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BREAK YOUR BELLY FAT HABITS

Listen to Your Body to Lose Weight

The world swills with scientific data and special formulas for reclaiming health, losing weight, growing strong, running farther than you’ve ever run before. Just slog into this data stream and you can easily pick out the amount of water you should drink each day (8 cups is the popular adage), detailed exercise programs, training logs, food charts, etc… All of this information can easily become overwhelming, especially when popular diets and exercise programs continue to change.

While picking and following programs that work for you is encouraged, one key habit can help keep you on the right track in regards to your nutrition, exercise and losing belly fat. Always remember to listen to your body.

Your Body Talks

Your body is an incredible, sensitive machine. Electrical messages are constantly zipping from your toes to your head telling your brain that your foot fell asleep, that you’re hungry, that the back of your knee is itching again and that you just got a paper cut on your finger. In our overcrowded, loud, saturated world, it can be easy to let the outside noise overwhelm the hum of reports that your brain is giving you about your own body. Ignore your body at your own peril, because it is the best tuning fork for your health and wellness.

How To Listen To Your Body

Let’s take thirst. The health and wellness field is currently in the grips of a huge water craze. Everywhere you look, health experts are insisting that each of us need drink more and more water. Certainly drinking water is can be good for you, but how much is enough? Just because the latest magazine article claims that 8 cups of water a day is required doesn’t make it true. Instead, let your body speak to you. If you are thirsty, take a drink of water. If not? Then hold off until you really are thirsty. Only drink what your body asks you for.

Sleep is one of the areas where people are least likely to listen to their bodies. Sleep is crucial for stress management and the optimal functioning of the mind and body. Good sleep replenishes the immune system, balances the chemicals of the brain, allows the body to repair itself and processes and stores memories. Yet, so often, the need for sleep is ignored. We go to sleep late, force ourselves up early and take the edge off our exhaustion with caffeine and other stimulants. In the background, our tired brain releases stress hormones which weaken the immune system and make us more susceptible to gain belly fat. (Learn how stress can cause belly fat).

Instead of forcing yourself awake each morning, listen to your body and allow it to rest properly. This may mean watching a little less TV at night or becoming a little more strict with your nightly or morning routines, but ignoring your body can have a real effect on your health and well-being.

The Danger of Ignoring your Body

When we don’t listen to our bodies, they will eventually rebel and break down. Think about the car you drive. It requires routine maintenance, but there are also many systems in place that tell you when something goes wrong. Sometimes one of the symbols lights up on the dashboard. Other times you can hear or feel something wrong. There’s a new rattle or a clunking coming out of the engine. The car is starting up slower or it shakes when it idles.

These are all messages telling you that your car isn’t healthy. If you continue to ignore the problem it almost never goes away. In fact, it gets worse and worse until the vehicle completely breaks down. The more you ignore your car when an issue arises, the worse the damage will be and the more costly to repair.

Consider your body through this same lens. If you feel woozy and hungry while on a diet, then it’s clearly not working for you. If your belly is begging you to stop eating that third scoop of ice cream, push the bowl away. Similarly, if an exercise doesn’t feel right at the gym, stop and ask a trainer to give you another option. If a weight is beginning to feel too light, or your regular running routine isn’t making you sweat, then ramp up the intensity. Your body is telling you that it’s grown stronger and needs to be pushed harder in order to continue improving and burning more belly fat.

Let your body speak to you during exercise, during meals and during the rest of the day. Give it the rest it needs, the healthy foods it craves and challenge it with increasingly intense exercise as it gets stronger.
Of course, listening to your body doesn’t mean you need to follow it’s every whim. If that were the case, most of us would eat nothing but chips and ice cream and never set foot in a gym again. Listening to your body allows you to take its needs into consideration as you pursue your health and fitness goals.

So listen up to your body, and the two of you will get along just fine.

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