The 15 Best Exercises to Help You Lose Belly Fat
There's no such thing as "spot reduction", but these exercises can help you to hone a stronger, healthier body.
When guys want to get fit, they often take a narrow focus in their approach. They want to build big arms, a broad back, and tree trunk legs, rather than focusing on less immediate (and important) health goals. If they need to lose weight to get to their ideal physique, the first place they target is their gut, as they aim to achieve a flat belly, hopefully leading to a six-pack. The battle of the bulge is a common struggle, even if the rationale to drop poundage isn't always in the right place.
You might want to lose the spare tire for how you look and the way your clothes fit—but there should be more pushing you to drop weight than your reflection or your shirt size. Your overall health should be the first concern, and in that case, belly fat should be the first thing to go. The fat you carry in your stomach, called visceral fat, is different than the fat found elsewhere in the body (think arms and love handles), which is called subcutaneous fat. Visceral fat can be damaging to your health and has been linked to conditions like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.
While you'll need to take a balanced approach built around a healthy diet and other factors to lose weight to achieve a "flat belly" look, you can use exercise to help you along the way. There's no such thing as spot reduction, or specifically targeting one area of your body with specialized exercises to burn fat, but you can work to build up the muscles around your stomach to make them bigger and stronger. At the end of the day, you'll need to achieve a caloric deficit (burning more calories than you take in) to lose weight. These exercises can help you to do just that, torching calories on your way to a flatter stomach and healthier body.
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