Hi, I’m Michelle, and today I’m going to show you how to lose this from your belly, without dieting
and through appropriate exercise. Now, before doing this video today, I discussed with a few
of my mates from the gym, some of the problems they experience with managing their belly fat,
and the strategies that work best for them. Then what we're going to be doing is talking to a male
dietitian, he's going to give you four of his tips for managing belly fat and losing belly
fat without dieting, and then I’m going to give you my four exercise tips for the most effective
ways of losing belly fat and actually keeping it off. So let's go to our guys at the gym.
So what's your biggest challenge in managing your body fat? Well, that's easy, it's eating the
right foods, not eating too much fatty food, not drinking too much booze, and exercising properly.
What do you find the biggest path that, the exercise or the diet of the drink? The diet.
The biggest challenge with me was maintaining your belly fat, and I found that it is a combination
of things, you have to maintain your diet, you have to watch out what you eat, and you have
to mix your exercises with cardio as well as the weight training, and I think the biggest challenge
for me was to – because being Indian, Indian diet is highly rich in carbs,
and you have to watch what do you have on your plate. Well, really, my biggest challenge is it
doesn't really matter what I do, I try everything, and I don't seem to be making any progress.
Do you think that there's some particular changes that you could make that would help?
I hope there is. Well, that's to be revealed.
So how much extra belly fat are you carrying? Four pounds, five pounds, six pounds? This here
is five pounds or 2.2 kilos of fat, and that's the volume it takes. So you can imagine that sitting
in and around your abdomen. So that's a large volume, isn't it? Now, the importance of abdominal
fat is if you take a look up here you can see that abdominal fat is different to other fat
and actually sits in and around your abdominal organs, and the real problem with this type of
fat is that it releases toxins and those toxins go to your heart, cause heart disease, and they also
cause organ damage. So not only is this a really important physical comfort issue and fitness
issue, it's also a really important health issue for men. So let's talk to our dietitian and see
what he has to say about the best ways of managing body fat and losing body fat without dieting.
So thanks for coming in today Darcy. So can you share your four tips on how men can lose this
type of fat without having to diet? So basically the thing about diets is that they're mostly
like crash diets, they're mostly unsustainable. So you want to change your eating in a way that
you're going to be able to stick to for a long time. So like a long term sort of plan? Yeah,
basically, and one that you enjoy, because you don't want to be absolutely hating what you eat
every single day. So basically, the way that weight loss works is that your body's got its
maintenance energy requirements, and that's just basically, and if you just eat those,
eat that every day, then you'll just maintain your weight, because that's enough for your
body to keep running. So the way you want to lose weight is you want to actually create an
energy deficit, which is where you eat less than what your requirements are.
But guys don't want to start, they don't – we don't want to use the word diet.
So can you still lose weight without actually having to diet? Yeah definitely, so there are
a lot of different strategies that you can use to lose this type of fat from your body. One strategy
that I recommend to most people is that they increase their consumption of plant-based foods,
so like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes and beans. So like a Mediterranean-style diet.
Yeah, so for example, the Mediterranean diet. And that's got a lot of other health benefits,
for example, it's good for your heart, good for a whole lot of a bunch of different things in
your body. And another thing that the Mediterranean diet targets is that it
aims to reduce your consumption of red meat, and red meat can be quite high in fat. So how much
red meat should a person, a man eat, do you think, and what size? Well, per week, the recommendation
is that you eat two serves of red meat, and one serve is basically just what would fit
within the palm of your hand. Okay, so what would be the better types of meat for a guy to have,
if he's trying to manage his weight? So the better types of meat to consume would be,
on a more regular basis, would be things like your fish and also your white meats and poultry,
and that sort of thing, and that's another thing that the Mediterranean diet promotes is that it
tells you to eat, to increase your consumption of fish. Okay. So what about alcohol, what about
when it comes to drinking, do guys actually need to stop drinking or maybe they need not have a
case a day. Well, yeah. No, basically, if you're having a case a day, then yes, that's going to
promote weight gain. Because I think what one pint has, like 180 to 220 calories, so that's
a lot of extra energy, isn't it? Yeah, exactly, yeah. It obviously depends on the beer, and that's
one thing that you can do to reduce your calories through alcohol is you can pick low calorie beers
or light beers. Other strategies that I personally use to minimize my... Not really drink much.
Not that I drink much, but basically my strategies are minimize alcohol because alcohol is also very
energy dense, and so, if you over consume it, it can help – it can lead to weight gain. But I
also do things like, I’m mindful of the mixes that I use, say, when I’m drinking spirits,
I’ll usually drink vodka lime and sodas, but you can also go for things like your no
sugar colas and all that sort of thing, no sugar lemonades. Great idea. All those sort of things.
And how many a day would be, if a Mediterranean diet, how much wine a day? Well, again, the
recommendation is no more than two standard drinks per day or no more than four standard drinks on
any one drinking occasion. But yeah, so basically just minimizing your alcohol is one good way to
help lose weight. And finally, what do you think, there's a lot of a talk about intermittent
fasting. What do you think about that? Well, I think intermittent fasting can also be a good
strategy to lose weight. Obviously, it depends how you go about it. So say you have one day on less
energy but then you go and way overcompensated for, way overcompensate for it the following day,
then you'll gain weight. But if you do it properly and you have your fast days or you have
your periods of fasting, and then you don't go back and overcompensate, that's a great way to
create an energy deficit because... Yeah, so is it enough just to – sorry to interrupt you – is it
enough just to miss a meal? Yeah, missing meals... So you don't have to go a whole day without food?
No, you don't need to go a whole day without food, but yeah, it's all about reducing the amount of
energy that you eat throughout the day. But you can do things like, you can still feel yourself
up on things that aren't high in energy, for example, what I was talking about earlier, fruits,
vegetables, legumes, your plant-based foods, a lot of your plant-based foods are very low in energy.
And so, you can eat a lot of those, and not rack up your energy, and basically you can still be in
an energy deficit, but stay full, so you won't be hungry and feel like snacking on more energy dense
things like lollies, chocolates, all those sort of things. That's great advice. So you're off to the
gym now? I am, I am off to the gym now. Okay, I’ll let you go and do your workout, thanks so much for
helping us out today. No worries. And see you next time. See you next time. Bye. Bye.
So we've heard from Darcy about how to actually lose body fat from your whole body, but now I’m
going to talk about four exercise strategies, and one in particular which is really effective for
targeting abdominal fat. Now, let me just bust a couple of myths, abdominal exercises, your sit-up
exercises will not do it. So it doesn't matter how many abdominal exercise you do, that's not going
to lose your belly, so don't waste your time. And the second myth is that you can actually lose your
weight or incur an energy deficit just by steady state exercise. Now, if you're eating a bag of
Doritos chips, it's going to take you an hour and a half of running or three hours of walking
just to burn that off. So that exercise isn't going to help you lose weight, if you're actually
overeating. So let's now go through the exercise strategies. The first one I would like to talk to
you about is HiLo or interval training. Now, this is a really fantastic evidence-based
exercise strategy to target losing abdominal weight. So interval training means going fast
and slow, and ideally doing 15-minute sessions, and where you go eight seconds really fast and
12 seconds really slow. So you do a five-minute warm-up, and then 15 minutes, three times a week.
Now the research at the fat lab of Sydney, the University of Sydney,
has clearly shown that men that actually do this type of exercise lost, over a period of three
months, 17% of just their abdominal mass, not to mention all the other health benefits as well. So
HiLo intensity exercise is one of the most effective ways of losing your abdominal fat. Now,
this isn't necessarily for everyone, but it's a great strategy. The other thing that you can do is
do a combination of your weights and your cardio. If you're doing the same thing, day in, day out,
of weights, just weights only, or cardio only, you're going to be unlikely to lose as much weight
as if you actually combine the two. Ideally, you'd be doing your weights two to three times a week,
and then doing your cardio on four to five days a week as well, ideally,
five days a week, and trying to get to 40 minutes of your cardio. Now,
there's some sneaky tricks here, if you do your weights first, before you actually do your cardio,
you mobilize your fat and you're going to be much more likely to burn off fat.
The other sneaky trick is to use exercises that use your large muscles, they're your fat burners.
So exercises are like your squats, like your lunges for your weights, your back muscles,
they're your large fat burners. And also too, if you're choosing your cardio equipment,
think about the exercises that actually use whole body or large muscles, exercises like
your bike riding, your spin classes, your rowing machine, your elliptical machines, all
those types of machines use your large muscles, and they're going to be much more effective.
So they're my tips for actually losing your belly fat,
your HiLo exercise, and mixing up your exercise, don't do the same thing day in and day out, mix it
around, do combinations of your cardio as well as your weights, use your large muscles as well. So I
think you can see, there's quite a bit you can do to actually lose your body fat and your belly fat,
and without actually having to diet, just changing your exercise, the way you exercise,
and following, as Darcy said, a Mediterranean-style eating plan,
and maybe cutting back on the case of beer to just maybe one or two glasses a night.
So I really hope this information helps you lose your beer belly, I’d really love to hear from you
or hear your comments in the comments below, any questions that you have.
And as always, if you like the video, can you please give it a like below,
because this helps other men find the video too and YouTube will share it around. Thanks
so much for watching today, I look forward to seeing you next time. Bye for now.