5 Tips To Reduce Belly Fat | Bonus Video: 5 Fat Loss Exercises

Today I’m super excited to share my top tips on how to reduce belly fat with you! I also made a video for YouTube where I’m giving you five fat loss promoting exercises that you can go do in the gym today to start melting the fat away! If you want to go straight to the workout, then here’s the video:

If you’re ready to read the tips, let’s dive right into it!

Belly Fat Loss Tip #1: Nutrition Is Key

Nutrition is the most important factor when you want to lose belly fat. You can go to the gym for an hour and burn 500 calories, but when you get home, you can eat those 500 calories in 2 minutes if you’re not watching your nutrition.

My advice is that for at least one week you write down everything that you want to eat or drink right before you consume it. That has two benefits:

1. At the end of the day or week, it gives you a chance to look back over what you’ve eaten and see where you can make changes and calculate how many calories you take in in a day or over the course of a week.
2. Writing your food down right before you plan to eat it gives you a chance to reevaluate if that’s really something you should be eating. By writing it down first, you have a moment to think if this food choice is something that’s going help you to melt away your belly fat or pack belly fat back on.

The main thing to remember if you want to lose belly fat is that you have to be in a caloric deficit, and this simple tool can help you understand how to achieve that. If you want me to do a full blog on nutrition advice to shrink your belly fat, write “YES” in the comments.

Reduce Belly Fat Tip #2: Get Your Mindset Right

Looking back over the last eight years, both for myself and for the clients I’ve worked with, the ones who achieved the best results were the ones who managed to get their mind straight. The people who committed to working on their nutrition and to stay consistent with their workouts are the ones who achieved their goals. And that commitment is something you have to decide on and stick to, even when it gets a bit tough down the line.

Another thing I often see is the desire to lose the belly fat fast. The truth is, if you want to lose belly fat over the long term, you have to stop looking for the quick fix. Understand that nutrition plays the most important role in belly fat loss and that you can’t spot reduce fat. Once you’ve accepted that and decided you’re ready to commit long term to start eating better and exercising regularly, you can add the right types of food and exercises into your routine. Find a plan you can stick with long term, build a routine and give yourself 6-12 months of consistency before you change your approach. You’ll be amazed but what you can achieve in that time.

Reduce Belly Fat Tip #3: Don’t Train Your Abs

That’s right. I said it. Don’t just train your abs. You can’t spot reduce on the belly by doing ab exercises all day long. I see so many people every day in the gym wasting their time doing crunches, sit-ups, and all these stomach exercises to lose belly fat, even though that won’t change how they look until they reduce their body fat. Spot reduction is not possible so unless you reduce your overall body fat enough, you won’t shrink your belly and see your abs. Just how lean you need to get to see your belly fat reduce is individual and depends on your body type and genetics.

In this picture, I have a very flat stomach, but I promise you: I did not do crunches to look like this. This is only a result of reducing my body fat.

Reduce Belly Fat Tip #4: Do Compound Exercises

A big secret to melting away belly fat in the gym is to do compound exercises. A compound exercise is defined as an exercise that works several muscle groups at the same time. For example, a squat is a compound exercise as it works both the quadriceps, glutes, and calves, as well as your core and spinal erectors. Doing compound exercises over isolation exercises is beneficial for two reasons.

1. Doing 1 hour of mainly compound exercises burns more calories in 1 hour than you could with 1 hour of isolation exercises. Your workouts will take a lot less time every week because you burn more calories in the same amount of time.
2. With compound exercises, you can go to the gym 3 times per week for 45-60 minutes, and still train the whole body hard enough to see progress. Instead of going to the gym for 1,5 hours 6-7 days per week to do isolation work, compound exercises allow you to do everything in one short-but-intense session and be done with it.

Most of us are busy with lots of commitments so anything that can make your workouts more efficient will help you stay consistent!

Reduce Belly Fat #5: Throw In Some Ab Exercises (If You Feel Like It)

So, I know everything I just said, BUT if it makes you feel good to do a few ab exercises over the week, it’s okay to add them into the mix! I recommend incorporating exercises such as high knee raises and plank variations, and working them into your workouts in a circuit style (or “superset”): Begin your set with a compound movement, then go straight to your ab exercise without taking a break, rest for a short period, then go back to your compound movement and repeat. I like doing 3-4 supersets with minimal rest before moving on to the next exercise.

If you want me to do a video on ab exercises that doesn’t suck, comment “ABS” down below.

Bonus Video With 5 Fat Loss Promoting Exercises

If you liked these tips on how to reduce belly fat, you might also like the video I made for my new YouTube channel! In the video, I share these 5 tips, but I also show you five of my favorite fat loss promoting exercises that you can go do in the gym today to start melting off the belly fat! You find the video embedded at the top of this blog or just click right here.