Best exercise for losing belly fat? What exercise burns the most belly fat female? What exercise burns the most belly fat male? Best exercise for losing belly fat at home?
All great questions! This post will be EVERYTHING you need to know about the best exercise to lose belly fat! It’s simpler than you think and probably not what you expect!
Who doesn’t have a bit of extra fat that they want to lose? Well, it’s the beginning of the year so everyone is making their resolutions! This the perfect time to talk about this topic.
I’ve lost 50 pounds…twice in my life. Then I’ve gone on many other mini diets in my life. That being said, I know how to lose weight. I also know how to keep it off now.
Which exercise the best to exercise for losing belly fat? With all the exercises out there? Which is the best? The answer will really surprise you. It’ll make your entire life easier.
Best Exercise To Lose Belly Fat
Well, I’ll give you the answer right away. There is no best exercise for losing belly fat (don’t be ridiculous and stop reading here). If anyone tells you otherwise, they are lying.
Also, it takes time. One of the most commonly asked questions is “exercise to lose belly fat in 2 weeks” or losing belly fat overnight. If it were that easy, do you think almost 75% of America’s population would be overweight or obese?1
Stop fooling yourself and stop letting people fool you. You can do it, you are no different than anyone else. If I can do it, you can too.
Also, there are no exercises that can “target body fat”.
Some of you might be saying, high intensity interval training (HIIT) is best, that’s not true at all. I’m not going to be into that in detail, but scientific literature have proven that HIIT isn’t better than regular cardio. If you are interested in the proof of that, read my article HIIT Cardio and Weight/Fat Loss.
Cardiovascular (cardio) exercise is definitely better as compared to weightlifting. That’s not to say, weightlifting isn’t important. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn by just living. Muscle burns more calories than fat.
Lets get into some details now.
1. Doing Abdominal Exercises Will NOT Directly Burn Belly Fat
One thing you need to keep in mind is that YOU CANNOT TARGET WHERE YOU LOSE BODY FAT FROM.
Everyone’s genetics are different. People will hold fat in different areas of their body and will lose fat at different times in their fat loss journey from different areas.
For example, my face gets very lean when I start to lose weight. Yet, my stomach and chest fat is VERY stubborn.
Doing sit-ups and crunches will not burn your belly fat away. It will strengthen your core and build that muscle, yes. When you lose the fat over your stomach you will be able to see your abdominal muscles (abs). You will just need to lose less fat to see your abs if you have bigger abs.
The best thing you can do is controls your diet while NOT being over restrictive. On top of that perform cardio and weightlift if you have time.
You don’t have to become a bodybuilder. If you’re a female and saying “I don’t want to look like a man”, good luck. Most men can’t even naturally gain that much muscle.
2. What Exercise Should You Do?
Well, the one that you enjoy the most (or hate the least!). It’s about consistency and what you can do long term. Pick whichever exercise you’d like! Or choose a few to rotate through!
You don’t even have to go to a gym, you can go outside for a walk. Some people use a step goal and try to hit that many steps a day. That way, everything you do in the day also go towards that step goal (shopping, walking to your car or walking away from your crush after getting rejected).
You can make the step goal whichever you’d like, 1000, 2000, 5000 or more!
Start off with however much you can do and increase slowly over time. Maybe add 500 or a 1000 steps per every week. Whatever you are comfortable with.
You can also walk, jog, run, swim, play sports, bike, do jiu-jitsu or whatever you’d like! A lot of people go on a treadmill (including myself) put it on 12 incline and 3 speed and walk .
If you want to monitor the time of your cardio, maybe increase your daily cardio by 10 minutes every week or two.
The table below shows how I increased my weekly cardio when I lost 20 pounds over 16 weeks. I took it very slow.
| Week | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday | Weekly Minute Totals |
| Fat Loss Diet Example – Cardio (minutes) | ||||||||
| 1 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 30 | 90 |
| 2 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 50 | 110 |
| 3 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 70 | 130 |
| 4 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 45 | 45 | 140 |
| 5 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 60 | 60 | 170 |
| 6 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 75 | 75 | 200 |
| 7 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 90 | 90 | 230 |
| 8 | 20 | 20 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 90 | 90 | 250 |
| 9 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 10 | 90 | 90 | 270 |
| 10 | 30 | 30 | 20 | 20 | 10 | 90 | 90 | 290 |
| 11 | 30 | 30 | 30 | 30 | 10 | 90 | 90 | 310 |
| 12 | 40 | 40 | 30 | 30 | 10 | 90 | 90 | 330 |
| 13 | 40 | 40 | 40 | 40 | 10 | 90 | 90 | 350 |
| 14 | 50 | 50 | 40 | 40 | 10 | 90 | 90 | 370 |
| 15 | 50 | 50 | 50 | 50 | 10 | 90 | 90 | 390 |
| 16 | 50 | 50 | 50 | 50 | 10 | 90 | 90 | 390 |
3. Weightlift
As I mentioned before, weightlift. The more muscle you have, the more calories you burn by just living.
These are my articles that give examples of complete exercising routines:
You don’t have to weightlift every day, you can even for lift 60-90 minutes two to three days a week. There are so many other benefits to weightlifting such as increased bone density.
4. Be In A Caloric Deficit
I know this article is about exercises, but this is so important. I HIGLY encourage you to read this section. It will make your life so much easier.
What does being in a caloric deficit mean? It means eating less calories than your body needs. I talk about this in may of my articles and I will continue to do so. It is an absolute must. If you continue to eat more calories than your body can burn, how do you expect to lose any weight?
So firstly, figure out how many calories you need.
How do you do that? To start off with, use basal metabolic rate (BMR: essentially what your metabolism is) calculators online to estimate how many calories you need. Here are three that I’ve used:
- https://www.muscleandstrength.com/tools/bmr-calculator
- https://www.bmrcalculator.org/
- https://www.calculator.net/bmr-calculator.html?ctype=standard&cage=29&csex=m&cheightfeet=5&cheightinch=10.5&cpound=195&cheightmeter=180&ckg=60&cmop=0&coutunit=c&cformula=m&cfatpct=20&x=84&y=27
I took the average of these three and then subtracted 500 because the number I got seemed high to me. Everyone’s body is different so you’ll have to play around with the number for a few weeks possibly.
Don’t just start drastically decreasing your calories right away. This will make the entire process tougher than it needs to be. Your body will also adjusts to the new low calories and you’ll need to keep decreasing them. So take it slow.
It takes my body THREE TO FOUR WEEKS to start losing weight, yours might too, be patient.
Try not to lose more than 0.5% to 1% of your body weight at a week.
If after three or four weeks you still aren’t losing weight or gaining weight, decrease your calories by another 100 to 200 calories until you start losing weight in the range we just mentioned.
After the initial three to four weeks, you can adjust your calories every week or two.
If you are losing more than 0.5% to 1% of your body weight per week, consider increasing your calories by 100 or 200 calories.
You don’t have to be overly restrictive. In fact, that’s a terrible idea. Don’t give up pizza, burgers and all your favorite desserts. Include all of that. You just have to fit them into your diet.
You can even make healthier alternatives at home. I lost 20 pounds in 4 weeks while eating pizza almost EVERY DAY.
5. Track What You Eat
I won’t get into that too much into this article, but tracking what you eat will make the entire process easier. Get a food scale and log what you eat in an app like MyFitnessPal. You don’t have to do this forever, but when you get an idea of how much serving sizes are, you can ease up.
Don’t go around carrying a food scale with you everywhere you go.
My article, 4 Must Have Fitness Equipment/Tools That Will Make it Much Easier To Lose Stubborn Fat, will give you the link to the food scale I use and MyFitnessPal.
Well that’s it for this post. As you can see, there is no best exercise for losing belly fat. Do the one you like the most (or hate the least)!
Disclaimer: I’m not your doctor. Please consult your doctor, nutritionist or any health care professional before making any changes in your own lifestyle. These blogs are just me sharing my knowledge for you reading entertainment purpose only. None of this is medical advice.
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Resources
- “Overweight &Amp;Amp; Obesity Statistics.” National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, 8 June 2023, www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/overweight-obesity#:~:text=Adults,-