How to Lose Belly Fat Quickly – Top 10 Effective Tips

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There will always be times in life when you feel bloated and not looking your best. This may be due to a whole host of issues, including hormones, a sluggish thyroid or just plain old over eating.

Feeling this way is a sign that it’s time for changes in your life as soon as possible.

In this post we will give you the top 10 effective tips on how to lose belly fat quickly for that fresh lease of life you desire. Also, for the confidence boost you need to live to the fullest in a body you are proud of.

Do starvation diets work?

hungry woman

Maybe you have an event, wedding or holiday coming up and you only have a matter of weeks to get your much desired flatter stomach.

You’re wondering if it’s even possible right? Well, it definitely is, but you will need to be willing to overhaul your diet AND add in some specific belly fat blasting exercises in.

This needn’t be an expensive or time-consuming venture. You don’t even have to go hungry. We definitely don’t promote those dangerous starvation diets that simply do not work in the long run.

In fact, starvation diets just mess up your metabolism and cause you to quickly gain even more weight than before. Weight that you will finder even harder to lose the next time around!

Is YoYo Dieting Bad?

Continuously losing and gaining weight is what is often referred to as yoyo dieting, and is not a cycle we recommend you get into.

Instead, you should relearn new ways of thinking and eating that will help you naturally change some of your bad habits for good. Doing this is ultimately the only sure-fire way of looking and feeling your best for life.

And that’s not even touching on all the other awesome benefits of a healthy and fit body. These include a lower risk of many diseases, including the obvious that is obesity, metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes. The list goes on of the potential side effects of being overweight (particularly having excess belly fat which is an even higher risk factor for ALL of these dangerous health problems).

Dieting and willpower

apple and donut

You’ve decided you would like a flatter stomach and fast, or maybe you would just like to lose a few kilos in general but you definitely don’t want to be miserable and hungry (who does). This is where you’ll need to apply some, or (if you’re really serious) ALL of the 10 steps on the below checklist.

Your own willpower will always determine how successful you are in your weight loss efforts. But, fortunately, most of these steps are pretty easily and cheaply incorporated into your life with minimum effort and if you follow them you should be seeing results in a matter of days.

To be successful in your weight loss efforts, you will need to change life long bad habits and create new neural pathways in your your brain (really not as complicated as it sounds, and happens naturally). When this happens, it will make things easier for you to stick to as they will become second nature in your life.

This is what is so important about a lifelong, healthy lifestyle. It must become second nature and a matter of habit, like brushing your teeth.

1. EAT LOW GI, HIGH PROTEIN FOODS

budget meals

You should switch to low GI foods as much as possible if you’re serious about long term weight loss. GI stands for ‘glycemic index’, and is the rating of how fast a food releases its sugars into the blood and its subsequent effect on blood glucose. The lower the GI the better in terms of weight loss.

Eating low GI foods will help keep blood sugar under control, which in turn will help to control sugar cravings. It’s usually those annoying sugar or carbohydrate cravings that will ruin your diet efforts.

Sugar is ALL refined carbs!

By sugar, we don’t necessarily mean just foods or drinks that taste sweet. Remember that refined carbohydrates such as white flours, breads and white rice are high GI and will act the same way as sugar does in the body, causing a sugar spike and soon after the inevitable crash.

You will then find yourself craving more and more refined carbs and sugary treats to perk yourself back up again and this can then become a self-perpetuating cycle. This is a slippery slope to what has been coined as sugar addiction (technically known as the addiction to the ‘high’ rather than the sugar itself), which can eventually lead to obesity and disease.

They don’t say sugar is MORE addictive than cocaine for nothing!

Get off the sugar train ASAP

The first thing to do is to try to get yourself off this so called sugar train as soon as possible by either cutting out (or seriously down on) refined sugars and carbs such as sweets, cakes, confectionery, pastries and fast foods.

Replace these with these known foods to eat to lose fat fast such as whole grains like quinoa, brown rice, buckwheat, amaranth, millet and oats. Along with plenty of pulses, lentils, nuts, seeds, fruits and vegetables to help keep your blood sugar on an even keel and your body in a higher state of fat burning.

Add into your diet these known fat burning foods:-

  • Probiotics
  • Prebiotics
  • Raw Almonds
  • Hemp Seeds
  • Pumpkin Seeds
  • Walnuts
  • Pulses
  • Nutritional Yeast
  • Whole grains
  • Broccoli
  • Bananas
  • Grapefruit
  • Berries of all kinds
  • Avocados
  • Coconut oil in place of other oils
  • Green Superfood Shots

2. CUT OUT TRANS FATS

deep fat fryer

Trans fats are the nasty kind of fats found in deep-fried foods, margarines and fast foods. They are made industrially in a process of adding hydrogen to liquid vegetable oils to turn them solid. They are then added to our food to make it taste better and last longer.

But, word of warning, they are hazardous to your health and can raise your blood cholesterol levels, thus increasing your risk of heart attack, stroke and type 2 diabetes.

These trans fats also increase the oxidative stress in your body, meaning accelerated aging both on the inside and out. Eating lots of antioxidant rich foods helps to negate this, but cutting out, or drastically down on, trans fats altogether is the only long term solution to keeping belly fat off for good.

3. ADD IN HEALTHY FATS

We do most certainly need fats, but we need the healthy kind. Not just to keep our hearts healthy, but to actually help boost metabolism.

Healthy fats such as those found on the whole plant food diet include coconuts, avocados, nuts and seeds. These all help your body to excrete that unwanted stored fat, and more specifically that dangerous belly fat.

Whole foods are better

It’s always best to go for the ‘whole food’ fat, rather than the fractionated fats that have been removed from their original sources as in the case of olive, coconut and any other refined oils. The body can assimilate whole foods better as they are more natural. There is also less chance of over-consumption this way.

The omega 3 fatty acids found in nuts and seeds are especially vital for those in training (or doing lots of exercise) because they help with blood flow to the muscles. This in turn stimulates enzymes into transporting fat to where it is needed and ready to be used for energy, thus boosting the fat burning process.

4. DRINK APPLE CIDER VINEGAR, LEMON AND CINNAMON

apple cider vinegar

Apple cider vinegar is a great way to help suppress appetite throughout the day. This PubMed study shows that it can even cause you to eat between 200-275 calories LESS throughout the rest of your day due to its amazing effect on actually lowering blood sugar. That’s a potential free calorie burn!

These results were seen at a 30ml dose per day, preferably taken first thing in the morning before breakfast.

Adding Ceylon cinnamon (which is also known for its ability to reduce insulin quantities) will help to squash sugar cravings even more. And, the adding of lemon juice (which is a liver detoxifyer) will help to make it even more of a triple whammy fat burning drink.

How to make this fat blasting drink

Add 30ml of good quality apple cider vinegar with the mother (this is very important as the mother is the healthful bit), half a squeezed lemon, and a teaspoon of Ceylon cinnamon to 300ml of warm water. Drink in the morning on an empty stomach for best results.

You may wish to add some natural sweetener like agave or maple for sweetness.

5. CUT DOWN ALCOHOL

drinking alcohol

You may like a glass of red wine or a beer at the end of a long day to help you unwind, but alcohol is very high calorie and needs to be added towards your daily calorie intake if you don’t wish to gain weight. To make matters worse, it also scores zero on every nutritional front!

It’s easy to forget about including drinks into your daily calorie allowance (we’re talking about ALL drinks here, including soft drinks, juices, and hot drinks with added milk, cream and sugar). This is where a lot of hidden unaccounted for calories and fats may lie, and is something worth keeping your eye on.

Calories in popular alcoholic beverages

  • 1 small glass of wine – 150 calories
  • 1 pint of medium strength lager – 180 calories
  • 1 pint of medium strength cider – 210 calories
  • 1 pint of Guinness – 210 calories
  • Standard 25 ml shot of spirits – 106 calories + extra for mixer

As you can see, those couple of alcoholic drinks every day (which you quite rightly may like to indulge in after a hard day’s work) can cost you over the course of a week up to 2,900 calories alone. That’s 11, 600 calories a month! Astronomical when you think about it, and equates to about 6 days WHOLE DAYS  worth of calories per month (going by the average 2,000 calorie a day diet). That’s JUST IN ALCOHOL.

That’s some mind-blowing statistics right there, and a fascinating example of why alcohol really isn’t your friend if you’re trying to lose weight.

And, there’s even more bad news, most alcoholic beverages can actually decrease your belly fat burning abilities.

Still, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel because…

A glass of red wine can actually be healthy, believe it or not!

Having said how bad alcohol can be, it just so happens that a small glass of red wine does in fact contain a phenol known as resveratrol. This phenol has the ability to interfere with fat synthesis and can help stop the body from laying down fat stores.

Resveratrol is also a powerful antioxidant, and antioxidants are anti aging!

So, moral of the story – if you do crave an alcoholic drink to help you relax at the end of the day, then be sure to make it a glass of red… but just the one, mind.

6. WHITE AND GREEN TEA

cup of green tea

Both white and green tea are effective metabolism boosters that you should drink in abundance. Or, ideally a mix of both if you wish to keep your metabolism revved up as much as possible. Four cups a day (2 of each) is a good amount for maximum results. This alone could potentially help you to torch up to 100 calories extra a day.

It’s also worth noting that green and white tea may even help you to lose stomach fat specifically!

Green tea 

Green tea is made from the young leaf and contains a unique antioxidant called EGCG that is believed to be anti inflammatory and heart friendly among many other benefits. It also contains other catechins that can stoke your metabolism by up to 4% (which may not seem like much, but just think about how this will add up over time if you’re diligent about swapping your normal hot drinks for these healthier versions).

Green tea also contains NO calories. This means if you usually have a high calorie latte with sugar as your beverage of choice, then this would yet again be another huge calorie saving in one simple swap.

White tea

White tea seems to be just as much of a superstar as green, though it doesn’t contain the EGCG antioxidant. However, it does contain around 3 times MORE polyphenols than green, hence the reason you should alternate for best results.

There’s also another exciting piece of information about this tea. According to a study produced by ‘Nutrition and Metabolism‘, white tea can boost fat breakdown and even BLOCK the formation of fat cells.

Check out more metabolism boosting drinks here.

7. SLEEP

woman sleeping

Most of us don’t get enough of this basic and vital function, but did you know that lack of it can have a devastating effect on your weight? More so for that dangerous belly fat. If ever there was an excuse to get more sleep, then this is it.

It’s a fact that 7-9 hours sleep is so crucial to human beings that we can actually die from chronic lack of it in the long term. This is because not getting enough good quality kip also ups drastically your chances of obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and can also lead to a decline in cognitive function.

Tiredness triggers sugar cravings

Lack of sleep makes you’re more likely to crave sugar and junk foods due to major hormones being thrown out of whack. This means you are more likely to produce more of the hunger hormone ghrelin and less of the satiety hormone leptin – both of which will spell disaster for your diet.

To help negate the damage from sugar cravings, don’t head for high GI foods. Instead, go for a high protein, low carbohydrate snack when the urge strikes.

Worse still, when you’re tired you will be more prone to giving in to those cravings as tiredness also negatively affects willpower.

Those extra calories are less likely to be broken down when you’re knackered because your digestive system will get lazy and won’t digest foods as well as it should. All this leads to higher than normal blood sugar, which in turn encourages fat storage.

To make sure you don’t end up in this vicious cycle make sure you get your sleep, it’s as simple as that.

7. CARDIOVASCULAR EXERCISE

Cardiovascular exercise is basically any activity that gets your heart rate up, such as running, exercise bike, swimming, squash, power walking and HIIT. The list is endless when it comes to exercise, and you can easily find fun ways to do it with a little imagination.

Fitness doesn’t have to mean expensive gym memberships. There are a myriad of activities you can potentially partake in for next to nothing, both in the home and outdoors.

You will find some great examples in this post, Why Exercise is Vital. Check it out and find something that you will enjoy.

Remember, at least 3 x 1 hour sessions of calorie burning cardio per week will help fire up your metabolism and keep you in belly fat burning mode.

This YouTube video will give you some great ideas for an at home HIIT workout.

9. WEIGHT BEARING EXERCISE

Weight bearing exercise is very important when it comes to fat burning because it helps build muscle. Tis in itself a huge calorie burner, so keep muscle mass up as much as possible if you want to keep in shape.

Doing stomach toning exercises, such as sit ups and planks, will also strengthen and ‘pull in’ the muscles that lie below your belly fat, thus giving the illusion of a slimmer stomach.

Protein for fat burning

protein powder shake

If you’re exercising a lot, then you may wish to consider a clean protein supplement.

A high protein diet in general will help to keep your muscle mass high, whilst still losing fat. This is very important because you do not want to lose precious muscle mass whilst dieting (a thing that is very easy to do as your body prefers to burn lean muscle, instead of fat, for fuel when calorie intake goes too low).

Remember, you need high muscle mass to keep your metabolism stoked and burning calories.

Supplementing 30 grams of a good quality protein powder within half an hour of waking (no carbs at all with it) will boost your metabolism and help you to burn more calories throughout the day. Some professional sports nutritionists say that this figure could be up to 400 calories MORE a day, but we will leave you to find this out for yourself.

Hula hooping – a way to burn belly fat fast at home!

We couldn’t end this section about exercise without mentioning the fastest and most effective belly fat toner  that is hula hooping.

The caveat is, it must be a weighted hula hoop for maximum effectiveness. This exercise is seriously effective if you do it every day because it tones your abdominal muscles pretty fast.

You can hula hoop anywhere, even in front of the TV. And, you only need to do it about 20-30 minutes 5 x per week to see quick results.

The adult weighted hula hoop (specifically designed for the job) is a cheap investment, and is our number one recommendation for fat burning along with the other suggestions on this list. The more you do, the quicker you will see results.

10. TRACKING

If you want to keep your will power and determination up, then track your food intake and activities. You can do this really simply and easily with modern technology and the use of apps and fitness trackers. Or, go the old-fashioned way of hand written charts and journaling.

Whatever you choose, just be sure to do it. It will make all the difference to see some kind of reference to your progression. It will also create ACCOUNTABILITY, a proven and effective way to keep you going when the going gets tough.

For example: you can leave your food, exercise, body and weight goals on a chart pinned to the fridge for everybody in your household to keep an eye on. This way, if you feel like caving, you’ll have an incentive to keep going because you will have other people to answer to. In the nicest possible way of course!

CONCLUSION

Whatever tips you decide to follow from this list, be it all, or just a few of the suggestions, make sure to implement them daily.  You will be surprised how quickly the little things add up and just how fast your body responds and adapts to these changes.

Thanks for visiting us today!

As always, your support is much appreciated!

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17 thoughts on “How to Lose Belly Fat Quickly – Top 10 Effective Tips”

  1. This is excellent advice. I eliminated the processed food and extra sugar in my diet. I also eat lots of healthy veggies and good fats. I ended up losing over 50 pounds. This is wonderful advice.

    1. Hi Wendy, thanks so much for the compliment. That’s just fantastic that you list all that weight through veggies and healthy fats.
      I love to hear great testimonies like this as it reaffirms to me that I’m on the right track with the advice I am giving out.

      I especially love to hear about people who have lost weight in a healthy manner, and those who have changed their eating habits and mentality around food for life. This really is the only way for long term health.

  2. These are great tips Stefanie! May I add one of my own? Probiotic foods and yogurt, like greek yogurt or fermented foods like kimchi. They take some getting used to but they’ve provided a lot of relief to me, especially as a means of fighting bloat.

    1. Hi there, yes you’re right and funny enough I was actually going to amend this post and write a list of fat burning foods to it, and probitic foods was one of them! So thanks for reaffirming that I should do that to complete the post.

  3. This is an excellent article as always. I’ll refer to the lack of sleep. Recently I attended a seminar where we were told that in order to achieve more success we should sleep fewer hours because we will have more time to accomplish what we want. That didn’t resonate with me because I noticed that when I’m tired, I’m not so productive and I usually accomplish less in more hours. I also noticed when I’m tired that I start craving junk food and then that kind of food makes me even more tired. I didn’t know that has something to do with hormones, and I didn’t know that lack of sleep has such an impact on belly fat. Thanks for the info. I’ll make sure to get enough sleep regularly and now I have a proper reason for that. Cheers!

    1. Hi Blanka, how bizarre that you got told to sleep less in order to achieve more! Wow, im totally gobsmacked at that advice. I have a little story to tell about sleep. For years I suffered terrible insomnia that destroyed my life and my body, and caused all sorts of things to go haywire with my health. I was like a zombie most of the time through tiredness, and I achieved nothing. I was struggling to even hold down a job through sheer exhaustion. As you can imagine, things came to a head with my health, and even though I was always into healthy eating and exercise, it was a losing battle without sleep. I couldn’t carry on the way things were so I saught help.
      18 months on my life has transformed immeasurably. I now sleep as long as I please, and feel so great that I have been able to achieve fantastic things since then, such as put in the work needed to build this website.

      I can only give my best to the world when I am well rested, so my advice is to sleep as much as feels right. Your body only wants to sleep when it knows it needs rest, so it should be listened to.

      And as for lack of sleep causing belly fat, well it’s totally true. I’m finally starting to get the body I want through sleeping enough. No amount of gym and diet was doing this for me before.

  4. Hi Stefanie!

    What a great article. It’s obvious to me that a few simple tweaks in our lifestyle can make all the difference when it comes to weight management. I’ve been doing most of the things you advised for years and I seriously couldn’t feel better! Thanks for reinforcing the healthy lifestyle!

    Steve

    1. Hi Steven, thanks, and yes it is much easier than people think to be healthy and that’s what I try to reinforce in my posts.
      It’s great you are already doing a lit if these things and are feeling the benefits. I also try to do most things on the list too, and it makes all the difference in the world to how I feel.

  5. These are all great tricks. For me, the thing that works at losing belly fat is simply exercising with nasal breathing. It provides so many benefits.

    1. Hi Melinda, yes you’re right, exercising is definitely the best thing. And good for so many other health benefits too! I’m curious about nasal breathing and would love to know how it works? I do some kind of alternate nostril breathing already where you breath deeply whilst blocking one side of the nose, and then out slowly through the other side. This always wakes me up when I feel tired, and really relaxes me if I’m stressed.

      I think people underestimate the power of the breath and how important it is to breathe enough oxygen in. I think I will touch on this subject in future posts as it’s so important to health. Thanks for the reminder.

  6. Thanks Nadja, I am glad you have found it helpful. The more you can apply a healthy lifestyle to your life the better you will feel. Good luck, and feel free to message me with any questions and I will be happy to help.

  7. Hello,
    I enjoyed reading your post on how to lose belly fat quickly with you healthy and sensible tips, I also have experienced consuming more plant-based foods and less high-sugar grains has made managing my weight so much easier for me.

    I found this out out of no choice, I had to eliminate and go cold turkey from grains and dairy. I even experience digestive problems with gluten-free grains which forced me to go on a high plant-based diet.

    Great tips for anyone wishing to become healthier and lose some belly fat at the same time
    Jeff

    1. Hi Jeff, I’m sorry you have experienced troubles with your diet, but I guess in a way it was a good thing as it has forced you to find a different way to live and eat…and ultimately has led you to greater health.

      I too was somewhat ‘forced’ into this lifestyle after suffering from severe depression that totally destroyed my life. I had to find something that would help, and after much research I realised that I had to change my diet for good, and also cut down drastically on sugar and other refined carbs. Doing this, plus lots of physical exercise, literally blasted my depression away for good.

      The life changing effects that healthy eating and exercise had on me is what inspired me to create this website in the hope of helping others. I’m glad you enjoyed the post, and keep up your great diet!

  8. Great article Stefanie! You mentioned some very useful tips in this, even I have been tried a few of them and they really worked for me. Such informative articles really remain helpful for people looking for the ways “how to lose belly fat” I will share your post with my community of friends as well. Very well done.

    1. Hi Sarah, I’m glad you found the article informative. I think that it is always best to do more than one thing consistently if you want to keep the stomach fat off. If you do this then you should have room for treats and enjoying your food; it’s all about balance I have learnt over the years. And thanks, i would be really grateful if you were to share my post with your friends and spread the word.

    1. Yes, I believe everything in life is always about balance. Sometimes if you are too strict on yourself then it can cause you to give up entirely. It is far better to follow the 90/10 rule so you have a little room for the treats that you love; and if you are being good 90% of the time then that 10% of teats really isn’t going to hurt much.

      This is the rule I have followed for a long time and it works well, though I do understand that some folks are all or nothing types which probably makes life harder for them. And yes, isn’t it good to know you can have the odd glass of vino, and that it can even be healthy? Yay!

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