Obesity

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Abdominal Fat and Exercise

107.   It is an established scientific fact that abdominal fat (potbelly) is a precursor of many lifestyle diseases. To exploit this, numerous bogus claims are increasingly being made that worthless gadgets like “ab-belt”, “ab-roller-rocker” etc. can reduce belly fat overnight. The hard truth is you don’t lose belly fat by doing exercises or using gadgets that target the stomach area. Spot fat reduction does not occur as fat is burned with exercise uniformly over the whole body. A certain amount of abdominal exercises are great to tone your belly muscles and help you maintain a healthy back. Therefore, direct abdominal exercises should only form a small part of your workout routines.

108.   The majority of your time should be spent focusing on multi-joint exercises that work the largest muscle groups of the body, like legs, chest and back. The increased and strengthened muscle mass improves metabolism and fat burning hormones both during exercise and many more hours afterwards which helps to burn more fat. That is one of the real secrets of ridding yourself of some of that sloppy belly fat for good. You simply don’t get this metabolic or hormonal response by wasting most of your time with specific abdominal exercises and gadgets. To burn fat on the potbelly and elsewhere, one should follow a combination of a suitable fat loss diet along with cardiovascular workouts and muscle conditioning.

 Weight Loss Plateau

109.   The weight loss plateau can be described as a flattening out in the weight loss curve while following a diet or eating plan. When after a few weeks / months on a weight loss programme, you suddenly stop losing any weight, you have hit a “plateau”, and this is very common. After you have lost a certain amount, your body thinks it is starving and sets up road-blocks that make it harder for those last kilos to come off. In fact, unless you continually review and adapt your programme to reflect the changes your body has already experienced, you will certainly hit a plateau at some point along your journey towards reaching your goal weight.

110.   If you hit a plateau, first determine the cause. Could you be eating more calories than you think. Remember that as you lose weight, you may lose some muscle, so your metabolic requirement for calorie intake reduces because there are less of you to fuel both at rest and during activities. So you could assess and lower your calorie intake further. This option, though, should be exercised with care, for you may not get sufficient nutrients from a diet that is low in calories. So moderation in reduction in calories, if desirable, should be undertaken. To help balance intake with expenditure, a good rule of thumb is to multiply your goal weight by 22 calories per kg. for resting metabolic rate, and add more calories according to how realistically active you are.