With the right tummy-away diet, you can get rid of those pesky pounds. But physical well-being is not dependent on the kilos on the scales. A healthy lifestyle is much more important. Here we show you how to live healthily and exercise your belly.
How the Belly Way Diet works
Although many belly way diets make big promises like “lose 5 kilos in 10 days”, this is unrealistic and not a sustainable way to work on your body. Much better for your well-being is a change in diet that you can integrate into your life in the long term.
- This will help you lose weight consistently over a long period of time without starving yourself or missing out on important nutrients.
- You can use a calorie calculator to work out how many calories your body needs each day to maintain your current weight, based on your age, height and current weight.
- Then you should eat 200 to 300 calories less than you need each day, while still making sure you get all the important nutrients.
- Use a calorie counter app or keep a diary where you record your meals with calorie information and exercise each day.
- Do not eat an unbalanced amount of carbohydrates or fats in your meals. Try to cook your own food and include fresh ingredients.
- Get your day off to a good start with a nutritious, filling breakfast like a porridge with low-fat milk, oatmeal, fruit and nuts. For lunch, you can choose a light dish like a salad or a Buddha Bowl.
- Dinner can definitely have a little more in the way of carbohydrates. Try not to have your last big meal right before you go to bed. Your body will then have more time to process the food.
- Snacks can quickly add up to extra fat. Eaten on the side, the carbs, sugar and fat add up quickly.
- This is why it is a good idea to consciously plan your snacks on the previous day. This could be a protein bar, a tasty smoothie or a low-fat yoghurt with fruit and a little jam.
With exercise to a healthy body
Besides eating mindfully, exercise is essential for lasting weight loss and a toned tummy. Make exercise a real priority in your daily life. Only when sport becomes a habit for you will you be able to keep your figure.
- Set fixed times for sport. This can be before work or after, for example.
- It is also important to find the right sport. Jogging is great for losing weight. Just 20 to 30 minutes of running a day will help you lose a lot of calories.
- At best, find an exercise option that you enjoy so you don’t have to force yourself to exercise. If jogging or going to the gym is not for you, consider skateboarding, cycling, horseback riding or swimming, for example.
- For a toned abdomen, exercises that target the abdomen are a good choice. These include crunches, mountain climbers, leg raises, planks, high knees and the Russian twist. Pilates and yoga also train the muscles of your abdomen.
- If you exercise regularly, you will quickly feel better mentally too. You will have more energy and simply feel much more powerful in your mind and body.
Tips for more body well-being
Images of the perfect body flood social media, women’s magazines, advertising and television. Yet these images show anything but reality and are usually edited.
- Because every body is different and every metabolism is different. Some people are naturally slim and hardly gain any weight because of a fast metabolism. For others, unfortunately, every pizza turns into a roll of fat.
- So don’t compare yourself with others whose body conditions are completely different from yours.
- A healthy body is much more important for your personal well-being than a slim figure. Because you can be healthy, fit, beautiful and happy even with a little more kilos.
- Internalise that you are doing the diet change and exercise because you are doing it for your body and your mind and not because you want to have a figure like an Instagram model.
- Avoid diets. You will no longer enjoy eating, and even though you may lose weight very quickly, the risk that the kilos will come back very quickly is greater with diets.
- Then you should eat 200 to 300 calories less than you need each day, while still making sure you get all the important nutrients.
