How i lost belly fat in 90 days

Fat is bad but belly fat is the worse.

For some, it’s the most troublesome part of the body and the jiggly fat on the stomach sticks on to you like a parasite. It does not want to go away. Even though you have tried the “ Best 5 exercises to lose belly fat“ , not an inch is lost from your waist.

You follow people with washboard abs and try to find the “secret”. The secret ingredient in their diet or a particular exercise that would do the magic on your belly fat too and melt it away.

Some might even convince that the result is from a special tea or a supplement, but don’t be fooled by them.

I know, It’s frustrating.

Not only for overweight people but also for skinny pe with prominent bellies. The reason it is easiest to gain fat on your stomach but most difficult to lose it is - belly fat is a visceral fat type.

It puts you on risk of diabetes type 2 or heart disease. Therefore, losing belly fat is advised not only to improve your looks but also to improve health and live longer.

But the reason no one is telling the real secret to lose belly fat is : There is no secret.

Articles like “Do these 3 exercises to lose belly fat” might convince you that there is a one-trick solution to lose belly fat, the actual science does not back it up. There is no research to back that drinking a particular tea or doing 100s of crunches every day will help you lose an inch off your waist. But science works.

Then what does science suggest to lose belly fat?

According to science, losing belly fat is similar to losing any kind of fat from your body. Your body needs to be in a state of a calories deficit to lose fat from body i.e

the total calories you intake from food should be lower than the total calories your body burns.

In such calories deficit state, the body uses your fat as a fuel to do any activity and hence, you lose fat.

Calories IN < Calories OUT

Mathematically, For every 3500 kcals deficit, you will lose 1 lbs weight. Though it is not exactly 1 lb fat loss in real life there is another important caveat of the equation i.e It does not say from which body part you will lose 1 lb.

Basically, the idea of losing fat from a particular body part or “spot reduction” is not possible. The mechanism of your body is quite complex to be understood and explain from where it will burn off the fat first. Mostly, it’s decided by your genetics.

Therefore, not only overweight people, even people with skinny-fat body need to be in a calories deficit and continue losing weight until they lose the belly fat.

~~Okay, but how to be in calories deficit?

So, to lose fat from your body or even belly fat, you need to either :

1. Reduce calories intake or Calories IN from food
2. Increase calories out by burning more calories
3. Both 1 and 2

Therefore to achieve a state of calories deficit, you need to follow a proper diet plan to take care of your calories intake or build a workout plan to burn more calories as stated in point 2 or do both.

Definitely, the most optimal path is to increase calories out and decrease calories in simultaneously, but for some cases focusing on either one of them should be a good starting point.

For example :

If you are just starting out, don’t overwhelm yourself by focusing on both. If you tend to binge, then focus on following a diet or if you have a sedentary lifestyle then increase your daily activity level by walking more or working out in the gym ( or even at home ).

In case of a lean person trying to reduce body fat % to single digits and already in a huge calories deficit, focus more on increasing activity level For someone already doing 1 hr cardio or working out in the gym, start focusing on decreasing calories intake with a planned diet.

Depending on your current lifestyle and weight, chose a path for yourself which you can stick with for a longer term and stay consistent; even if it’s not the optimal path. Losing belly fat is a long-term process and the only way you will stick with the plan is by building a habit

Now, let’s break down each path and see what steps can be taken to effectively be in a state of calories deficit and lose belly fat.

What should your diet look like?

If you believe in “Losing fat is 80% diet and 20 % workout”, you might not be wrong. It could be applied to the general population with exception to pretty lean individuals. Let me explain why it works with an example :

Consider a case where 75 kg person is trying to lose 0.5 kg per week by creating a weekly calories deficit of 3500 kcals. Hence, his daily calories deficit is 500 kcals which he can create either by reducing calories intake or by burning extra 500 kcals every day.

Practically, to burn 500 kcals he needs to more than 2 hours of weight training every day, which is not possible for everyone.

A more sustainable approach would be to cut 500 calories from your diet by switching sugar-loaded drinks with a zero coke or black coffee. Easy, right?

Therefore, especially for people who focus only on cardio to lose weight, my advice is to fix the diet first because it’s the easiest way to create a calories deficit. You can follow either or all of the below methods to decrease calories intake :

1. Reduce fats

Fats form a huge part of our diet and compared to protein and carbohydrates, fats are the most calorie dense macronutrient. 1 gm of fat = 9 calories. Moreover, consuming fats don’t make you feel full and you tend to binge eat it. Therefore, try to reduce the consumption of fast food or fried foods and include good quality fat sources in your diet, like - nuts, fish oil, egg yolk etc. This advice alone would work mostly for everyone to start seeing their weight. But some people might be better off by eating more (healthy) fats in their diet for example people with insulin sensitivity, PCOS or diabetes patient and they should rather follow the next point.

2. Reduce sugar

The reason sugar has been labeled “as addictive as cocaine” is because it’s highly palatable and you tend to binge eat it. Most of us crave for cakes, chocolates, ice-creams etc and seem to lose control over our mind and almost always binge eat it. While it’s fine to consume it occasionally but frequent consumption of it can ruin your progress. For example: consuming a single pastry might increase your calories intake by 500-600 calories and eating a whole medium pizza on a weekend can cancel out your weekly deficit. Therefore, to lose belly fat, keep a check on your sugar consumption and switch to low-calorie options like stevia, artificial sweetener. Fresh juice or packaged juices are generally seen as “healthy” but they are heavily loaded with sugar and miss out on the important fibers of fruits. Rather than drinking a glass of fresh juice, lower your calories intake by eating a fresh cut fruit which would also keep you satiated because of natural fibers

3. Fasting/keto/ paleo whatever based on your lifestyle

Keto or Intermittent fasting or any other fad diet is not superior to a balanced diet when total calories are matched. Fad diets are a way to create calories deficit by either eliminating/ reducing a macro ( ex - keto eliminates carbohydrates) or by restricting the time of consuming meals to a few hours ( ex - IF restricts to 8 hours of eating and 16 hours of fasting). Therefore, pick a diet only if it suits your lifestyle and you can stick with it for a longer term. If you are fine with skipping breakfast and having heavy lunch and dinner, you can follow the intermittent fasting program If you tend to binge on sugar, following low-carb in extreme case keto might help you to reduce belly fat.

Reducing belly fat is a marathon and if you cannot stick with your diet for more than 4 months, then don’t follow it.

4. Alcohol

Alcohol ain’t good for your diet plan, you know it. It’s just empty calories and the highest priority of your body is to eliminate it from your body. It does so by prioritizing and burning calories from consumed alcohol first rather than burning calories from fats. This leads to higher fat storage in the body if you are not in a calories deficit. Mathematically, 1 gm of alcohol = 7 kcals. When it comes to reducing belly fat, reducing consumption of alcohol might be the easiest way to create a calories deficit and start seeing the weight change.

5. Increase protein intake :

While reducing food intake is certainly your best bet to reduce belly fat and create calories deficit, but increasing protein intake could be a good strategy for most. Protein is an important macronutrient for our body and especially your muscles. When you diet to lose fat, you might even lose muscles but increasing protein intake will help to retain most of it. Increasing your protein intake to 1.6-2.2g / lbs of your body weight will keep muscle loss at the minimum ( if paired with proper workout plan) and at the same time keep you satiated while still staying in a calories deficit state.

6. Introducing diet break :

In case you have been dieting for a long period of time and your weight seems to have plateaued, then take a break from your diet. By eating more, you will be burning more. Not kidding. See, when you diet for a long period of time, your body adjusts to the available calories and reduce your metabolic rate. Your hormones, specifically leptin and ghrelin, fall below normal levels and tend to signal the body to burn fewer calories and hence your body goes against your dieting plan.

To bring back hormones to a normal level and increase your metabolic rate, you need to increase your calories. Basically, to keep losing weight, you need to take a break from your diet and consume 500-600 calories more. You could either do it for 1 week or maybe even a month, depending on your progress.

As a general rule - don’t stay for a too long period in a large calories deficit and take diet break after every 6-8 weeks of dieting. This would allow your hormonal levels to reset.

Following either or all the above-mentioned points will help you reduce calories intake and help you reduce some extra inches from your belly. Based on the points, I have created a sample diet plan which can work for you.

Now, let’s look at the other part of the equation i.e increasing the calories burnt by your body. Your body burns calories not only during exercise but for various different reasons. It’s important to understand how your body burns calories to optimize and increase your calories out.

In a brief, your body burns calories in four following ways :

#1 BMR or basal metabolic rate :

This is the major component, around 70 % of the calories burnt by your body. It’s the energy required to keep your body functioning when you are resting. But, it highly adapts to your calories intake and will go down during dieting.

#2 TEA or Calories burnt from Exercise :

It’s the energy you burn when working out, lifting weight or any other form of exercise, including cardio. But, it forms only 10 - 15 % of the total calories burnt in a day. Only 10 -15 %.

Yet people hop on the first treadmill they see without realizing that it makes up for only 10 -15 % of the total calories out.

#3 TEF or Calories burnt for digestion:

Feel warm post your meals? This is the energy your body burns to digest food. It’s quite a small component and does not change often. To see how small, for a person having total calories out = 2000 kcals, TEF will be only 200-250 kcals. You can ignore it mostly as it tends to stay the same.

#4. NEAT:

Calories burnt in an activity other than exercise such as fidgeting, lifting a pen, etc. It’s kind of a black box since you cannot measure it accurately but only measure the change. Most of us ignore it, but it could be a game changer during dieting and especially to burn the stubborn belly fat.

If you can increase either of these components or all, you can increase your calories burnt in a day. Hence, lose more fat. Hence, become sexy af.

While BMR and TEF generally depends on your diet and calories intake ( also on muscle mass, genetics etc), we will cover the other overlooked ways to burn more calories through activity i.e NEAT or TEA

Walk more to increase NEAT :

It might not look as hardcore as running like Bolt but walking is an effective way to increase your NEAT by a large amount. It is safe for knees and compared to running, you can do it for more than 30 minutes daily without getting exhausted. With the integrated mobile apps, now it’s quite easy to count your daily steps and make sure you stay active throughout the day. Setting a goal of 10k steps daily can be a starting point for many, especially 9-5 workers or others who have a sedentary lifestyle.

Resistance training to increase TEA :

Walking, swimming or any other form of cardio is good to increase the calories out and lose weight but they have the main drawback - you lose muscle too. Muscles are essential for strength to do daily life activities like lifting table, carrying groceries etc and also make your body look aesthetic ( or sexy af). Increasing muscle mass should be a priority if you want to look good and not just lose weight. Resistance training combined with cardio offers the most amount of fat loss as compared to only cardio training. Therefore, next time you hit a gym, don’t just run on the treadmill but also pick up weights to build more muscle.

The point here is to optimize the calories burnt by taking care of all the components to increase the deficit.

Therefore, if you are just starting out with your dieting and want to lose only belly fat, focusing on just 1 or 2 things will suffice to achieve your goals without getting overwhelmed.

But in case you have been training and dieting for quite a long time and trying to hit single digit body fat %, then you need to focus on all the components and use them together in an optimized way to burn the fat.