6 Simple Strategies for a Flatter Belly

6 highly effective but simple strategies for a flatter belly – and how to implement them immediately.

I always ask my clients, “are there an areas that you’d really like to focus on in particular?”. The answers vary but one seems to come up more often than others: I want a flatter belly.

Heard.

The fact is, a flatter belly isn’t just about aesthetics. Belly fat is actually a greater health risk than fat elsewhere, say around your hips or thighs. Excess belly fat surrounds your organs. It increases your risk for health problems like diabetes, insulin resistance, liver problems, and it even impacts longevity.

So while there are valid aesthetic reasons to want to get rid of fat around that area, it’s important for your health and quality of life too.

6 Simple Strategies for a Flatter Belly and Healthier Body

The most effective and efficient way to lose belly fat is to approach the problem from all angles. It’s not just about caloric intake and output. These strategies include focuses in sleep and stress, when and what you eat, as well as when and how you workout.

First though, I’d like to dispel a couple of fat loss myths:

• You cannot spot reduce fat.
• You CAN target specific areas to build muscle.
• You cannot out-workout a poor diet.
• You CAN lose fat without following a starvation diet.

Now that all that’s out of the way…

Strategy #1: Lift Heavier Weights

Despite the ever popular love of cardio for fat loss, strength training is the MVP of fat loss workouts. Whether you are 50 pounds overweight or you want just want to lose 10-15 pounds to feel top notch, strength training is a must. Here’s why.

First, strength training builds lean muscle mass. Lean muscle mass is metabolically active – meaning it takes more calories to maintain muscle than it does to maintain fat. At the end of the day, that means that you resting metabolic rate increases which means… that your metabolism increases.

Second, the lean muscle mass I mentioned above is not just a way to lean out. It’s the only way to lean out and create a body that looks healthy and toned. Think about it. You could drastically reduce caloric intake and start doing hours of cardio every day. You would lose weight. BUT…you wouldn’t be building any muscle. Muscle is what shapes healthy, toned looking bodies. Muscle is what keeps your body revving on high even after you come off of the overly restrictive diet.

Third, strength training has a greater post-workout oxygen consumption (EPOC) than other workouts. Meaning it takes a lot of effort for your body to recover post strength training. That recovery uses up more oxygen and ultimately more calories – boosting your metabolism for hours if not days!

>> Strength Training Basics (getting started with body weight, free weights or a full gym set up)

Get Started Today

If you’re new to strength training I highly recommend consulting with a personal training or fitness coach (like me!) to make sure that you are jumping into lifting weights safely and with a well-designed plan. If you’ve been strength training for at least a few months, it might be time to push your limits a little bit.

If you feel like you’ve become comfortable with the workouts and weights you’re currently lifting, it might be time to pick up the next set up. Remember, you can always do a single set, or even just a few reps, at a heavier weight to test it out, and then drop back down to a lighter weight.

P.S. I know this is a lot of information coming at you all at once. If you’re feeling excited (but maybe a little overwhelmed, too), schedule a FREE fitness consultation or send me a message and we’ll connect about what this all means for you and your goals.

Strategy #2: Try High Intensity Interval Training

HIIT combines high intensity movement in short bursts with relatively short rest periods. The idea behind HIIT is that you push your body’s limits without giving it enough time to fully recover – so you tap into energy stores that you might not normally tap into and, your body has to recover those energy stores later. Like heavy weight training, high intensity interval training (HIIT from here on out in this article), has an post-workout energy consumption impact on the body.

While lower intensity, steady state cardio is a great workout and has major health benefits for your body, if losing belly fat is your goal, high intensity interval training is your game. Why? Because HIIT doesn’t tap into your muscle mass for energy like long bouts of steady state cardio do (there’s no time for that during a rapid-fire HIIT session). Which means that you’re not sacrificing hard-earned muscle mass but you’re still reaping the caloric-burn benefits.

You’re not sacrificing hard-earned muscle mass but you’re still reaping the caloric-burn benefits.

Julia Hale Fitness

Plus, HIIT workouts tend to be shorter simply because at that intensity, you can’t do them effectively for long periods of time. You just can’t produce that kind of energy and intensity. So you have more time left for strength training!

Get Started Today

I have a ton of workout-with-me style exercise videos on my YouTube page. Since I teach class virtually, I always use minimum equipment so that anybody working out with me from home can easily follow along and get in a fantastic workout. Which means, we’re doing a lot of HIIT!

Check it out!

Strategy #3: Prioritize Sleep

Here’s a strategy we can all appreciate (and probably use more of): sleep. There are a few reasons that sleep is so important to your weight loss efforts. Some are obvious, some not so much.

First up: when you’re short on sleep you’re short on energy and you’re going to reach for it elsewhere. Typically that means either a larger than life latter or a larger than life meal with quick-digesting carbs and fats to perk you up and give you a jolt of energy. A study done at the University of Chicago found that people who lacked sleep took in 220 calories extra, on average, during the day.

On top of that, a lack of sleep means a lack of energy. Who has the will to workout when they’re exhausted? A Harvard study showed that people who don’t get enough sleep were heavier – about five and a half pounds heavier plus more likely to be obese – than people who get 7+ hours of sleep a night.

To wrap it up, a lack of sleep changes the way your body reacts to and stores calories. Too little sleep triggers your body to produce a hit of cortisol – a stress hormone who’s side affects include conserving fuel rather than using it. In real life terms – your body is going to hang on to fat rather than burn it as energy. Lack of sleep affects insulin sensitivity too. Insulin is needed to change certain nutrients into energy. When insulin sensitivity isn’t working at it’s peak, your body has trouble processing fat and ends up storing it.

Get More Sleep Today

If you’re currently sleeping 4-5 hours a night, jumping to 7-8 hours might not be doable immediately. Take small steps:

• Go to bed just 15 minutes earlier.
• Shut off electronics (Anything with blue light) 2 hours before bed time.
• Turn down the thermostat.
• Start a nightly ritual that calms you down and let’s your brain know “time to get ready to sleep”. For example: take a bath, read a book, drink chamomile tea, practice meditation.

Strategy #4: Practice Hunger Check Ins

Hunger check-ins are small pauses throughout your day that you take to, well, check in with yourself. Every 3-4 hours just take a minute to evaluate. Am I hungry? When was the last time I ate? Is that hunger or is that boredom? Do I have food planned/prepared for my next meal so that I’m not scrambling?

The point of a hunger check in is not necessarily to eat every time you check in, although you can if you need to. The point is to build awareness.

Awareness is the key to healthier eating. Awareness helps you:

• Recognize hunger and fullness cues. We’ve learn to ignore these built-in cues in favor of culturally recognized “normal times to eat”. It doesn’t help that junk food is available 24/7. Learn to recognize what hunger feels like, and what fullness feels like, and you will be able to eat in response to hunger – not just the presence of food.
  
• Stop eating before you feel stuffed. Hunger check ins can be done throughout the day but also throughout a meal. The goal is to eat before you are starving, and to stop eating before you are overly stuffed.

Hunger check ins also help you spread your meals out throughout the day and eat when you need it the most.

Get Started Today

You can get started with this immediately by setting an alarm to go off every 3-4 hours. When the alarm goes off pause. Rate your hunger level on a scale of 1-10. Try to eat before you reach an 8 on the hunger scale, and stop eating when your reach a 2-3.

Strategy #5: Eat More Protein

To get a flatter belly you need to lose fat. In order to lose fat you need to eat in a caloric deficit. Eating in a caloric deficit means that you’re eating under the amount of calories your body needs to maintain.

When you are eating less food you need to make sure that the food that you do eat not only fills you up, but gives you body the nutrients it needs despite the lower energy intake. That means your choices, and the quality of those choices, matter.

Protein is particularly important because it preserves muscle mass which you already know, is key for losing belly fat and improving overall health. Plus, your body can’t store protein the way it stores carbohydrates and fats. It’s important to space out protein consumption throughout the day, eating it at breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack time too.

Bonus points for protein: the TEF (thermic effect of food) is higher for protein than any other macronutrient. That means that gram for gram, it takes more energy to digest protein than it does other foods.

Get Started Today

Try to eat 1 serving of protein at every meal opportunity. A single serving is roughly the size and thickness of you palm.

>> Use my Power Eating Grocery List to expand your protein horizons!

Strategy #6: Increase NEAT

NEAT stand for non-exercise activity thermogensis. What it means is that there is a caloric expenditure for all of the movement you make, all of the activity you do, outside of your 60 minute workout. And it can really add up, if you pay attention.

Let’s say that you workout 4 times a week for 60 minutes. That’s awesome! Don’t stop doing that. But think about that amount of time in the grand scheme of things. 4 hours is less than 1% of your week. That leaves a lot of “other” time that is not you purposefully putting in effort to improve your body composition.

There are plenty of ways to increase NEAT no matter what kind of job you do or what kind of spare time you have.

• take the stairs instead of the elevator
• stand at your desk instead of sitting in a chair
• park further away at work/the grocery store/the mall (does anyone go to the mall anymore?)
• get up from your desk every hour and take a 5 minute walk
• clean your house for 20 minutes
• do yard work or gardening for 1 hour
• have a 15 minute dance off to relieve stress and energy
• walk the dog
• fidget!

Will cleaning your house for 10 minutes break the caloric bank? No. But it adds up.

Think about it this way: if a 150 pounds person spends 30 minutes each day on each of these activities:

Walking (107 calories)
Gardening (162 calories)
Cooking (70 calories)
Playing with the kids (141 calories)

…they’d expend 480 calories they wouldn’t have expended had they just sat on their butts! That’s 3,360 calories of the course of a week!

Get Started Today

This is an easy one to get started. Scroll back up to the short list above and circle 3 activities that sound doable, even enjoyable, to you. Write them into your planner. Check them off as you go.

Want more tips and strategies? Check these quick-reads out!