Body fat is a natural part of being human. It's essential to understand how to take care of yourself, recognizing which types of fat might pose health risks and which are just a normal part of your body. In this post, we’ll discuss a holistic approach to losing lower belly fat and why it’s important for your overall health.
These changes may help you lose lower belly fat. They represent a holistic and healthy approach to full-body health and overall wellness. While there's no way to tell your body to lose fat here and not there, by making a few lifestyle tweaks, you'll set yourself up for a trimmer waistline.
1. Optimize Your Macros
The truth is, restrictive diets often fail. Instead of resorting to extreme measures, focus on incorporating more proteins and healthy fats into your meals while being mindful of carbohydrate intake. Foods rich in protein, such as lean meats and collagen powder, can help build muscle, enhancing your metabolism.
Choose whole-food carbs, like sweet potatoes and quinoa, over refined options. Healthy fats, such as avocados, olive oil, and nuts, are great choices. Avoid trans fats and processed oils to support your journey. If you’re looking for a supplement to enhance fat loss, consider Cira’s Flare for a gentle boost.
2. Prioritize Sleep
Quality sleep is vital for health and wellness. Poor sleep can elevate cortisol levels, the stress hormone linked to increased belly fat. Establish a calming bedtime routine: dim the lights, disconnect from screens, and make your bedroom a cool, restful sanctuary. Even if you can’t achieve a full eight hours every night, prioritizing sleep hygiene can improve your rest quality.
High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is an effective way to burn calories long after your workout ends, thanks to the afterburn effect (EPOC). Combine cardio with strength training for maximum benefits. This approach will help you build muscle while burning fat. Looking for ideas? Check out our leg workouts at home or upper body workout routines to get started!
4. Engage Your Core During Workouts
Every workout can become an ab workout if you focus on your core. Strengthening your abdominal muscles is crucial for long-term health, posture, and injury prevention. Whether you’re doing cardio or strength training, maintain good posture and engage your core with each breath.
Here are some awesome ab-focused exercises that target the muscles under your belly button. Add these to a HIIT workout or tack them on in sets at the end after you get your heart rate up. We recommend doing 45-second timed intervals or three sets of 15 for these exercises.
Remember, targeted ab work is a lot less important than the other lifestyle factors on the list.
Read on to learn about a type of fat you might not know about and why lifestyle factors can help you on your way to health and wellness.
There are basically two kinds of fat you should know about: visceral fat and subcutaneous fat. Let's start with the one you know best, even if you're not familiar with the term: subcutaneous fat.
Subcutaneous fat cushions your body. It sits between your skin and your organs. It's a muffin top, inner thigh fat, and fat on arms and legs, and it makes a booty bounce. It might be gross to think about, but a good visual example of subcutaneous fat in the animal kingdom you've probably seen in person is a cut of prime rib at a fancy restaurant: That thick layer of fat that lines the outside of the lean muscle is the kind of fat we're talking about.
A few inches of this fat here and there are perfectly healthy, especially for women. In fact, women need more of it than men, biologically speaking.
On top of that, how much your body likes to store is much more about genetics than you've been led to believe. That's why one person who eats a low-carb diet and works out three times a day still has more body fat than their skinny best friend who doesn't do anything.
Visceral fat, however, may not be as visible. It lines your organs and grows beneath your muscle rather than on top. You might see this kind of fat in a hard beer belly. It's in fatty liver disease and the type of fat linked to heart disease. You might not see it at all if you're genetically thin with a crappy diet.
It's present in skinny people with insulin resistance or full-blown type 2 diabetes. So this kind of fat (the kind you can’t always see) is a cause for concern. This is also the kind of fat that relies on your diet. You can’t get rid of it through aerobic exercise alone.
What we're trying to say here is that whether you're skinny or fat on the outside isn't a good indicator of your health and wellness. You may want to trim your waistline for your own satisfaction, and that's great, but it's not quite the health indicator we once thought it was. Thin people can be fat on the inside (TOFI) and fat people can be just fine on the inside.
While getting rid of subcutaneous belly fat might be an aesthetic preference, don't let mainstream media tell you that all excess fat is bad and unhealthy. Make sense?
Life never stays the same. We get older, our sleep habits change, our hormone levels change, the time we have for physical activity may ebb and flow, and the same goes for our health goals and how hard we want to work to achieve them. In other words, a healthy lifestyle keeps evolving. And focusing on lifestyle changes rather than dieting is a useful way to reframe your approach.
Most science says that dieting doesn't work in the long run. But that doesn't mean that you can't improve your sense of wellbeing or your physique through healthy lifestyle changes like cutting your total carb count or tracking your food to help you get started.
Life is constantly changing, and so are our health and wellness goals. Focusing on lifestyle changes rather than quick-fix diets is a sustainable approach. Dieting often leads to temporary results, but embracing a holistic lifestyle can lead to lasting benefits.
You may not control where your body stores fat, but you can make choices that support your health and wellbeing. Regular exercise, healthy eating, and the right supplements—like magnesium bisglycinate for muscle recovery or electrolyte powders for hydration—are key.
There's no way to tell your body where you want it to burn fat (your genes might prefer fat storage in your belly or boobs when all you want is a bigger butt, for example). But accepting yourself and working hard for your health aren’t mutually exclusive. You can love who you are and still get your sweat on. Not only does exercise make you feel awesome by flooding your body with feel-good hormones (endorphins), it also helps you decompress, take a load off, and sleep better.
Get your heart rate up every day (and make it fun by inviting a friend to join you!). Keep your blood sugar in the normal range with healthy carbohydrates (rather than sugar and white flour-based snacks), and you'll be well on your way to looking great in your jeans, regardless of your genes.
Your ability to lose belly fat can change for the worse if you're under a lot of stress. Cortisol shoots up when you're stressed out — that's why it's known as the stress hormone. This hormone is not all bad. It has a role in the fight or flight response that can get you out of a dangerous situation. And cortisol levels naturally rise every morning to help you get out of bed.
But when you're constantly stressed, overworked, and pushing yourself too hard for too long, cortisol becomes a problem. Without going too far down the physiology rabbit hole, high cortisol levels are directly linked to increased belly fat, and we're talking about the bad kind — visceral fat.
So, it's not over the top to say that too much stress is bad for your health. And this includes working out too much or too hard, eating too few calories, not sleeping enough or well, as well as the things you'd normally associate with stress like work or relationships.
It doesn't help you lose weight or cut belly fat to burn your candle at both ends, so chill out and get enough sleep to be your best self.
At Cira, we celebrate all bodies and want to support you on your health journey. Remember, health looks different for everyone, and that’s okay. Focus on reducing harmful visceral fat through self-care, while enjoying the beauty of your unique body.
