How to Lose Belly Fat - Exercises to Lose Belly Fat

The layer of fat that lies behind the abdominal muscles is called the belly fat. It is a major cause of distress for many who wish for their 'dream body'. A proper workout routine is undoubtedly the best way to lose fat. The exercise should consist of movements that specifically target the belly area, given below are few such exercises. The basic rule is to keep your belly pulled in tight during these workouts.

Exercise 1: Lying on your back, keep your feet and hands flat on the ground, hands should be at right angles to your body. Inhale and when you exhale move your knees to touch the floor on your left till you create tension on your belly's sides. Do the same in the other direction and repeat five times.

Exercise 2: Lying on your back with your hands on the sides, raise your head up without the help of your arms. Repeat this a few times and then continue by placing your hands on the sides of your head to do the curl up.

Exercise 3: Lying on your back with bent knees and feet flat on the ground, place your hands behind your head. Inhale and bring your knees towards yourself while raising your body off the ground. Hold for three seconds and exhale bringing your body back to the initial position. Repeat this exercise up to fifteen times.

Exercise 4: Kneel down with your heels touching your buttocks. Placing your hands on the belly, move your head towards the ground. Return to initial position after holding down for 30 seconds. This can be repeated ten times.

Exercise 5: Lying flat on the back, move legs in slow pedaling movements. Use legs alternatively. Inhale and exhale normally, continuing for thirty seconds.

Exercise 6: Lying on your back with knees bent and feet flat on the ground, raise hips and hold for ten seconds.

In East Asia, the art of Tai Chi has proved to be an efficient workout for the belly. It tones the mid-section as well as the thighs. It involves graceful but, complex movements. It consists of a basic movement that increases in intensity and complexity.

Apart from sit-ups and the abdominal workouts, simple activities like walking, jogging, cycling, etc. can also play a vital role if one wants to lose belly fat. The effective result of aerobics can not only help your belly region but also the whole body. Cardiovascular as well as weight training routines can also help with amazing results. These exercises increase metabolism, thus, breakdown lots of calories and builds your muscles much more than the normal aerobic activities.

It is good if one opts to join a fitness club or slimming centre, where a personal trainer can help out. Nevertheless, in order to maintain your weight and shape it is important to eat a well-balanced diet and keep a regular exercise routine. It should not be forgotten that commitment is the foundation for having a healthy body.

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Cardio Does Not Help Busy People Lose Fat

Research proves it.
In fact, in a head-to-head study, at University of Glamorgan, sports scientists found that short intense workouts helped subjects burn more belly fat - while cardio didn't work at all.

I am an elite personal trainer and sports scientist and have something very exciting that you need to know, I have been working in with normal people (like you) for over 15 years, and I must say you may be missing a trick....or even two.

By fixing these two parts of your programme you could start seeing results again. In this article I will share the two effective and important changes I have made to many of my clients programmes over the last 15 years. I use these strategies to help get real results for real people like you.

"We do more of the stuff we like and less of the stuff we don't like as life goes on." Wouldn't you agree? It's our prerogative! Isn't it?
There are two thing lots of you have in common. Firstly, you are avoiding the tough stuff and doing too much of the easy cardio and secondly you are not doing any intense strength training.

What do I mean?...
If you are like some of my clients were when we met, you may not be working at a high enough intensity and are doing too many hours of SLOW boring cardio. STOP. PLEASE.

Combine this slow boring cardio with the fact you probably don't do intensive strength training. This will lead to increasing body fat stores and decreasing muscle stores - the opposite of what you want.

I heard slow cardio is better for being in the fat burning zone?
This is technically correct but very misleading. You will burn more fat while exercising but you will expend less energy overall, compared to high intensity intervals. Overall energy expenditure is key.
Your ultimate aim is obviously improvement. That's not complicated, that's why you train your ass off. So how come you have not seen any real results in years?

There are two common things in my opinion:

1. Too Much SLOW BORING CARDIO!
2. No Intense Strength Training

Improving Your Fitness - The easy way!
The measure of how fit you are is called your aerobic capacity or VO2Max. If you have trainer for a long time, your Vo2 Max will now only improve with high intensity training.

Training at intensities above 90% VO2max is one of the most potent routes to fitness improvements.
If you are already doing interval running, cycling or swimming, well done - join the club, what you need to do now is High Intensity Strength Training aka - circuit training.
Good circuit training combines the aerobic interval work (you may be already doing) and the muscle strength endurance work. This is commonly the most overlooked component of the amateur programme. It's meant to be in there but it often left out in favour of slow cardio.

A typical circuit training workout will include exercises that improve your running and strength endurance, foot speed, core stability, lactate acid tolerance, VO2 max, all in one highly efficient workout.

DIY Circuit Training- make up your own circuit and do it at home or integrate some muscle endurance exercises to your next interval session on the bike, road or pool - press ups, squats, vertical jumps and lunges to name just a few.

Remember your system needs to be fuelled well when you are expecting your body to perform. If you do not fuel your system well you will struggle training in the "red zone", just feeling ill if you are lucky, picking up injuries if you are unlucky.

*Please note* this type of training is not for people who want to be in their comfort zone, it hurts, it makes you feel a bit sick (that's the lactic acid... gotta learn to love it!). It is higher risk too. You need to be in good physical condition - mobility, flexibility and core stability to lessen the risk of injury.

*NOT FOR BEGINNERS*
It will however boost your overall fitness like crazy (VO2 Max) and ultimately your performance. Once or twice a week for 12 weeks would be enough to notice a difference; two and three times per week will change your body shape.

If you follow these two simple steps and cut out the slow boring cardio and fuel your system for the training. You will take a huge step towards improving your performance and seeing results. Trust me I'm a sports scientist!

Now you know some vital information which will hopefully help your exercise program and increase your chances of achieving your goals. For more information from our team of sports scientists on personal training, boot camps, diet and nutrition, psychology, injuries and treatments, and rest, recovery and conditioning and many more why not visit: http://advancedsportsperformance.co.uk/
There are many easy to read helpful articles which can inspire you to reach your fitness and exercise goals FASTER!

Thanks for reading.

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Cholesterol: Healthy Fats Vs The Unhealthy Fats

If your doctor has told you that your cholesterol levels are too high; this article is for you... because you are not healthy and are in a serious health risk situation.

Whether they've put you on a medication to help you lower cholesterol, or simply told you to consume less cholesterol-containing foods... No matter what you're doing to manage your high cholesterol, it'll help if you clearly understand what's going on inside your body so that you can work your way back to good health.

The fact of the matter is that "high cholesterol" is a pretty complex and potentially dangerous situation.

You see your body makes about 80% of its cholesterol; and the other 20% comes from your diet, more specifically the foods you choose to eat. Dietary cholesterol only enters the body from those foods we eat that are of animal origin; such as meat, fish, eggs, and dairy products.

All individuals (especially people with high cholesterol levels) should make a point of limiting their intake of dietary cholesterol to less than 300 milligrams a day. But as you'll soon learn, doing that and limiting your dietary cholesterol intake is only a small part of the entire cholesterol-lowering picture
Another major factor to consider is what types of fats you're eating; because that issue can have a much larger effect on your cholesterol levels.

Back in the 90's, after the surge in fad diets based upon the Low-Fat and Fat Free craze swept the nation; many people fell into that group who believe (and many still believe) that any & all fats are bad for you. If you subscribed to that theory, it will undoubtedly come as quite a surprise to many that truth of the matter is that certain types of fat are very valuable and important to maintain your good health.

Basically it all boils down to the fact that some kinds of fat are good for you, while others are clearly not.

Whenever you're making decisions about food choices, the type of fats you choose to consume are just as (if not more) important than the choices you make regarding the amount of cholesterol the food contains.

Here's a Guide to help you better understand the difference... 

Heart-healthy Fats you'll want in a Cholesterol-lowering Diet:

Monounsaturated Fats are the healthiest of the fats. They can actually decrease your total blood Cholesterol while maintaining your HDL (good) cholesterol.

Ideally, most of the fats in your diet should only come from this group. They include: almonds, avocados, cashews, canola oil, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, natural peanut butter, olive oil, olives, pecans, peanuts, peanut oil, pistachios, sesame oil, sesame seeds, tahini paste and humus.

Now you probably know that certain margarines (those made from oils listed above) also fall into this healthy category of fats; but you need to exercise caution when choosing one. Avoid any that list any form of "partially hydrogenated" oil on their label... because THAT is a red flag for unhealthy Trans-Fats (which are explained below).

Polyunsaturated Fats are somewhat healthy fats that decrease your total blood cholesterol by lowering your LDL (bad) cholesterol; but at the same time they also lower your HDL (good) cholesterol level as well!

Lowering your total cholesterol is great, but because these fats also lower your HDL (good) cholesterol, you should only enjoy foods containing them on occasion and in moderation. You'll find polyunsaturated fats in corn oil as well as products made with corn oil, also mayonnaise, pumpkin seeds and in sunflower seeds.

A special sub-group of polyunsaturated fats are the Omega-3 fatty acids.
These are the heart-healthy fats that are found in high-fat fish (like albacore tuna, mackerel and salmon), as well as other cold-water seafood (herring, lake trout, oysters, sardines, shellfish and shrimp). It can also come from plant sources like butternuts (white walnuts), flaxseed and flaxseed oil, hempseed, soybean oil and walnuts.

Certain margarines and most salad dressings (those made primarily of polyunsaturated or omega-3 fats) also fall into this "somewhat" healthy category.

Okay now that you've got a better understanding about which fats to include in your cholesterol-lowering diet... here are the fats that are bad for your health.

The Un-healthy Fats: Fats to avoid for a strong and healthy Heart

Saturated Fat is an unhealthy fat that increases your total cholesterol as well as your LDL (bad) cholesterol. Numerous Nutrition Experts and Cardiologists suggest that limiting your saturated fat intake is one of the most important cholesterol-lowering tips you can follow.

If you want to lower your cholesterol and remain healthy, no more than 10% of your calories should come from saturated fats... meaning about 15-25 grams a day depending on your calorie needs.

Seriously... if you want to avoid any of the health problems associated with high cholesterol (like heart attack, stroke, cerebral hemorrhage or death), you've gotta keep this number as low as possible. Make every effort to limit or better yet, avoid these sources of saturated fat: bacon, bacon grease, beef, butter, cheese, cocoa butter, coconut, coconut milk, coconut oil, cream, cream cheese, ice cream, lard, palm kernel oil, palm oil, pork, poultry, sour cream and whole milk.

Trans Fat... is the unhealthiest fat you can eat! Trans Fat not only increases your total LDL (bad) cholesterol level... It does it while lowering your HDL (good) cholesterol!

As a matter of fact, eating even a small amount of any foods that contain Trans Fats will significantly increase your risk of heart disease! And that's especially true if you already have high-risk factors like elevated cholesterol levels.

In order to reduce your risk of serious health problems, you really need to watch out for and avoid foods that contain Trans Fats as much as possible. Health Experts have yet to establish any level or indicator of what they would consider to be a safe amount of Trans Fats to consume (maybe none!)...
So, just to be safe, you should make every effort to limit your intake of Trans Fats to as close as possible to zero (0) 0 grams.

The food products that are known (by the labels on the side of the package) to contain Trans-Fats include vegetable shortenings, hard stick margarines, crackers, candies, cookies, snack foods (like potato chips), fried foods, doughnuts, pastries, baking mixes and icings, store-bought baked goods (like pies, cakes, pastries) and more... much more... basically nearly all mass-produced processed foods.

Although some fats (like Mono-unsaturated and Omega-3′s) are healthier than others (Saturated Fats & Trans Fats), it's important to remember that all fats are very high in calories. Consuming too many (even the healthy ones) can cause your body to store fat and result in major weight gain. So it's important to watch what you eat and limit your total fat intake to less than 30% of your daily caloric intake.

In other words, try to limit your Fat intake to 45 to 65 grams a day (more or less depending on your calorie needs).

Of course, there's far more to a cholesterol-lowering plan than just eating good fats and avoiding the bad ones... regular Exercise, following a healthy diet and not smoking also play important roles in order to lose weight and to keep healthy.

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Cardio and Weight Loss

Cardio is a great ally in the difficult task of weight loss. If somebody wants to lose weight, he or she probably has a weight which is above the recommended healthy level. And being overweight is not healthy at all. Being overweight can cause many problems and one of those problems is heart related problems.
Similarly, being under the recommended healthy weight is not good for you. If you stay in any of these dangerous weight zones for too long, many problems may occur. This is because we have to maintain our weight between the normal values as well as practicing physical exercises to keep our bodies functioning and healthy.

Excessive body weight can cause heart problems. Like a car needs its engine, we need our heart. With this in mind, we therefore need to protect our heart and avoid unhealthy habits that may affect our health. Additionally, physical exercise will maintain our health as well as our heart.

We can even find some of the best cardio for weight loss in order to reduce our weight in a healthy way on the internet and by practicing cardio exercises we will be helping our heart and our body.

There are some of the best cardio exercises for losing weight:
Swimming: swimming is a very good cardio exercise in order to lose weight and to keep you healthy. Swimming allows you to exercise your entire body and it is an excellent way to lose weight.

Swimming is among the best cardio for weight loss. Additionally, this type of physical exercise doesn't cause any injury relating bones or joints, because you will be exercising in the water with reduced resistance.

Running: You don't need any kind of special equipment for this exercise, however you will need a good pair of trainers in order to prevent any kind of damage to your bones or joints. Also, you will need comfortable clothes so you can move without any problem. Running will help you losing weight by burning calories, though of course you can't run only five or ten minutes - you will have to run around half an hour each time. A good tip is to listen to music or run with someone else as this will help you keep motivated to run further even if you are tired.

Cycling: By cycling at least thirty minutes a day you will improve your endurance and lose weight. Cycling is a very simple activity and an effective exercise to lose weight. Additionally, you can practice this exercise by going to work or school by bicycle. You just have to be creative and find the best way to incorporate your best cardio for weight loss exercises in your day to day activities.
These are only three of the best cardio for weight loss exercises that you can undertake in order to be healthier, to lose weight and to improve your physical skills such as endurance and strength.

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Cardio for Weight Loss

The Facts about Weight Loss and Cardio

If you're trying to lose weight, 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.
How Cardio Helps You Lose Weight You already know that you lose weight 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. Cardio is a key component because:

• You burn more calories at one time - Getting your heart rate into your target heart rate zone means your blood is pumping, you're breathing hard, you're sweating and burning calories.
• You can easily add intensity to increase your calorie burn - With cardio exercise, it's easy to increase your calorie burn with small changes: Going faster, jumping higher, climbing hills or trying new activities that your body isn't used to. .
• It adds to your overall calorie deficit - Burning calories with exercise means you don't have to cut as many calories from your diet.
• You can do cardio most days of the week - With strength training, your muscles require rest to recover and grow stronger. Cardio can be done most days of the week without worrying about injury or overtraining.

The Best Cardio Exercises
You know cardio is important for weight loss, but which exercises are best and how much do you really need for weight loss?
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 goals. That said, 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: High impact, or 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 cross-country skiing, it's often easier to get the heart rate up and burn more calories.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't bother with low impact exercise. Both types of activities offer opportunities to burn calories and doing both gives you a well-rounded program. To get an idea of just how much cardio can do for you, check out the following list of common exercises. Below is the number of calories burned for a 150-pound person in 30 minutes:

• 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 weight.

How Much Cardio Do You Need?

It's tough to know exactly how much cardio we need for weight loss. The American College of Sports Medicine and the American Heart Association recommend about 60 minutes of moderate- to vigorous-intensity activity on most days of the week. But, the truth is, how much cardio you need varies from person to person and depends factors such as:

• 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

That said, there 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 interval training 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.

You can learn more about different levels of intensity in Burn More Fat with Cardio Exercise. These sample cardio schedules will help you set up your own program.
Bottom line, cardio will help you lose weight. But it is most effective when combined with strength training and a healthy, low-calorie diet.
How much cardio do I need if I want to build muscle?
Not everyone wants to lose weight and gaining weight or muscle can be just as tough as trying to lose it. You may think you shouldn't do cardio exercise if you're trying to gain muscle. But, cardio isn't just for weight loss. It also helps condition the heart and lungs and promotes health and well-being.
If your goal is to gain muscle, you won't need tons of cardio. But, doing at least three 20-minute sessions a week won't hurt your goals and will help you reap the benefits of cardio without burning too many calories.

By Paige Waehner, About.com Guide

Updated June 07, 2011

About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by our Medical Review Board

The 3 Key Elements For Effective Weight Loss

When starting any type of workout program, many people will soon discover that for effective weight loss they need to add muscle to their body. This muscle helps to boost your metabolism and burn more fat. This is because muscle is denser than fat and therefore needs more nutrients to stay healthy. Muscles take these nutrients from your fat stores and burn more fat.
As well as knowing this, we all need to know the 3 key elements to an efficient workout program, these 3 elements are:

- Intensity
- Volume & Frequency
- Progression

Intensity is basically how hard you need to work to perform an exercise based on the difficulty of that exercise. Different types of exercise need different levels of intensity to get the most out of your workout. Volume is the amount of reps you perform e.g 10 reps or 10 minutes running, Frequency is very similar but is judged by how many times you do 1 exercise over a period of time e.g 10 reps, 2 times a day, 5 times a week. Finally progression is about moving forward and making your workouts slightly harder so your body has to keep adapting.

Where many individuals go wrong is weight training, they think that if they do hours of weights their bodies will be forced to burn fat. This is in fact totally the opposite, To get the best out of your weight training and to keep up an effective weight loss routine you need to remember one thing. Short and sweet, keep any weight training to a high intensity but very small volume and frequency for optimal results. When it comes to progressing with weights you want to aim to either improve your amount of reps or the weight you push every week.

Aerobic or cardio exercise is different to that of weight training, where as you do high intense workouts in small amounts, in aerobic you aim for a medium intensity for a longer period of time. So for best results in your cardio aim for a run every day but keep the same distance because with aerobic exercises you don't need to progress as much as with weight training.

Even if you lower the weights and perform exercises at a low intensity for longer periods of time you won't see any benefit beyond the first week. Your overall goal for any weight training should be to improve the weight you are lifting to keep you gaining lean muscle and strength.

A very important aspect that a lot of people don't think to involve in their workout program is rest. A decent rest period including sleep is as important as how heavy the weight is you are lifting. We need our sleep for weight loss because this is our repairing stage, when we do any type of physical exercise we are actually causing injuries to our muscles. These are tiny little tears in our muscles and when we sleep and rest these muscle fibres rebuild themselves to be stronger and thicker, Thicker and stronger muscle burn more fat to get more energy.

Upon hearing that you need to add muscle to your body for effective weight loss, many people, especially women start thinking "I don't want muscle, I want to lose weight." But this is very unlikely to happen because we aren't made to pack on muscle like the guys you see on tv. Many of these men & women take muscle building supplements along with high intakes of protein and carbohydrates, this helps them maximise their muscle building potential. The muscle you want is pure lean muscle, which will actually be compact and thinner than fat. It will also replace most of the fat on your body, in turn making you look a lot slimmer.

Remember to implement these 3 key elements into your regime and you will have put yourself into the best position possible for effective weight loss, if you don't you will limit your ability to burn excess fat and ultimately gain the body you deserve.

Why not claim your free copy of the ebook "7 Secret Of Permanent Fat Loss & Fitness"
Only at www.flattentheflab.eu

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