How to Lose Stomach Fat: Eliminate 7 Hidden Pitfalls

People of all ages have a growing concern about their stomach and belly fat. They are fed up with it, and they want to learn how to lose stomach fat and to keep this unsightly and unhealthy fat off for good. If you’re concerned about your belly fat, you’re in good company.

The medical community is also alarmed at the amount of weight that’s showing up on our nation’s midsection. Recent medical research shows that a wider waistline is tied to a higher incidence of diabetes, cancer and a number of other serious health problems.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that nutritional research today provides us with better knowledge than ever before – to help us combat our growing waistlines. This article takes the best that nutritional research offers, and condenses it into what we call our 7 hidden pitfalls to avoid so you can reduce your belly fat.

7 Hidden Pitfalls to Avoid:

ELIMINATE or Minimize all of these items from your diet -

1. Processed foods including so-called ‘Health Foods’. Recent research has shown that not all calories are created equal. Most processed foods, including those that are labeled as healthy, include sugar, white flour, preservatives, coloring agents, corn products, and high fructose corn syrup. All of these ingredients – especially high fructose corn syrup – can add pounds to your waistline regardless of the calorie count. Avoid processed foods as much as possible!
2. Trans Fats: Trans fats are found in hydrogenated foods. Again, limit your exposure to processed foods, and you can avoid these trans fats! When you do eat processed foods, always read the labels, since new FDA rulings require trans fats to be itemized. These fats not only increase your risk for heart disease, but will also add to your waistline. Do your best to eliminate anything with trans fats on the label.
3. Limit Dairy: There’s a lot of research that points to dairy as an inflammatory agent, which causes the body to hold onto body fat. Some experts recommend eliminating dairy altogether and replacing it with rice, almond, hemp, soy and flax products. If you do eat dairy try and limit it to soft cheeses, yogurt and other easy-to-process forms. Concerned about vitamin D and calcium? Vitamin D is added to dairy products and can be replaced with a few minutes of sunlight every day, and the most usable forms of calcium are found in leafy greens. Cows and other animals don’t drink milk after the first year, and yet other animals don’t get osteoporosis because they consume plenty of calcium from plants.
4. Minimize Alcohol. While some experts say that up to a glass of wine each day can be good for you, too much alcohol can hurt you in two ways. First, it interferes with your sleep cycles, which decreases your ability to lose weight. Second and more importantly, part of the alcohol you consume is converted to fat, but the rest is converted into a substance called acetate. The acetate is then dumped into your blood stream. While you have acetate in your system, your body burns the acetate as a fuel source instead of burning fat. That can set your weight loss plans back by days every time you drink!
5. Sugar Substitutes and Diet Soda. Aspartame (Nutrasweet), Sucralose (Splenda), and any of the other sugar substitutes are a recipe for disaster. Most sugar substitutes have been shown to spike insulin just like sugar does. On top of that the chemical composition of sugar substitutes confuses the body, and the body responds by holding onto its’ fat reserves.
6. Sugar. It’s not necessary that you eliminate all sugar, but the recommended daily allowance is 6-10 teaspoons per day, whereas the average American consumes 34 teaspoons a day! Reduce sugary sweets to once or twice a week if you haven’t done so already.
7. Fat Burning Pills: The list of complications from taking these pills grows every day. Plus there isn’t any conclusive proof that any of them even work.

We recognize that avoiding all these 7 pitfalls completely would be difficult, so it’s comforting to know that if you avoid them 90% of the time, you can still lose 95% of the fat you would have lost if you avoided them 100% of the time!  Our intention was to take much of the mystery out of how to lose stomach fat, and if you follow a diet plan that eliminates most of these pitfalls, you can look forward to a slimmer waistline pretty quickly.