Why are middle-aged individuals prone to belly fat?
As age advances, human metabolism gradually slows down. During middle age, the body’s rate of energy expenditure is not as swift and efficient as it was in youth, leading to a higher likelihood of consumed calories being converted into fat and accumulating in the abdominal area.
It’s important to note that after the age of 30, muscle mass decreases at a rate of 5%-8% every 10 years, with the rate accelerating as one gets older. The caloric expenditure of muscle is several times higher than that of an equivalent amount of fat. The loss of muscle mass implies a decline in basal metabolic rate, making it easier for fat to accumulate.
Moreover, middle-aged individuals often lack exercise and engage in prolonged periods of sedentary office work, which prevents the abdominal muscles from getting effective exercise, causing them to become flabby and allowing abdominal fat to accumulate more easily.
Middle-aged individuals may also consume more high-calorie, high-fat, and high-sugar foods during social gatherings. The body’s metabolic capacity for these unhealthy diets declines, increasing the risk of abdominal obesity.
How to reduce abdominal fat?
Firstly, in terms of diet, it is crucial for those accustomed to excessive nutrition through rich meals to adjust their diet. If you can refrain from attending 2-3 dinner parties per week, avoid overeating and drinking, and quit various milk teas and late-night snacks, you can reduce calorie intake by 2000 kcal per week.
If you can change your usual high-oil and high-salt cooking methods such as braising, sweet and sour, and stir-frying to low-oil and low-salt methods like steaming and light frying, and increase your vegetable intake (more than half of each meal), while controlling the intake of staple foods and other high-calorie foods, you can reduce your daily calorie intake by at least 300-500 kcal, which amounts to 2100-3500 kcal per week.
By persisting for 4-8 weeks, your abdominal fat will start to break down, visceral fat will gradually decrease, waist and belly flab will become looser, and your waist circumference will slowly shrink.
Secondly, in terms of exercise, physical training can increase active metabolism, enhance blood circulation, and improve your cardiorespiratory function, helping you burn excess body fat. Studies have found that when you engage in exercise for more than 30 minutes at a time, the involvement of fat increases to over 50%, greatly improving fat-burning efficiency. Therefore, maintaining exercise duration is also very important for reducing abdominal fat.
Three best exercises to reduce abdominal fat are recommended:
The first exercise, jogging, is suitable for people without a fitness foundation and with a larger body weight. As long as you start running, you can increase calorie expenditure and help reduce fat accumulation.
For those who have poor endurance when starting to run, you can begin with a combination of jogging and brisk walking. Initially, it might be 20 minutes, gradually increasing to 30 minutes and 40 minutes, progressively enhancing exercise duration.
The second exercise, strength training, has been shown to increase muscle mass, strengthen basal metabolic rate, and inhibit fat accumulation, effectively eliminating abdominal fat.
There are various ways to perform strength training. We should start with compound movements, choosing exercises such as squats, push-ups, overhead presses, bench presses, and pull-ups. Those at home can engage in bodyweight training or purchase a set of dumbbells and resistance bands for at-home resistance training, both of which can provide excellent exercise results.
Arrange half an hour of strength training each time, which can keep your body at a high metabolic level, continuously burning calories. Maintaining 3 workouts per week can help create an easy-to-lose-weight physique, and your figure will become more toned after losing weight.
Attachment: A set of strength training plans:
Day One
Plank: 4 sets x hold for 30 seconds, Glute Bridge: 4 sets x 8-10 reps, Kneeling Clamshell: 4 sets x 8-10 reps, Kneeling Leg Kicks: 4 sets x 8-10 reps, Squats: 4 sets x 8-10 reps, Lunges: 3 sets x 8-10 reps
Day Two:
Dumbbell Bench Press: 4 sets x 8-10 reps, Push-ups: 4 sets x 8-10 reps, Dumbbell Shoulder Press: 4 sets x 8-10 reps, Resistance Band Deadlifts: 4 sets x 8-10 reps, Crunches: 4 sets x 10-12 reps, Mountain Climbers: 4 sets x 10-12 reps
Rest for 45 seconds between each set and 1 minute between each exercise.
The third exercise, High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), is a training method that alternates between high-intensity bursts and short rest periods. There are many reasons why HIIT can reduce abdominal fat.
Firstly, HIIT’s high-intensity training can rapidly elevate the heart rate to over 80% of the maximum heart rate, allowing the body to enter an efficient fat-burning state in a short period.
Secondly, HIIT training can increase muscle mass. More muscle mass means a higher basal metabolic rate. Even at rest, the body can continue to burn energy, leaving no place for abdominal fat to hide.
Thirdly, the greatest advantage of HIIT is time-saving. For busy modern people, it is not necessary to spend a long time in the gym to achieve the desired fat reduction effect, which is fantastic!
Common HIIT training exercises include sprinting, jumping rope, jumping jacks, push-ups, and squat jumps, etc. For example, perform a 30-second all-out sprint, followed by a short low-intensity rest phase, about 15-30 seconds, either by walking slowly or taking deep breaths for adjustment. Repeat this cycle of alternating high and low intensity, usually the entire training lasts for 15-30 minutes.
