Jelly Belly Be Gone

It can be quite alarming to discover the various ways we can develop a jelly-belly. One such way was revealed in the findings of a three-year survey of 3,000 men and women, ages 30 to 69 in Japan.

It was revealed that if you want to lose that unwanted belly fat, you should slow down at mealtime and don’t stuff yourself. Folks who wolf down their food and eat until they feel full are three times more likely to be overweight than those who eat at a leisurely pace or stop before they feel full.

Another research found that women are more likely than men to chow down until they feel full, while more men than women say they’re speedy eaters.

Now that it’s known, let’s all slow down.

If you haven’t been exercising regularly, the most important concern in choosing a health facility may be your physical condition. Some health issues, like joint problems, require your doctor’s approval and close attention from the club’s staff to develop an appropriate workout routine to effectively lose unwanted pounds.

Two of the newest developments in health clubs are life coaching and medical fitness facilities. Life coaching pairs a health club member with a coach to set goals for nutrition and general well-being as well as fitness. Medical fitness facilities, typically run by hospitals, address physical issues for people with medical conditions, such as hypertension or cardiac concerns. Medical fitness facilities can be a safe haven to individuals who are intimidated.

Even if you’re just sorely out of shape, there’s a club for nearly everyone on the fitness spectrum, but it should be a place that will make exercise both pleasurable and motivating. The environment of the club can go a long way toward helping someone’s self-concept.

Once you have an idea of the type of facility you’re looking for, ask friends, family, coworkers and perhaps even your doctor about places they would recommend. Narrow the list by visiting websites to check out hours, fees, classes and equipment, then assemble a list of health clubs to visit in person. Good Luck.

Have you been procrastinating about joining a health club because of the fear-of-the-unknown factor? There’s no doubt that the process can be intimidating to first timers—the lingo, the classes, the routine. Arming yourself with a little knowledge about what to expect when you walk through the door can help you find a health club where you’ll fit right in.

Like hospitals, malls and grocery stores, health clubs have adapted to changing family structures, routines and expectations. Facilities in the 21st century are just as likely to provide personal coaching, medical-school-trained personnel and day care as they are to offer sophisticated workout machinery. Some facilities still cater to the toned-body set, while others pride themselves on family-friendly offerings. Every club has a different setup, which means you need to look at your needs and your routine. Is flexibility in workout times most important, or would the latest and greatest classes bolster your motivation? Do you require child care, or is proximity to work a must? Questions like these will let you come up with a short list of what you’re looking for in a health club. Choose wisely, it can be the difference in your success.

A fresh tactic for shedding unwanted belly fat is to first season our food, take a sniff before biting and then chew well, suggests a new study that put the theory to the test. Researchers asked overweight and obese participants to sprinkle a variety of flavoring crystals—savory or sweet—on neutral-tasting foods before eating them. A control group was given crystals with no flavor.

Follow-up measurements of the volunteers’ weight and body mass index over a period of six months revealed that those using the flavored crystals lost an average of 30.5 pounds. The control group reported an average drop of just two pounds. The researchers theorize that flavorful food enhances our senses of smell and taste, helps us eat less, savor more and ultimately control our weight. Well, now you know.

It’s been established that proper posture can help in the battle to lose belly fat. But little is known about the effects of body massages in this process.

Allowing the body to reinforce healthy and natural movements can be one of the most beneficial aspects of massage therapy. Many aches and pains are due to poor posture. With a consistent program of massage therapy, the painful points in muscles are loosened and relaxed, joints have greater freedom, and pressure points are relieved. This allows the body to position itself in a healthy and natural posture, therefore avoiding the movements and positions developed over time as a reaction to the pain. This improved posture makes the stomach appear less obvious.

Further, a person with poor circulation can suffer from a variety of discomforts including pooling of the fluid in the extremities (like the toes), cold hands and feet, fatigue, and achiness created by an accumulation of lactic acid in the muscles. Good circulation brings damaged, tense muscles the oxygen-rich blood they need to heal.

So include massages in your battle against that jelly-belly.

It’s tough to know exactly how much cardio an individual needs to effectively lose unwanted belly fat without knowing habits like:

• How many calories you eat
• How hard you exercise
• Your metabolism, age and gender
• Your fitness level
• Your body fat percentage and weight
• Your exercise schedule

The American Heart Association recommend about 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous intensity activity on most days of the week. That said, here are some tips for setting up an effective cardio program:

• If you’re a beginner, start with 3 to 4 days of the cardio exercise of your choice, working at a level you can handle.
• Add time each week to work your way up to 30 to 45 minutes of continuous exercise.
• As you get stronger, try some high intensity training with periodic rests, once a week to help boost endurance and burn more calories.
• Work your way up to 5 to 6 days of cardio and try to vary what you do and how hard you work.

This sample cardio schedule may help you set up your own program. Bottom line, cardio will help you lose unwanted fat. But it is most effective when combined with strength training and a healthy, low-calorie diet.

Over time, numerous reports have revealed that cardio is important for weight loss, but the question remain, which exercises are best and how much do you really need.

The truth is, there really is no best cardio exercise. The best activity is the one you’ll do on a regular basis. So, finding something you like is critical to reaching your weight loss goal, whether it’s to lose a jelly-belly or simply to reduce the waist line a few inches. However, some exercises offer more intensity than others.

• Impact activities: Exercises that involve some impact, like walking, will usually boost your heart rate quicker than no-impact activities like swimming or cycling.
• High impact activities: Exercises that involve running or jumping, will often burn more calories than lower impact things like walking.
• Whole body activities: When you involve both the upper and lower body, as in swimming, it’s often easier to get the heart rate up and burn more calories.

All these activities offer opportunities to burn calories and doing them all gives you a well-rounded program. Here is the number of calories burned by a 150-pound person in 30 minutes of cardio:

• Step aerobics: 340 calories
• Stationary bike: 238 calories
• Swimming: 270 calories
• Walking 4 mph: 170 calories
• Running 5 mph: 270 calories
• Mowing the lawn with a push mower: 200 calories

As you can see, everything from walking to cutting the grass can burn a significant number of calories, which is one reason cardio is so important for losing belly fat.

If you’re trying to lose belly fat, cardio exercise is just one of the things you need in your weight loss toolbox. The trouble is figuring out how much you need, how hard to work and the best cardio exercises. Your first step in setting up an effective cardio program is to learn just what it can do for your body.

You already know that you lose stomach fat when you burn more calories than you eat. The best way to do that is with a combination of cardio, strength training and a healthy diet. But, the cornerstone of most weight loss programs is cardio, cardio, cardio.

• It helps you burn more calories in one sitting. Getting your heart rate up means your blood is pumping, you’re breathing hard, you’re sweating and burning calories.
• With many cardio exercises, you can burn 100 to 500 calories depending on how hard you work, how long you exercise and how much you weigh.
• Burning calories with exercise means you don’t have to cut as many calories from your diet.
• You can do cardio exercise most days of the week without worrying about injury or over training.

Since cardio is important for weight loss, you should choose the routine you are most comfortable doing on a regular basis and stick with it. Remember, persistance is critical in reaching your goal of losing unwanted belly fat.

The infamous infomercial rears its ugly head once more and is about to send us crazy. The latest trend is to create bizarre gadgets, call them ab machines and sell them to you for hundreds of dollars, guaranteeing to lose belly fat in a very short amount of time. First, don’t believe it! As the saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Second, you don’t need special equipment to work your abs. You can do a wide variety of ab exercises with just your body weight or with an exercise ball, which is often much cheaper than the gadgets you see on infomercials. For ideas, follow these blogs and you’ll see that challenging your abs doesn’t require much equipment.

You’re better off buying equipment that has multiple uses. Ab machines only work the abs, but things like dumbbells, an exercise ball, resistance bands, etc. can be used to train your entire body. Don’t fall for the hype.

Let’s face it, the factors that dictate how our bodies look are too many to keep track of. Age, genetics, gender…all of these decide what your body and, therefore, your tummy, look like. Women, in particular, tend to store fat around the lower belly area causing that annoying lower belly pooch. Men tend to store fat around the middle, causing that annoying spare tire effect.

Sure exercise can reduce your body fat, but you can’t choose where you lose fat. To get six-pack abs, you may have to drop your body fat to a level that is either a struggle to maintain or downright unhealthy. Many of us have the goal to get six-pack abs but most of us will find it difficult to reach that goal.

If this is true for you, trying to reach an impossible goal is only going to make you crazy. Set reachable goals for yourself and make friends with your belly. Remember that we all have flaws and perfection isn’t an option unless you head to your nearest surgeon. Instead of doing that, challenge yourself by taking care of your body and accepting it. Good luck all.