Did you know that just because you look slim doesn’t mean that you have a healthy body composition. Most people don’t know about hidden or visceral fat, this is the fat that is stored deep inside you body surrounding your internal organs – the bowels, liver, kidneys. Surveys have shown that the amount visceral fat in the body is highly correlated with coronary and circulatory complications.

Hidden fat is a latent killer, often causing problems over the course of years or decades being undetected. Increasing the risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and the complications associated with these ailments.

It’s highly recommended that you do some exercises to lose belly fat, it’s not as difficult as you might think. Another to do is to adopt a healthy diet which includes balanced nutrients of fats, proteins and carbohydrates.

What You Should NOT Do To Lose Belly Fat

There are some misconceptions when it comes to fat loss and ones of these is that people think that simply consuming less calories than you use will help you lose weight. They are not wrong, but they will be losing more than just fat, they will lose muscle mass too which is contrary to what is one of the biggest factors to reducing excess fat.

By not eating enough you force your body into starvation mode, promoting it to reduce the amount of muscle and save every bit of fat it can. So here are some things you should NOT do:

• Go on a low calorie diet – Low calorie diets puts your body on scrimping mode, making it much harder to lose visceral fat.
• Cut out all fat in your diet – There are some essential fats that are good for your health.
• Start fasting in the hopes of slimming – Similarly to low calorie dieting this puts you body on alert, saving every bit of excess as possible and promoting the reduction of muscle mass.

What You NEED To Do To Lose Visceral Fat

So here’s the good part, what you need to do to get rid of the hidden fat in your middle. It’ll be hard to track your visceral fat composition without some fancy equipment so you might not know how much fat your losing. But don’t despair, just stick to the advice and you can’t really go wrong.

As mentioned above you shouldn’t get rid of fat in your diet, BUT you must reduce the amount of trans and saturated fat you consume. How do you know what’s saturated and what’s not? There’s a simple rule of thumb to follow:

Animal and processed fats are SATURATED and plant based fats are UNSATURATED

In other words, avoid eating too much fatty cuts of meat, pre-packaged meals and butter; instead opt for nuts, fruits (such as avocado), and olive oil.

So here are some things you absolutely need to do:

• Include unsaturated fats in your diet
• Be active everyday – walk more, cycle to work, and anything which is an active alternative in your daily routine.
• Do more exercise – Regular and frequent exercise is essential for your health.
• Start turbulence training – High intensity exercise is shown to burn fat for hour after the exercise session; this is the only way to reduce body fat percentage which is a good marker for the amount of visceral fat you carry.

It might be worth a visit to the doctor to find out exactly your body composition, so that you can make informed decisions for your health and lifestyle. If you find out something that frightens you, such as high levels of visceral fat, you now know what to do about it.