Belly Fat is Dangerous to Your Health

What is the worst thing about belly fat?
    It’s ugly
    Makes your clothes fit badly
    Lowers self-esteem

How about, 'It will Kill you'!

All excess body fat is bad for your health but stomach fat, which comes in two kinds, indicates that you are at greater risk for developing . . .

Cancer
Diabetes
Heart disease
Stroke

And other degenerative conditions like high-blood pressure and even sleep apnea.

There are two types of belly fat . . .

Subcutaneous fat
Visceral fat

The first is just under the skin and rests on top of the abdominal muscles. The visceral fat is more dangerous because it develops inside the abdominal cavity.

Visceral fat surrounds your internal organs, causing the stomach to protrude in the classic beer-belly look. This type of stomach fat releases inflammatory chemicals directly into your bloodstream on a daily basis.

Here is an eye-opening fact gleaned from “Circulation”, the journal from the American Heart Association;

A ten centimeter (4 inch) increase in waist size will increase the risk of heart disease by 19% for women and a deadly 30% for men.

How to Lose Belly Fat

Sorry to say, but there is no way to lose belly fat fast. You can only reduce belly fat by eating a healthy diet and following any of the many types exercise workouts.

Diet and Exercise

Eating foods that burn fat is only part of what it takes to lose belly fat. One study, of thousands of people, divided the participants into two groups. The first group ate a healthy diet and the second group followed the same diet while exercising on a regular basis.

The diet and exercise group lost more belly fat. Lots more!

That is why the Mediterranean diet is the most effective way to lose your fat belly. The food pyramid for this type of lifestyle shows the essentials for proper nutrition and the base of the pyramid is ‘Exercise’.

The chief of preventive medicine at Harvard’s Women’s Hospital, Dr. JoAnn Manson, relates the results of an analysis of 200 studies done world-wide. These studies involved literally millions of people and the results were broken down into three simple categories; good, bad and questionable foods.

When all the foods in the ‘good’ category were compiled it made up the exact same list of foods in the Mediterranean diet, lots of;

Fresh veggies and fruit
Fish
Nuts
Olive oil
Whole grains
Wine

While the list of bad foods read like a menu from a fast food restaurant:

High fat dairy
Processed foods
Red meat
White bread

With lots of added sugars and salt added to these highly processed foods like you find in most Western diets.

There is such a wide variety of delicious foods, that will help you lose belly fat, in the Mediterranean diet, that it is easy to adhere to over a lifetime while enjoying flavorful meals that help you live longer.