So you had your baby… life has changed drastically. You managed to shed some pounds but one thing is not the same! The mommy pooch!
I’ve come across many mamas who have successfully lost weight after childbirth but almost all of them complain to me how difficult it is to lose the belly fat.
I used to just encourage people that “that’s the beauty of motherhood” and embrace the change. That was until I came across an article that changed my perspective. Not only is belly fat unpleasant to have but it’s actually unhealthy.
Below is an article written by by Mike Geary , Certified Nutrition Specialist, Certified Personal Trainer, author of best-selling programs: The Truth about Six-Pack Abs & The Fat-Burning Kitchen
There are two types of fat that you have in your abdominal area . The first type that covers up your abs from being visible is called subcutaneous fat and lies directly beneath the skin and on top of the abdominal muscles.
The second type of fat that you have in your abdominal area is called visceral fat , and that lies deeper in the abdomen beneath your muscle and surrounding your organs. Visceral fat also plays a role in giving certain men that “beer belly” appearance where their abdomen protrudes excessively but at the same time, also feels sort of hard if you push on it.
Both subcutaneous fat and visceral fat in the abdominal area are serious health risk factors, but science has shown that having excessive visceral fat is even more dangerous than subcutaneous fat . Both types of fat greatly increase your risk of developing heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, sleep apnea, various forms of cancer, and other degenerative diseases.
Part of the reason visceral fat is particularly dangerous is that studies show that it releases more inflammatory molecules into your system on a consistent basis.
One of the major reasons that some people accumulate more visceral fat than others can be from a high carbohydrate diet that leads to insulin resistance over time (years of bombarding your system with too much sugars and starches for your pancreas to properly handle the constant excess blood sugar) … and studies show that high fructose intake particularly from high-fructose corn syrup can be a major contributor to excess visceral fat.
So What Gets Rid Of The Stubborn Mommy Pooch?
Both your food intake as well as your training program are important if you are to get this right and the good news is that I’ve spent over a decade researching this topic, analyzing the science, and applying it “in the trenches” with myself as well as thousands of my clients from all over the world to see what works to really stimulate abdominal fat loss.
I’ve actually even seen a particular study that divided thousands of participants into a diet-only group and an exercise & diet combined group. While both groups in this study made good progress, the diet-only group lost significantly LESS abdominal fat than the diet & exercise combined group .
From my research, two of the most important aspects to getting rid of visceral fat are:
1. The use of high intensity forms of exercise and full-body resistance training. Low intensity cardio exercise simply isn’t as effective for removing visceral fat in particular. High intensity exercise such as interval training, sprints (bike sprints or running sprints), AND full-body weight training are very effective at helping to improve your body’s ability to manage glucose and increases insulin sensitivity, a crucial step in removing visceral fat.
These types of high intensity exercise routines are also very effective at increasing your fat-burning hormones and creating a hormonal environment conducive to burning off abdominal fat, including visceral fat.
2. In addition, it’s vitally important to get blood sugar under control to help restore insulin sensitivity through the right nutrition. This means greatly reducing sugars and refined starches in your diet (including fully eliminating any use of harmful high fructose corn syrup!), and focusing more of your diet on healthy fats (such as avocados, nuts, seeds, coconut fat, olive oil, grass-fed butter, free-range eggs, fatty fish and fish oils, etc), as well as increasing protein and fiber intake. The standard diet recommended by the government, which contains an unnaturally high grain intake is NOT conducive to controlling blood sugar and reducing visceral fat!
Reducing grain-based foods in your diet and getting more of your carbs from veggies and high fiber fruits such as berries can go a long way to helping to solve this problem.
3 Unique Veggies That Fight Abdominal Fat?
A surprising way that a few specific vegetables can actually stimulate the burning of abdominal fat…
I bet you didn’t know that there is a specific class of vegetables that contain very unique phytonutrients that actually help to fight against stubborn belly fat.
Let me explain what these unique vegetables are and why they help to burn stomach fat…
Chemicals that force your body to hold onto belly fat
Something you may have never heard about is that certain chemicals in our food supply and our environment, such as pesticides, herbicides, and certain petrochemicals from air and water pollution, household cleaners, plastics, cosmetics, etc can react with your hormones and make your body store excess abdominal fat.
These harmful chemicals are known as xenoestrogens .
Xenoestrogens are chemicals that you are exposed to (and are hard to avoid in the modern world) that have an estrogenic effect in your body. Excess exposure to these can cause hormone balance disruptions for both men and women.
These estrogenic chemicals that we are exposed to on a daily basis can stimulate your body to store belly fat, along with many other problems (including cancer risks in the long term).
So here’s where this specific class of vegetables comes in handy…
One of those cool tricks that I teach my clients that hire me for nutritional counseling is the use of cruciferous vegetables to help fight against stomach fat.
Cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, kale, bok choy, cabbage, etc. contain very specific and unique phytonutrients such as indole-3-carbinol (I3C) that help to fight against these estrogenic compounds…
And by fighting against these belly fat stimulating estrogenic chemicals, this is just 1 more step in helping you to win the battle against abdominal fat!
So there you go… just another excuse to do what mom always told you and eat more broccoli and cauliflower!
I’ve really learned to like brussells sprouts in the last year too… Melt a little grass-fed cheese on them and some garlic and they’re great!
But BEWARE…
Although this class of vegetables may be a super-healthy choice for achieving your lean, strong, and energetic body… I’ve discovered that there are at least 23 popular foods that most people falsely think are “healthy”, but they actually HARM your metabolism and pack on belly fat, including the WORST type of MILK you should never drink…
Discover what these metabolism-harming foods are on the next page:
mommy pooch mommy pooch mommy pooch mommy pooch mommy pooch mommy pooch mommy pooch mommy pooch mommy pooch mommy pooch
