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Skin Care Tips

Skin Care

How to Get Rid of Excess Belly Fat

Do you have excess belly fat that you'd just love to get rid of? While there are no easy solutions, the good news is that you can take steps to reduce it significantly or eliminate it completely.

1. Lose total body fat

Most excess belly fat is called "subcutaneous fat," which means that it's under your skin but over your muscles. The only way to reduce this type of fat is to burn more calories than you consume. If you can combine a routine of reducing the calories you eat while increasing the calories you burn through physical activity, over time you will experience a reduction in your overall subcutaneous fat. Reducing your total body fat is the only way to lose that fat in "problem areas"-there's no such thing as spot-reduction when it comes to subcutaneous fat.

2. Exercise aerobically

Another type of fat lies underneath the abdominal muscles and over your organs-it's called visceral fat. Unlike subcutaneous fat, this type doesn't jiggle and can't be pinched. Seen more frequently in men, visceral belly fat is associated with metabolic syndrome, acting as a major indicator for heart disease or diabetes.

Scientific studies seem to be split with regards to reducing your visceral fat. Older studies indicated that vigorous aerobic exercise, alone or combined with dieting, helped to reduce visceral fat, but that dieting alone was not sufficient. However, a new study found that simple fat loss, through diet, exercise, or a combination of both, will reduce the excess belly fat equally.

3. Consider surgical alternatives as a last resort

If you've lost weight through a routine of low-calorie dieting and exercise and still have some excess belly fat left that just won't go away, you may want to consider surgery. Liposuction or a tummy tuck, depending on whether you have loose skin over your belly, are viable alternatives that should only be considered as an extreme last resort.