It can be difficult to get started on a weight loss journey, and it is understandable to want results quickly, especially if you are trying to get rid of belly fat. You should try to get this done right away by searching for “how to lose belly fat in two weeks” on Google.
Naturally, weight loss is and should be a personal choice, and you should never be under any kind of pressure to do so.
Okay, so how do you get rid of belly fat? You need to look beyond planks and crunches and take a holistic approach. Chris Gagliardi, a certified personal trainer with the American Council on Exercise (ACE), concurs. “It needs to be more about losing fat as a whole.” The best ways to get rid of belly fat permanently are listed below.
How to Get Rid of Belly Fat in Two Weeks
Weight reduction, particularly permanent weight loss, is often a time-consuming process, according to Jessica Cording, R.D., author of The Little Book of Game-Changers. However, there are several things you may do to expedite the process.
1. Recognize that your actions will change.
A huge part of losing weight is just being conscious of the choices you’re making. For example, if you’re out with pals for happy hour, you can lose track of how much you’re eating or drinking. However, if you take a single second to take a step back and become conscious of that truth, you will be able to adjust your path. “Awareness and then preparing for what else I might do that would provide me the same benefit as eating comfort foods,” Gagliardi adds.
2. Keep a calorie log.
The most fundamental technique to losing weight is to burn more calories than you ingest. For example, because 3,500 calories equal one pound of fat, a weight reduction app—or even simply a pen and paper—can help you determine how many calories to eliminate from your diet or burn at the gym to accomplish your objectives. “If you burn 500 extra calories every day seven days a week, you’ll burn 3,500 calories in a week and lose one pound,” adds Gagliardi.
The Body Weight Planner at the National Institutes of Health is an easy way to figure out what you need to reach your goal. You will be asked to enter information about your current weight and level of activity, as well as your weight loss objectives and desired time frame for achieving them, into this online tool. From there, it will estimate the number of calories you should eat every day. It won’t tell you exactly how to get rid of that belly fat, but it can still guide you in general.
You can take a more general approach if you don’t like to work with numbers every day. According to Gagliardi, “Knowing that typically, I eat a whole sandwich” is important to some people. I’m going to cut down on calories by eating half of a sandwich for lunch and saving the other half for dinner. Consider these 25 ways to cut 500 calories a day to get started.
3. Consume extra fiber.
Refined carbohydrate and sugar-rich foods do not actually satisfy your hunger, so you reach for more. Consume more foods that are fibrous, such as whole-grain breads, oats, fruits, vegetables, beans, legumes, and chia seeds. According to Lawrence Cheskin, M.D., associate professor of health, behavior, and society at Johns Hopkins University and chair of the department of nutrition and food studies at George Mason University, “they fill you up more” because fiber slows digestion.
According to a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2015, people who have trouble sticking to a strict diet can still lose weight by simply increasing their fiber intake. The most recent U.S. Dietary Guidelines recommend that women consume at least 25 grams of fiber per day (based on a diet consisting of 2,000 calories). Start with our diet plan high in fiber.
4. Take a walk every day.
According to Gagliardi, “walking is a pretty good entry point for people” if you don’t already exercise regularly. Obese women who participated in a walking program for 50 to 70 minutes three days per week for 12 weeks significantly reduced their visceral fat in comparison to a sedentary control group, according to a small study that was published in The Journal of Exercise Nutrition & Biochemistry.
According to Gagliardi, “Even if your starting point is a one-minute walk, if that’s more than what you’ve been doing, there are health benefits to that.” When trying to lose weight, one of the biggest mistakes people make is trying to do too much at once and becoming exhausted.
Gagliardi asserts, “Starting slow and working your way up is better than overdoing it and giving up.” A straightforward approach: Take a 10-minute walk after dinner as a commitment and gradually increase the duration as you become more accustomed to daily movement.
5. Start doing weight training.
If you want to lose belly fat, and especially if you want to keep it off for the long haul, it’s important to do full-body strength training. According to Dr. Cheskin, strength training ought to be a part of nearly everyone’s exercise regimen. This is due to the fact that strength training helps you build muscle, which will replace fat in your body. Additionally, because muscle is metabolically active, working out will continue to burn calories, resulting in a reduction in body fat. Bonus: According to Dr. Cheskin, if you struggle with this, you’ll have a little more leeway in your diet when your metabolic rate increases as a result of muscle growth.
According to Gagliardi, the best way to get started is to lift weights at least twice a week and build up from there. He elaborates, “You are building up to supporting your long-term goals,” as one way to think about it.
For instance, you might want to improve your ability to perform certain exercises, such as bench pressing or deadlifting, and work your way up to more sets of those exercises, or you might just want to make it easier for you to lift groceries.
6. Accept healthy fats.
You have to consume healthy fat if you want to lose weight.
Including monounsaturated and polyunsaturated healthy fats in your diet can help you feel fuller for longer. “Fat sources that I recommend boosting in the diet come from unsaturated fatty acids found in foods like olive oil, nuts, avocados, fatty fish, and eggs, as they can help increase satiety while providing a variety of health benefits when consumed in moderation,” states Yasi Ansari, M.S., R.D., C.S.S.D., national media spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. You can add chopped avocado to your salads, eat wild salmon twice a week, and have some peanut butter in your smoothie or post-workout snack to get more healthy fats. According to Ansari, you should just keep in mind that they still have a lot of calories, so enjoy them in moderation.
7. Eat a lot of protein.
Everyone raves about protein for a reason: It not only helps you stay full, but it also helps repair the tiny tears in your muscles from strength training. They get bigger and stronger as a result, and body fat is shed as a result. According to Dr. Cheskin, the ideal daily intake of protein should be at least 70 grams.
Before you exercise, this is especially important. We all make the mistake of working hard at the gym and then going straight to Chipotle because we are so hungry afterward. The outcome? You end up with excess belly fat because you consume more calories than you burn.
Dr. Cheskin advises eating a snack with at least 12 grams of protein prior to exercise to prevent hunger pangs. And if you still have a craving afterward? According to Dr. Cheskin, the first step is to check in with yourself and ensure that it is not dehydration but rather genuine hunger. Then, consume a protein-rich snack with some carbs, such as a protein bar made with whole grains.
8. You may now perform crunches.
Despite the fact that you can’t recognize diminish fat, you can target building fit muscle tissue, which thus assists ignite with fatting. “There are in a real sense many muscles between your shoulders and your hips that are engaged with each development you do,” says Chris DiVecchio, a NASM-ensured fitness coach and creator of The 5 x 2 Strategy: Uncovering the Force of Your Faculties. “The quickest method for making a lean midriff starts with picking the right moves.”
Expect to accomplish stomach muscle work three or four times each week on non-continuous days with something like 24 hours of in the middle between meetings, says Gagliardi. During those meetings, you can begin with less difficult moves like crunches, bike crunches, and boards. Despite the fact that you may just be straightforwardly focusing on your abs three or four times each week, you ought to in any case be actuating your center (also known as, fixing your stomach muscle muscles) in each exercise you do, says Gagliardi.
There are lots of various stomach muscle exercises you can do solidly in your home. When you’re agreeable in a stomach muscle schedule, move gradually up to more mind boggling stomach muscle works out, similar to side-to-side prescription ball pummels and weighted Russian turns, says DiVecchio.
9. Make an effort to reduce your tension.
Stress can play with all aspects of your body — yet the way that you manage it can represent the deciding moment your weight reduction objectives. “I consider most the impact of pressure is conduct as opposed to neurochemical,” says Dr. Cheskin. “It causes us to eat more, since we use food as a substitute for managing pressure.”
Truly, eating food to encourage yourself is normally a ton more straightforward than really dealing with the pressure directly. “Individuals incline toward something that doesn’t need any other person to make it happen, is promptly fulfilling, and doesn’t require a ton of exertion, particularly in the event that you’re simply opening up a bundle or box,” says Dr. Cheskin.
Stress-eating can prompt a certain something: developing your midsection instead of shaving it. In the event that you end up pressure eating, make a stride back and think: What’s causing my pressure, and what can be done? Figure out how to cure the arrangement or talk through it with a specialist as opposed to going to a pack of Doritos.
10. Make excellent sleep a priority.
Whether you sleep too little or too much, sleep has a big impact on your ability to lose weight. According to Dr. Cheskin, “excessive sleep is probably not good for your health in any way.” However, inadequate sleep is worse.
Just one example: A review and meta-analysis conducted in the United Kingdom in 2017 found that people who slept for less than 5.5 hours per night consumed 385 more calories the next day than those who slept for at least seven to twelve hours. In addition, they preferred to eat chips and other fatty, empty-calorie snacks.
If you only get a few hours of sleep each night, you’ll have more time for snacking and other unhealthy choices that could hurt your weight loss. According to Dr. Cheskin, the ideal amount of sleep is typically seven to eight hours, although this will vary from person to person depending on how effective you are and how far you want to get in your weight loss journey.
11. Consume less booze.
You only need to eat fewer calories to lose weight, but doing so can be difficult when you start to feel hungry. One effective strategy? To make room for the foods that help you reach your goals, cut back on the empty calories. All sugary drinks, like soda, are included in this, but alcohol is a big one.
Alcohol, according to Ansari, can prevent weight loss in a number of ways, including the fact that excessive alcohol consumption can encourage food intake. The liver can become overworked from excessive drinking. According to Ansari, the liver then stores the protein, carbs, and fat as fat in the body after prioritizing alcohol processing over other nutrients. Binge drinking is defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as having five or more drinks in two hours for men and four or more drinks in two hours for women. Additionally, sugar-rich beverages are frequently combined with alcoholic beverages. She explains that excessive alcohol consumption can result in rapid calorie expenditure.
In addition, studies have shown that drinking frequently, even in moderation, can lead to excessive pudge. According to a 2016 study, not only do the beverages themselves contain unnecessary calories, but once you start drinking too much, your inhibitions also drop. The outcome? You won’t be able to resist that slice of pizza at midnight. Therefore, women should limit themselves to one drink per day and men should limit themselves to two drinks. Choose one of these alcohol drinks with the fewest calories.)
12. Stay away from sugary meals.
Sugar consumption has been linked to an increase in belly fat, according to research. “Added sugar is a significant source of additional calories,” adds Cording. “If you don’t replace it with other sources of calories, it can contribute to a healthy calorie deficit, which can help you lose weight.”
According to Cording, eating too much sugar can produce blood glucose rises and crashes. And having those crashes might make you feel fatigued and hungry, increasing your chances of overeating.