There are a number of different reasons why is it so hard to lose belly fat. Most of us have lived a life where we are not used to extreme physical exercise, and have a ready and abundant source of food. But this has not always been the case for mankind. Since the beginning of our history, up to very recently, starvation was a reality that many of us would have faced more than once in life.
So the body is designed to hold onto any energy it can get. This energy is stored as fat in the body, as a reserve for times when the food is scarce, and to prevent us from starving. The main problem is that this never happens (of course, this is a good thing).
So what we are actually trying to do when we diet is to recreate the effects of these periods of famine.
When we do diet, the reason why it’s so hard to actually lose weight is that the body will be fighting us al the way. It’s job is to hold on to the energy that is keeping it alive, and it has some tricky ways of doing this. The main tool it has is to reduce the metabolism (speed that it burns energy at.) It can even go so far as to burn muscle mass up to reduce the rate of energy consumption – after all, your lifestyle is telling your body it doesn’t need those muscles.
There are some diets that are designed to keep the metabolism high while reducing calories, and these are more effective because they allow you to get rid of the stored energy (fat). Some of them use stimulants, which are dangerous at the best of times, but can be very hazardous when the body is low on energy.
A natural alternative is a special diet called calorie switching. This diet takes a bit of explaining, and there isn’t enough space in this article to completely cover it, so I’ll keep it brief. Basically, it switches the types and amounts of food that you eat in each meal so that your body can’t adjust to a routine, and so it keeps burning energy at the normal rate (rather than slowing down) as you are eating a reduced amount of calories.
Some people find it hard to keep track of calorie switching – all the different meals they need to have at different times, shopping lists, and so on. So there is a website that takes care of all of this for you – it makes it much easier and more effective.
You can read more about this at the loose belly fat blog. Read it and you’ll see why it is so well named.