide a fairly accurate assessment of the number of calories you are burning. Two products I find particularly reliable are the Polar F6 heart rate monitor and the Bodybugg. Wear one of these for a 24-hour period and you will now (more or less) how many calories you are burning. Do so for several days in a row, and you will be able to get an average.

Once you have these two important pieces of information, you can attack the problem one of three ways: you can either 1. reduce the amount of calories you eat, 2. increase the amount of calories you burn, or 3. do both. So long as you end up with a deficit at the end of the day (every day), you are bound to reduce the amount of fat on your body – yes even that stubborn belly fat.

- Jeff