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All You Need To Know About Visceral Fat

Are you familiar with the term Visceral Fat? We’re sure you’ve heard about it. It’s all the unwanted belly fat that forms inside the abdomen. It is considered dangerous because it is the type of fat that surrounds the internal organs, like the liver and the intestines and is also known as ‘Active Fat’ because it influences how hormones function in the body.

Visceral Fat can pose a lot of problems. If you have more fat stored than you need, especially around visceral organs like the liver, heart, kidneys, pancreas and intestines, your body becomes inflamed. This kind of fat stores inflammatory white blood cells and this is why inflammatory belly fat is linked with cognitive decline, arthritis, diabetes and so on.

Fat-generated inflammatory cytokines are the main contributors to heart disease and other inflammatory disorders. When your body is inflamed, your liver becomes overwhelmed with cholesterol and toxins, which leads to plaque buildup in your arteries. Visceral fat is associated with an increased risk for cardiovascular disease markers like high triglycerides, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Furthermore, Visceral fat is thought to play a large role in insulin resistance, which means a heightened risk for developing diabetes.

Refer to the image below to know more:

Visceral Fat

Apart from Exercising, reducing stress and managing your diet well, beware of how you cook your meals as well. Boiling, steaming, baking, and grilling foods will help to make meals healthier and lower in fat. On the other hand, certain foods encourage belly fat. For instance, trans fats are found in meats and dairy as well as in deep-fried or processed foods. Avoid them along with sodas, candy, baked goods, and other foods sweetened with fructose.

We hope this article helps you! If you are keen on losing weight in a healthy, sustainable way, check out GOQii Transform for a personalized weight loss program. For more articles on weight loss, check out Healthy Reads.

To learn more about visceral fat and weight loss, speak to your GOQii Coach by subscribing for personalized health coaching here: https://goqiiapp.page.link/bsr

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More Common Reasons For Not Losing Belly Fat

more common mistakes for not losing belly fatIn my previous article, we looked at some common mistakes for not losing belly fat. In this part, we’re going to go over some more reasons which make it difficult for an individual to lose belly fat. As mentioned before, losing belly fat that has accumulated over the years is no easy feat and these habits make the journey even more difficult. Let’s look at them!

Reasons Why You’re Not Losing Belly Fat 

  1. Lack of sleep: Sleep deprivation or disturbed sleep not only adds on to physical and mental stress, but also affects your choice of food items i.e. you end up eating junk/carbs when you are unable to sleep at night. The ideal procedure of fat loss, growth and development actually takes place when you are in deep sleep. I think now you can relate why people with high stress levels tend to gain weight day by day even when their portions are controlled. Sleeping for 6-8 hours daily is very important.
  2. Starvation: In my practice as a dietician, I have come across a lot of people who starve themselves to lose weight, most importantly, belly fat. It is one of the worst things that you can do to your body. The first thing that your body does when it has access to food post a long gap is to store all the calories in the form of fat and spend the least for various functions of the body as well as for other activities. Small frequent meals and not keeping your body starved for long hours will really help improve metabolism.
  3. Consuming fruits at night or post meals: Most people think that eating fruits at night is healthy and light. But, the fact is that fruits are a rich source of carbohydrates and supply constant energy. We are neither that active at night nor is our metabolism good post sunset. Thus, all the unused calories get stored in the body in the form of fat. With regards to having fruits with/post meals, it increases the carbohydrate load of the meal and all the excess and unused carbs is converted into fat. It is better to consume fruits as a mid meal snack before sunset or a great option to start your day to boost your metabolism.
  4. Sweets/Dessert post meals: Sweets such as ice-cream, pudding, cake or chocolates are sugar laden. Eating them after a meal is quite a bad idea as it leads to more fat deposition. That doesn’t mean you should not enjoy sweets and desserts. You can enjoy them as a mid meal snack. If you manage to have it during the first half of the day, nothing like it. If you are a person who cannot do without sweets post meals, opt for a piece of more than 70% dark chocolate, a small piece of jaggery, chikki made of jaggery and nuts or squeezed rasgulla.
  5. Dehydration: Consuming less water/fluids or increased consumption of caffeinated drinks like tea, coffee, pepsi, coke, etc. leads to dehydration of cells. In the state of dehydration, the cells and organs cannot function at their optimal level and metabolism falls. This aids in less energy utilization for various functions of the body and the unused energy or calories get converted into fat, which are generally stored in the belly region. When you drink less water, all the toxins that are present within the body do not get flushed out of the system and affect some functions of the organs like the liver, kidney, heart and other muscles which further reduces metabolism and effective calorie consumption of the body. This increases the conversion of excess energy into fats. Consuming at least 2.5- 3L of water and choosing fluids like lemon water, vegetable juices, buttermilk, and coconut water over caffeinated drinks, will help you hydrate and rejuvenate your cells.

While you might be making these common mistakes without realizing that they’re harming you, you now have a better idea of what needs to be done! After making these small changes to your life, you can bring about a great difference within you and work towards your health goals.

We hope this article helps you on your journey to losing belly fat and maintaining healthy weight. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

For more articles on weight loss, check out Healthy Reads or get the right advice, tailored to your goals, from an expert, by subscribing for GOQii’s Personalised Health Coaching here: https://goqiiapp.page.link/bsr

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Best fat loss exercise for Indian women.

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In India, most women have only one fitness goal – WEIGHT LOSS

From my experience as a fitness coach, most young girls/women have similar goals – flat stomach or that thigh gap or those toned arms.

The biggest mistake women make in their fitness pursuit is that they are chasing “weight loss” when they really should be chasing “fat loss”.

Young girls and women have a very clear picture of their fitness targets. But, too many women are misinformed about the CORRECT way of achieving those targets.

KEY: CARDIO will not get you to your goals fast.

Losing WEIGHT by purely staving yourself and doing exhaustive cardio works, but neither is good for your overall well being, nor is it the most effective means of burning fat.

Let’s break it down. When you do any form of CARDIO exercise. Running, jogging, even some hipster cardio exercise like some form of dance or martial arts, you’re burning calories. You’re burning off the fat that is stored in your body and using it for energy.

So it is burning fat but, keep in mind that the fat burns only WHILE you’re doing that particular exercise. Once you go home, your body enters a period of rest and things are normal.

Now let’s consider what happens to your body during and after WEIGHT TRAINING.  So weight training is like any other EXERCISE. In order to go through with it you need to exert your body. You need to spend calories.

While you’ve undergone resistance training, while you’ve done squats or push ups or a bicep curl, your muscles are made to fight against that resistance. In doing so, your muscles undergo a number of minute tears.

After your exercise, when you go home, and you’re resting, these tears in your muscles are repaired by your body. In order to repair them, your body spends calories, and continues to burn fat even when you’re on your couch, watching TV and even when you’re asleep.

SIMPLE CARDIO – Burn calories only while you exercise.

RESISTANCE TRAINING – You’re burning calories while you exercise AND you’re burning calories even after the exercise, while you’re chilling out at home.

The added advantage of resistance training is the lean muscle you put on in the long term. The more muscle you put on, as a woman, the more fat you’ll burn.

The other big issue I’ve seen in Inida, is that many women are afraid to take up weight training because they think they’ll end up looking like a “bulked up bodybuilder”. They don’t wanna get “Bulky”. You need to know that these overly bulky women have taken a LOT of steroid injections to make their bodies turn into THAT.

Many of them have used testosterone, the male hormone. The testosterone is what makes those women bulky and it’s also what makes mens’ muscles bigger.

Rest assured you won’t become like that UNLESS you take testosterone injections. As a woman, your natural biological make up will make you look beautiful always, it will make you look “girly”, unless YOU mess around with it.

Priyanka chopra, Bipasha Basu, Alia Bhatt. All these women lift weights and have been lifting weights for a long time. They aren’t bulky by any means.

If you still aren’t convinced about this, I urge you to at least try it out for a couple of months. Go to a good gym, get a good trainer, see the results for yourself. As a woman, especially if you’re someone who has never tried resisitance training, you owe it to your body to give it a shot. You have only one body, its time to maximize its potential.

THIS IS THE FASTEST WAY TO BURN FAT.

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