Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Improve Your Health With A Flat Stomach

By Jason King

Three main and scary health benefits of removing unnecessary belly fat are the prevention of serious illnesses such as breast cancer, diabetes and heart disease. It has no bearing either on how you get the fat around your mid-section either. Whether it's another health problem, or just plain overeating it will have an effect on your good health at some point in your life.

It's not just how a fat mid section looks that people are now attempting to lose their excess pounds, but it's also because of the health risks that carrying extra weight has on the internal organs. The good news is there are simple steps you can take in order to reduce the amount of extra weight that's lining your belly.

A strategy that is gaining more popularity is food choices. Gone are the days when the dietitians were encouraging you just to eat less. We now know that dieting doesn't work in the long term, and can in fact make your problem worse.

Now we know that getting a proper balance of all foods is the key to burning fat. This incorporates eating carbohydrates and fat which most dietitians will encourage you to avoid or cut down on. Not all fats are bad, fats such as omega 3's are an important piece of a healthy weight loss plan, and they can help your body break down bad fats.

Carbohydrates are another food that a lot of dietitians now encourage you to remove from your diet. Carbohydrates are important to your health like any other food. They give you energy and prevent your muscles from shrinking. When your muscles start shrinking your metabolism slows down, and then you'll put on weight.

Apart from eating a healthy balanced diet, exercise is imperative for losing weight, and reducing stomach fat. Cardio should be performed at least 4 times a week for at least half an hour. Depending on your size and the amount of effort you put in an hour of quality cardio can burn up to 1000 calories. If you can do 4 sessions a week that's an extra 4000 calories burnt off. That could be almost 2 days worth of eating being burned off in just a few hours.

If you can you can also do some resistance training that requires lifting weights. If you can increase your muscle mass you can maximize the speed of your metabolism. Once you raise the speed of your metabolism your body will burn extra energy even when you're resting which will help your belly get flatter.

Exercise has lots of other benefits such as making you stronger, fitter and it also strengthens your heart.

Just eating healthy and exercising regularly will get you a trimmer stomach and prolong your life. - 15343

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