for half an hour to eat a healthy diet. And then there's a bar of chocolate.
Psychological stress also leads to a restriction of the metabolism. Because the body knows above all two states: Stress and relaxation. Under stress, he's ready to fight and escape. An extensive digestion only disturbs there. Instead, your body thinks it makes sense to build up reserves now so that it can fight better later or flee without having to worry about food.
So mental stress has a big influence on your eating habits and your metabolism - and thus directly and indirectly on the fat that accumulates on your stomach. It is therefore absolutely sensible to get your stress well under control. With it you do something lasting for your health and so naturally also for your figure. Those who are more relaxed do not eat stress food so often and have a better metabolism. A lot of other things almost happen by themselves. A good opportunity to become active here is relaxation techniques such as autogenic training. They help you not to lose your head even in stressful times - and not to claim to live a healthy life.
Sports
Your body is equipped by nature to move quickly from one place to another, to carry and move things, and to defend your territory. Much of it we don't do today any more or only very rarely. Work often takes place on the computer, when we want to get somewhere, we take the car or public transport. And we fight at most still with words or on Facebook.
So your body is no longer as challenged as it was originally thought. The consequence is that you put on belly fat. Because you still have the same appetite that our ancestors had, but you burn much less. Not only because you are less active, but also because your muscles are less pronounced due to the lack of activity. And muscles burn the most calories.
Sport is the best way to balance this out. So one reason why you're putting on abdominal fat is that you don't move enough and you don't have enough muscles. Of course, the more you weigh, the harder sport becomes, and if you haven't done sport in a while, the prospect of it probably won't make you cheer.
Sport doesn't have to be as bad and exhausting as we all think. Because the great thing is that through exercise and sport also happiness hormones are released and he is also a great catalyst in stress. Sport also helps to burn fat, although the effect of sport itself is relatively small. You've had to walk a long time to burn a piece of pie. But it makes your body fitter overall and burns more energy with more muscles even when you're lying on the sofa doing nothing else.
If you have done too little sport so far, here is a way to get a better grip on your abdominal fat. In the third chapter, you'll learn how to use this opportunity without training for a marathon or registering for a gym.
Unhealthy eating habits
The most important factor that causes you to get abdominal fat is your eating habits. That's why this book also includes a whole chapter dedicated to healthy eating habits, because this is where you can make the most difference with changes.
It is especially important that you realize that these are habits, not that you eat something unhealthy every now and then. Abdominal fat only occurs when many factors (such as predisposition, too little sport, stress, poor metabolism and of course the wrong food) interact over a long period of time. A bar of chocolate doesn't get any belly fat. However, if you make it a habit over a long period of time to regularly eat the wrong and rarely the right foods, you are giving your body signals that it almost directly translates into abdominal fat.
Changing your eating habits is a special challenge, because in most cases it was not you who shaped them, but you who took them with you from childhood. You got a "consolation" in the form of a candy when you fell? Your family did not eat regularly, but everyone looked at what they were hungry for? Or dinner was the main meal? Then these things are deeply anchored in you and you live them - or variations of them - unconsciously on. Meanwhile you may give yourself the consolation if you are sad, you eat irregularly and in the evening you especially like to eat.
The fact that you have been given eating habits that may not necessarily help you today is because you have never known so much about healthy eating as you do today. That's your big advantage your parents haven't had yet. So it is now up to you to break this knot and make sure that you yourself adopt healthy eating habits and perhaps even pass them on. Because if you know which eating habits harm you, you can actively change them and consciously live and eat healthier. Remember, you're not the prisoner of your eating habits. Everything you recognize and understand, you can change as you wish.
Age
There is another point that leads you to put on belly fat and that you cannot influence yourself: Your old man. With increasing age, the fat on the stomach becomes more and more difficult (but not impossible!) to get rid of. There are two reasons for this.
The metabolism, about which you already know a lot, changes not only through your behaviour, but also quite naturally in the course of your life. In youth there are still many things that need to be developed on the body, you automatically move more and therefore consume significantly more energy. The metabolism is running at full speed. The older you get, the less energy you need as a basic need. Your body does not go through any major developments and your daily rhythm also becomes more routine and less active.
While young people are still "forced" to exercise by school, go dancing more often and wander through the city with friends, every year the evenings become calmer and take place more often at home. The fact that one has more money available with increasing age also leads to the fact that one rather goes out to eat instead of cooking something for oneself. And you like to treat yourself to something to eat. So the basic need decreases, the eating habits remain or even get worse. This naturally leads to abdominal fat.
Another reason for looking more rounded with age is the loss of connective tissue. Even if you do not weigh more than before, your body may look thicker, simply because the fat is no longer so well supported and is now more visible. As with all reasons for belly fat, you are not helplessly at the mercy of your age. You can't change the fact that you are getting older, but you can do something to tighten your connective tissue. And if you know that you burn less energy as you get older, you can do something about it - add less energy or burn more energy through exercise. You will learn how to do this in the following chapters.
Reduce belly fat: Healthy eating habits
Why your eating habits are so important
You have read in the last chapter that there are many reasons why you are always putting fat on your stomach. These reasons all play together, but they differ in two important points: On the one hand, to the extent to which you can influence them and, on the other hand, to the effect a change has on your character.
In both points the eating habits cut off best: The easiest way to change them is because you have plenty of opportunities to do so every day. You can start at any time (best now!) and it does not cost you any additional money.
At the same time, it is the easiest way to control your energy balance. One serving of fries has as many calories as you burn in an hour of aerobics. The arithmetic task is quite simple. What is simpler: to work hard for an hour or eat a piece of fruit or vegetables instead of French fries?
So you see: If you change your eating habits, you are already on the best way to the dream figure without belly fat. You can find out how simple the whole thing is in the following chapters.
Never leave the house without breakfast
You've probably heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It's not a truism, it's true and it can help you get rid of your belly fat permanently.
If you have a healthy breakfast in the morning, you are well prepared for the day. You're not immediately hungry when you come to school or the office and you don't think about eating when you have a little stress. Your body is perfectly equipped to survive the day. Besides, your body knows immediately: There is enough to eat today! And your metabolism adjusts accordingly. So a healthy breakfast is what gets him going.
In addition, with your breakfast you