The Best Way To Get Rid of Abdominal Fat in Your 40’s

You may have noticed that since your 30’s, your body doesn’t bounce back as easily.  Whether that is because you don’t exercise, you indulge in too much food, or you’ve had babies, you see the changes to your abdominal area and you are not happy.

1. The subcutaneous fat that is found just under the skin.
2. The fat within the skeletal muscle.
3. The visceral fat (AKA belly fat, beer belly or intra-abdominal fat) which is the fat packed between your abdominal organs.

Belly fat is among the most dangerous fat because it increases the risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and premature death.  The drop in estrogen levels and the rise of cortisol (the stress hormone) results in a build-up of belly fat.  In fact, stress from calorie restriction and over-exercising can raise that cortisol level even more.  And you were wondering why it is much harder to lose that belly.

So how do you lose belly fat in your forties?  Spoiler alert:  it is not from calorie restriction or over-exercising.

Losing belly fat involves lifestyle changes that you can sustain going forward.  There are 2 elements to gain these lasting effects.  A whole food diet, and quick effective workouts.  If you think that you should calorie restrict, then you would have to be able to sustain that restriction going forward.

A whole food diet is the very first thing that will help you target that belly fat.  A whole food diet is made of any foods that come from the ground or has a mother.  That takes away processed and refined foods, trans fats, sweeteners, preservatives, and other food additives.  If you eat a whole food diet, you can gain all your nutrients from food.  Have you ever heard that food is medicine?

The Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology (CSEP) recommends 150 minutes of exercise a week.  And that can be broken down into 30 minutes, five times a week.  Here are the guidelines based on age.

Whatever your activity level, do a proper warm-up and start with low impact exercises that focus on strength.  Once that has been established, then try HIIT or high intensity interval training a couple days a week.  The missing piece is to take at least one active recovery day or a rest day.  This helps your body to recover for further energy, repair, and performance.

What if you are already making healthy food choices and exercising regularly? Then there are 3 more higher level elements to losing belly fat: intermittent fasting, eating enough, and variability.

Intermittent Fasting is a schedule of eating rather than a restriction of food itself.  You can learn more about it here:  Blog: Intermittent Fasting to Burn Fat

I have repeated a couple times now that you need to eat enough food to lose belly fat.  You can calculate how much food you need from a calorie counter calculator, and it will be based on your weight, height, age, gender, and your activity level.  What is more important than the calories, is the proportion of macronutrients: carbs, protein, and fat.  These macros are needed in the right ratio to effectively fuel the body, to maintain or make more lean tissue, and to effectively burn fat.  You can read about it here Blog: How much protein, carbs, and fat should you eat?

Our bodies adapt to different conditions, but in the case of fat burning, the adaptability is undesirable.  That’s when this last upper level strategy can help you to burn more fat.  In the FASTer Way program, we intentionally change our carb intake on certain days, and this is called Carb Cycling.  This causes our bodies to continually guess our fuel sources, and instead of conserving energy (a survival strategy), we will burn resistant belly fat.

You just have to make the decision to start, and I can help you with the rest.  The FASTer Way to Fat Loss starts with a 6 Week New Client Experience, and rolls into a VIP membership that has a huge community of people just like you.  As a Certified Coach, I will walk you through this learning process.  Week 1 is a prep week, so you don’t need any preparation.  If you can read my daily tips, log your macros in a food journal, and have time for 30 minute workouts, then you will say good bye to belly fat for good.  You deserve it!

I am happy to answer any questions you have about my program.

Be healthy,

Natalie