3 Best Ways to Lose Belly Fat at Home

Are all those binge-watching sessions catching up with you? Are your waistbands starting to feel a bit tighter than usual? To reduce belly fat at home, you need to tackle the problem with three different approaches:

• Make healthier choices with food
• Choose workouts to target your belly fat
• Do cardio exercises for overall weight loss and fat burning

Make healthier food choices to reduce belly fat at home

Fad diets often restrict certain food groups to have faster results, but this can lead to nutrient deficiencies. By switching to healthy food options, you are creating a diet that you can stick to for the rest of your life. Here are some easy ways to start with healthier choices:

Start with portion control and reduced serving sizes. You could try serving yourself on smaller plates to moderate your intake.

• Fill up at least half your plate with veggies, fruit, or salads.
• Replace fried snacks with options like trail mix, baked chips, chopped veggies with yoghurt dips, or fresh fruit.
• Switch out sugary drinks and replace with homemade flavoured water instead.
• Reduce your sugar intake by gradually taking less sugar in your tea or coffee.

There are many ways to control your caloric intake without losing out taste. You may benefit from consulting a nutritionist online to get a customized nutrition plan.

Exercises to reduce belly fat at home

Making healthier food choices will help but if you’re hoping to reduce belly fat at home, these exercises will help you achieve your goals sooner.

If you are new to exercises like this, you may want to talk to a personal trainer before starting.

1. Start with warm-ups

Never do targeted exercises like these without a thorough warm-up first, or you could seriously injure yourself. Do these exercises for 30 seconds each:

• Arm circles
• Neck twists
• Shoulder shrugs
• Swinging toe touch
• Jumping jacks
• Jogging on the spot

2. Crunch and reach

• Lie flat on the mat with your lower back pressed into the floor, arms extended over your head.
• Raise your legs to 90 degrees and bring your arms forward, reaching towards your feet.
• Use your core muscles to perform these crunches.
• Repeat 15 times.

3. Bicycle crunches

• Lie on your back with your lower back pressed into the floor, arms bent to keep your hands behind your head or on your temples.
• Raise your legs to 90 degrees and bend your knees. This will be your neutral position for this exercise.
• Bring your right knee to your chest and swing your left elbow to touch it, using your abdominal muscles to move your torso.
• Alternate with your left leg and right elbow.
• Do this 15 times on each side.

Note: If you tend to clench your fingers behind your head and pull on your neck, place your fingertips at your temples instead.

3. Tuck and crunch

• Lie on your back with your lower back pressed into the floor, arms bent to keep your hands behind your head or on your temples.
• Raise your legs to 90 degrees and bend your knees. This will be your neutral position for this exercise.
• Bring both knees towards your chest and raise your upper body and shoulders, aiming to bring your nose to your knees. This should be done without stretching your neck forward.
• Stretch your body out straight and repeat the exercise without a break.

4. Mountain climbers

• Get into plank position with fingers splayed and core engaged.
• Jump your right foot up towards your chest and then your left one. This movement feels like you’re running, with your hands on the floor to support you.
• Keep your abs active and your back straight, watching out for a tendency to raise your hips.
• Do this for a minute.

5. Leg raises

• Lie flat on your back with your lower back pressed down and your palms resting on the floor under you.
• Engage your core and raise your legs to a 90 degree angle.
• Lower steadily to the floor, using your core and not your lower back to control your movement.
• Repeat 15 times.

6. Burpees

• Begin in a standing position.
• Jump in place and swing your arms overhead.
• Then squat down and put your hands on the floor and jump your legs backwards into a plank.
• Hold the plank then jump back to squat.
• Rise to a standing position.
• Do this 10 times.

Find out what are burpees and how they can help you.

Note: If you want to increase the challenge, do a push-up when you are in plank pose. You might also like to try out box jumps for an extra workout.

7. Full Plank

• Get into plank position with your hands on the floor, fingers splayed out.
• Keep your neck relaxed and your gaze on the floor about a foot above your hands.
• Engage your core muscles to support the plank and keep your legs and glutes active.
• Don’t allow your lower back to bear the load – keep your hips up.
• Maintain your pose for at least a minute.

Note: If the Full Plank is too difficult for beginners, rest your knees on the ground but use your core to keep your torso stable. You should aim at graduating to a Full Plank, even if only for 30 seconds at a time.

8. Stretch and cool down

After you complete these exercises to reduce belly fat at home, you should do a complete round of stretching and cooling down. This helps to prevent or reduce any stiffness in your back or abs the next day. Some good stretches are:

• Cobra pose
• Cat-Cow stretch
• Side bends
• Forward and backward bends

Cardio exercises to reduce belly fat at home

Apart from exercise that targets your belly fat, you should supplement your efforts with exercise like running, swimming or cycling. Cardio exercise boosts your metabolism so that you are burning fat all day long, even on days when you don’t exercise.

Check out our 30 minute workout at home if you’re thinking about getting those limbs moving. If you’d like to do more for weight loss, Avaana can help you find a personal trainer or join a group fitness class near you.

Understand how belly fat accumulates

Before you try to learn a new exercise to lose belly fat, you should understand what it is and how it accumulates.

There are two types of belly fat:

Subcutaneous fat: This is the fat that sits under your skin. This is usually what you see and most people worry about big bellies when it starts to increase. It is unhealthy and we may become conscious about not fitting into our clothes, but it is not as deadly as visceral fat.

Visceral fat: This is the fat that builds up around your internal organs, causing them to function with less efficiency.

When you have too much visceral fat, it can lead to health problems like cholesterol, cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and even mental health conditions like depression. Visceral fat slows the function of your organs, especially your liver, kidney, intestines and stomach, causing problems in digestion and elimination in your body.

It is important to lose both types of fat, and the best way to work on both is through exercise. There are many types of weight loss diets but with exercise, you will lose the fat and improve the function of your body, as well as boost heart function, respiratory function, and mental health.

However controlling your calorie intake is a preventative measure that should be an ongoing effort. If you eat healthy, you will maintain a healthy weight and see better results from your workout.

Stress and belly fat

Reducing your stress levels can have a huge role in helping you lose belly fat. When you are stressed, you are more likely to make poor diet choices, reach for comfort food more often, and skip workouts.

Stress also makes you more likely to have unhealthy sleep patterns and indulge in binge drinking, drugs, or smoking. All these factors can contribute to your overall health and the extra weight that you pile on.

But apart from these obvious reasons, stress can also affect your hormone levels and raise cortisol in your body. Cortisol slows your metabolism and makes it harder for your body to eliminate fat, adding to your waist size without you realizing it. Learning how to meditate can have a positive impact on your mental health and on your weight loss goals.

Set yourself up for successful weight loss

If you want to lose belly fat, just follow these steps.

Step 1: Take an honest look at your life

Analysing your lifestyle and diet will help you understand which factors are contributing to your weight gain. Ask yourself these questions:

Is my diet healthy? Your diet should provide you with the proteins, vitamins and minerals that your body needs. If you aren’t sure if your current diet is effective, consider consulting a nutrition and dietetics specialist to get a plan that caters to your body and health.

How can I cut down on sugary foods or carbs? Try cutting back on sugar in your coffee or tea, giving up or reducing the serving of dessert, or eating at home more often than you eat in restaurants or cafes or order takeaways. You might choose to quit sugar altogether.

Do I eat more junk food or more fruit and veg? If you like snacking, you can replace processed foods with healthy snacks or fresh vegetables and fruit.

Do I get enough sleep? If you’re sleeping late and waking up early, you should reassess your daily routines to get at least 7 hours of sleep each night.

How much activity or exercise do I really do? If you have an exercise routine, you might like to consult a personal trainer to make it more effective. If you do not exercise much, you should consider starting with walking to start losing weight.

Step 2: Set goals

If you don’t know where you’re heading, you won’t see a way to get there. People who enjoy exercise are motivated enough to stick to a regular workout routine. But if you’re reading this, you’re probably tired of fad diets and want to reassess your fitness goals to lose belly fat.

Your goals could be anything – fitting into a favourite pair of jeans, dropping a few pounds, or losing your belly fat – but you should set them and stick to them.

When you set a goal, you should also set milestones along the way so that you can celebrate every achievement. Plan to reward yourself with something that motivates you even more along your new fitness path: how about a new pair of running shoes, those expensive weights you’ve been eyeing, or a new protein powder?

Step 3: Create an action plan

Once you know the reasons you’re putting on weight and have set goals that you want to work towards, the action plan should be fairly clear.

The most effective way to lose belly fat is to eat healthy and exercise regularly. While watching your calorie intake will help you lose subcutaneous fat, the only action that will significantly reduce visceral fat is exercise. You have to move if you want to shift the weight that has accumulated around your internal organs.

Do note that if you do not have a regular exercise schedule, you shouldn’t start with extreme workouts immediately. Build up to an hour of walking or exercise over time to avoid injuries and burnout.

Step 4: Stick to your plan

This may sound like its easy or not worth counting as a step, but maintaining a healthy body weight is a lifelong endeavour.

Create a realistic action plan that you are comfortable sticking to for the rest of your life. This means:

Allow room for indulgence: Your diet should not be so extreme that it doesn’t allow for treats, occasional indulgences, or your favourite foods. Practice moderation and not abstinence so that you don’t feel deprived.

Build a workable workout plan: Your exercise routine should be something that helps you stay fit and active and that you enjoy. If you like swimming or running, build a workout plan that includes these activities. Do note that if you try a routine like yoga for beginners, the weight loss may take longer to be noticeable, but in the long run, you’re more likely to stick to a routine that you enjoy.

Keep it fresh: Provide place in your life to experiment with new foods, new recipes, new exercise activities, and new lifestyle changes. If you have been sticking to the same diet and same workout for a long time, even if you don’t get bored of it, your body may become accustomed to the energy it requires. This means you’ll start seeing less noticeable results. Changing your workout routine can make a big difference on your weight.

Building a lifestyle that supports healthy living

While this article is meant to help you lose belly fat, the best way to keep those pounds off is to create a life that makes it easy for you to stay fit. This means having healthy alternatives for every aspect of your life.

• Instead of meeting your friends at a bar, try meeting for a walk or to explore a farmer’s market.
• If you work late and often skip the gym, consider moving your workout to the morning for a boost in metabolism that lasts all day.
• When you go shopping for groceries, choose more raw foods and unprocessed foods so that you’re not tempted by junk food lying around at home.
• Set up a weekend meal prep routine so that you have delicious, home-cooked meals to take with you during the week, even on busy days.
• Take time out to destress in healthy ways, whether this involves pursuing a beloved hobby or starting a new yoga practice.