What is the best way to lose belly fat
What is the best way to lose belly fat?
This year millions of people will embark upon a diet and fail to lose weight. The usual response to this failure by the people marketing the diet is to blame the individual for the failure. This leaves the person feeling defeated and guilty because of their lack of “will-power”Blaming the individual also preserves the illusion that diets are an effective way to lose weight.
I think it is time to move the discussion beyond this “blaming” level and explore the real reasons diets fail. I will use an example to explain my position. When most people are presented with something like a chocolate (candy) bar it is not long before they feel a desire to eat a chocalate bar.
Most will simply blame the chocolate for causing the desire. They will then try to battle the craving with “will-power”. Usually they lose this battle and sooner or later give in and eat the chocolate bar. This “giving-in” often marks the end of the diet.
Why does it end?
Now lets look at why this “giving-in” occurred. We know that the cognitive process that caused the craving to eat the chocolate bar went something like this; sensory input was received through the appropriate receptors [mainly eyes in this case] and the mind formed some type of neural or sensory representation of the object that will be defined as a chocolate bar.
We can regard this process as inescapable. If the sensory receptors are in working order, the mind must form a representation or neural image of the object. When a neural image has been formed we have been taught to assign meanings, from memory, to these images as they occur in the mind.
The assignment of meaning is followed by an emotional response appropriate to the meaning assigned. In the case of the chocolate bar the meaning assigned included past memories of pleasant experiences assosciated with eating chocolate bars, hence the craving to eat this chocolate bar.
What is really happening?
So really it was not the presence of the object that will be defined as a chocolate bar that caused the craving, but the cognitive process outlined. Specifically it was the assignment of meaning that caused the craving. And because this assignment of meaning has become totally automatic in most people, the chocolate bar gets the blame for the craving when in fact it only had the power to cause the mind to form a meaningless image.
For most, the meaning and image have become “fused”, with the meaning now seen as an inherent part of the neural image itself rather than something assigned from within the mind. This of course gives the stimulus the power to be the cause of the response.
Just thinking about or reflecting upon a chocolate bar has the same effect. A neural image is formed from that reflection and when it has been formed the cognitive process of automatically assigning meaning to it is exactly the same as with images caused by the external stimulii.
We feel like a eating the chocolate bar. This all means of course that every time we are presented with a chocolate bar or some other desirable food, the mind automatically performs the cognitive process outlined and creates a desire to eat the delicacy.
Why do we give in?
The continual emotional responses build up and eventually wear us down. This is the reason we “give-in” and the diet goes out the window. My point is then, the only way to reduce our food intake and still feel comfortable is to modify this process of automatically assigning meaning to the images that come into our heads.
This way we can reduce the desire to eat unnecessarily and thereby modify our eating behaviour so that we lose weight and keep it off.
Conclusion
Diets do not supply these techniques and in actual fact they fail the individual not the other way round as their providers would have you believe. If changing our behaviour was easy as making a decision to go on a diet, most of us would have changed many things about ourselves long ago.
The truth is we need techniques that will help us to bring that change about or we are doomed to failure.
7 Comments
Anthony Hu
Thank you for your post. It is useful for me. I am getting older and working on my online business. My belly fat becomes bigger and bigger. I think about reducing my belly fat, but never take time to do the research.
Here comes your article, providing helpful advice on how to lose belly fat. I particularly like your description on Why do we give in. I agree with you that the continual emotional responses build up and eventually wear us down. It is important to reduce our desire to eat unnecessarily and modify our eating behavior to lost weight.
Diane
What a very “spot on” post regarding dieting. It’s true that most diets fail. In fact, I’m not sure it’s possible to diet our way to a perfect body. In my experience, it’s better to make better life changes and then be comfortable with those changes.
For example, when a friend of mine was having problems managing his diabetes, he went to a doctor who prescribed medications. His problem worsened. More medicines came. It wasn’t until he finally went to a program where they changed his viewpoint on dieting. He found success through changing his food choices and then changing the focus he had on food. For him, it worked. He lost the extra weight (and yes, most of belly fat) and was able to reduce his medications. It wasn’t a diet, per se, but more of a change in his eating habits.
And I think he still has a little chocolate each day!
Sonia
Interesting post. I don’t like diets. I find them to be too restrictive. Just the fact that I can not eat something let’s say chocolate because I am on a diet makes me want to eat chocolate even more!
Many years ago, I did lose a lot of weight, and the reason why I succeeded, I think, is because I didn’t feel like I was on a diet per se! I lost the weight by eating healthier foods, exercising daily, mainly walking in my neighborhood, and reducing the portion-size as well as eating slower. I ended up losing over 100 pounds, and I managed to keep it off to this day. So no more belly fat!
hillarydandy
Thanks for sharing this highly informative article. From my experience on loosing belle fat one needs to reduce overall body fat in order to look fit. I did cardio in the morning and weight training in the evening which also included cardio after the weight. I started 3 years back and now I have gone from 91KGS to 77KGS.
evansese
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edahnewton1
Hey nice article you have there, your thoughts are indeed invaluable. Loosing belly fats has been widely sought after in recent times. However, if one choose to burn out belly fat he/she must take note of their sugar intake because excessive consumption of sugar puts an extra load on your liver and it can lead to fat storage, and the first target is the tummy
Skuchmane
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