Take on the 7 day quarantine belly fat challenge

HOW BEING IN QUARANTINE CAN BE INCREASING OUR BELLY FAT! AND HERE’S HOW TO LOSE IT!

It is not surprising as our routines have changed drastically overnight, being in quarantine can lead us to being more sedentary and comfort eating. The big knock on effect of this inevitably is weight gain. One of the biggest concerns is the weight we gain around our belly. It is important to have some fat on our body, and what is important to understand is there are two types of fat which are: Subcutaneous Fat – this is the fat stored just under the skin and this is generally all over around our abs, legs and arms. Then we have: Visceral Fat – this is often referred to as active fat and is stored within the abdominal cavity, near to our vital organs – this is what we want to reduce.

HOW TO REDUCE YOUR BELLY FAT

The first thing I would say is do not panic, because, as your online trainer, I can show you how to easily reduce this measurement at home and if anything, be excited as right now you and I are going to take control of your health.

To reduce belly fat, we need to focus on several aspects and obviously what we eat has a massive impact on belly fat, so aim to have a healthy well-balanced diet. Avoid over eating and you don’t need to be calorie obsessed but be calorie aware. On average for women to simply maintain weight they should be looking at 2000 calories a day, for men 2500. So if you are having more than this daily (and not exercising) this will clearly lead to gaining weight. Whereas if you stick to the recommend daily number of calories as above this will help you maintain weight. So, to then successfully lose that belly weight, you could look at reducing your calorie intake by taking in between 200 to 500 calories less a day, combined with doing my suggested home workouts. You will then successfully start reducing excess belly fat.

WHAT IS THE RIGHT EXERCISE TO DO TO HELP STRIP OFF BELLY FAT?

Well it is not the “plank” or “ab crunches”, they will not help in reducing fat at all. What you need to be doing is what I call MCM & MDM (multiple compound moves and multiple directional moves). This means you are engaging lots of muscles all over your body and not just major muscles, but also smaller muscles that help with stabilizing the body. This way your body is burning so many more calories. In addition, this is also helping to reduce the stress hormone known as cortisol which can be guilty of causing excess body fat.

SO, THE GOOD NEWS IS I HAVE CREATED YOU A FREE 7 DAY HOME “BEAT THE BELLY FAT CHALLENGE”

You simply do the 3 recommended 7 Minute Belly Fat Workouts – one in the morning, one at lunchtime and the final one later in the day. Do this for 7 days consecutively and if you stick with healthy eating and smaller portions. You will notice a reduction in your waistline when you recheck your measurements.

SO HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU ARE STORING VISCERAL FAT?

There are ways of testing this but they are expensive and time consuming, such as CT Scans, whilst we are currently in lockdown this is unobtainable – also do we really need to do this when we can tell so much from simply looking in the mirror at our tummies!

An easy way to measure this and see if you are likely to be carrying Visceral Fat is to measure around your waist:

Measure your waist in line with your belly button. Do this on bare skin,make sure you are not breathing in as you take the measurement and stand with good posture, use a flexible tape measure.

For women if your measurement is above 31.5 and for men if it is above 37 then we definitely want to look at reducing your belly fat.

Lucy Wyndham-Read