What’s Stopping You From Losing Belly Fat?
If you’ve been eating right and exercising but not losing belly fat as you might expect, you
need to know how the hormone cortisol works against weight loss. Cortisol is a chemical that’s produced by your body under certain conditions and it can really throw a spanner in your weight loss program.
There are all types of hormones in your body and they are basically responsible for your internal processes.
One of the main reasons that you’ll want to reduce cortisol if your levels are too high is that too much of it can lead to increased belly fat. Losing belly fat is important for your health and well-being because, apart from it looking unsightly, it increases your risk of heart disease and diabetes.
So how do you reduce cortisol and what causes it in the first place?
What Causes Cortisol?
Cortisol is a hormone that is produced when you are stressed. It is very powerful hormone and even if you’re eating a proper diet and exercising, it may be impossible to get rid of belly fat while the hormone has hijacked your metabolism. It’s important to address this situation if you’re struggling with losing belly fat.
Cortisol is involved in the “fight or flight” response to stress. This is the response that allows you to react quickly to dangerous situations – you can run faster, your muscles become stronger, and your reflexes become quicker. This was fine in the primitive days, but today we don’t have to escape from wild animals or rival tribes.
The problem today is that high cortisol levels are often found in people who have a very stressful lifestyle. Unfortunately, the fast pace of modern life means that many people have too much stress and are producing too much of this hormone.
When you have too much cortisol, your efforts to losing belly fat becomes much more difficult – and can even become impossible. This hormone isn’t meant to be at high levels all the time and effects of elevated levels of cortisol can be quite negative.
Ways To Reduce Cortisol Levels
Stress reduction is one way to take back your weight loss efforts and reduce cortisol. You can work with managing your time better and actually reducing the amount of stress in your life. If that’s not possible, exercises like yoga and meditation can help to decrease the physical effects of stress.
There are also supplements to reduce cortisol levels in your body. These products can help your weight loss efforts to be more successful if your lifestyle is stressful and cortisol is working against your efforts to losing belly fat.
One final point. While this hormone gets a bad rap because of stalled weight loss, you actually need it. Cortisol helps your immune system work well, it helps you to maintain a steady blood sugar level, and it can help you to control blood pressure.
START LOSING BELLY FAT
While we all might wish for a quick fix, the facts prove that the only way to losing belly fat is to have control over our lifestyles combined with a smart exercise routine and a healthy nutrition plan.
Take a hard look at your diet and workout plan as well as your calorie-tracking system to ensure everything is on the right track. Take advantage of apps like My Food Diary. This highly-acclaimed food database contains over 100,000 foods to improve your diet and the exercise log can calculate calories burned for over 700 activities to help you achieve your weight loss goal.
