How Long Does It Take To Lose Belly Fat?

By - Dr. Omair Ansar, MBBS, MSc

Your physical appearance matters a lot. How you present yourself in front of the audience leaves a great impact on them. Almost every one of us is conscious of our appearance.  Some are struggling with their hair or with their skin tone, others are in search of different ways to increase their height, and some are struggling to maintain a good physique.

Out of the above-mentioned categories, the majority of the world’s population is struggling with their overweight body. Obesity is a big issue these days. It is not confined to a specific age group anymore. People belonging to all ages are facing this issue. This question pops up a lot: how to lose weight? What to do to get rid of obesity?

Fat Deposition Areas

It is reported that most obese people around the world are either the ones with extra belly fat or thick from the thighs. Usually, people complain that the abdominal region of the body is not in perfect shape. This is because of the visceral fat that gets accumulated mostly in the abdomen, around the thighs, or the belly.

It does not only destroy the shape of your body but it is also harmful to your health. It could be the precursor of many diseases like cardiovascular disorders, inflammation, hypertension, diabetes, etc.

All the ones having overgrown bellies need to concentrate. They should try to lose the excess fat that has accumulated and should struggle to restore their perfect body shape. Now the question that arises here is how to do so? What methodologies need to be adopted to get desired results? How long does it take to lose belly fat and love handles?

Healthy Lifestyle Goals

Your daily routine and your lifestyle have a great impact on your health and body weight. What are the timings of your meal and the type of food you eat, all these factors contribute towards your healthy body?

To lose belly fat focus on the two things the most:

Proper Routine

To live a healthy life and to get a flat belly time management is the key. All you need to start from is by waking early in the morning. According to the research it is stated that waking up early in the morning improves your health, cherishes your mood, and boosts your body metabolism.

When you start to wake up early in the morning and have your breakfast early, your whole day meal cycle will start to get in place. You will not delay your lunch and dinner anymore. When this happens, your body’s metabolism gets boosted enough to digest the food properly. This thing will help to minimize the excess fat in your body.

Your belly will start to get flattered and your body will get back to its original shape. This practice will not only contribute to losing belly fat but also ensures long-term results. The only thing that is needed from your side is dedication as mentioned earlier.

Balanced Diet

Another important factor that helps to reduce belly fat is a balanced diet. Keep a check on the nutritional content of your food. Try to avoid oily dishes and minimize the intake of junk food. Eat a balanced proportion of carbohydrates, proteins, and vitamins.

Make the most use of fruits and vegetables. Avoid frozen products as much as you can. Keep a check on the fat intake and strictly avoid all the food items that have high calories or fat content.

Taking care of your diet is not an easy task. You need to fight over yourself. You need to control your cravings. People are always curious about how long it takes to lose belly fat and love handles but they do not follow the path properly. You will only get results when you strictly follow all the necessary steps towards a flat belly.

Making a permanent habit of having a balanced and controlled diet is a promising method to effectively lose belly fat and enjoy consistent and long-term consequences.

Keto Diet

One of the most effective ways to lose weight and to get rid of extra belly fat is the ketogenic diet. A low carb or ketogenic diet can help you to lose weight faster than with a high carb diet. It is the most effective way of dieting through which your abdominal fat and belly fat will reduce to a greater extent effectively without affecting your body’s metabolism.

A ketogenic diet lets your body burn the stored body fat for energy instead of glucose. As compared to a long workout, adopting a Keto diet can burn 2.3 times more fat per minute. On a long-term basis, it provides many health benefits and protects your body against obesity as well.

From the staple food you can include the following in your ketogenic diet:

Keep a check and avoid all the high carb sources like rice, beans, grains, potatoes, cereals, sweets, milk, etc. The basic nutritional index of a ketogenic diet includes a low carb, moderate protein, and high-fat diet.  It produces ketones and increases fat burning in your body.

Extra Efforts To Lose Belly Fat

People inquire a lot about the time duration that is required to get results. These questions are frequently asked about how long it takes to lose belly fat. Or how long does it take to lose belly fat for a teenage girl?

Whether you are a male or a teenager or a grown-up adult or in your early teens, that’s not the matter at all. The thing that matters is how much effort you are putting in to get the desired results? The more you struggle the more you will achieve.

Except for a few cases like elderly people or a pregnant woman or someone with any medical issues, if you are not any one of them, here is another great hack for you to lose your belly fat faster.

Apart from focusing on your diet, you need to go the extra mile ahead. Focus on your physical activities as well. Try to engage yourself in different activities as much as you can. These activities could be anything in your reach like walking, running, or exercise, etc.

Walking

Walking is one of the best methods to lose belly fat or excess fat around your thighs. It regulates your body activity and boosts your metabolism as well. The food inside the body gets properly digested which also ensures protection against many GIT-related discomforts.

It is said that after a continuous walk for 20 minutes, your body starts consuming the excess fats in your body. Try to walk for at least 20-30 minutes before breakfast and at least 45-60 minutes at night before going to bed.

Try to manage your activities in a manner so that you get more time for a walk. For traveling at shorter distances go by foot and avoid using transport. Rather than doing online shopping, go and visit the shopping malls and do your shopping there and wander around. This will increase your walking activity and help you to get a flat belly and a perfect physique.

People ask a lot about how long it takes to lose belly fat by walking? Well, it all demands discipline and commitment. All you need is to focus and stay motivated.

Running

Another productive approach to lose belly fat is by running. You can run anywhere in your comfort zone. You can run on a treadmill if you go to a gym or if you have it in your home. You can go to the nearest park for jogging in the morning daily.

This question arises a lot: how long does it take to lose belly fat by running. It is true that through running you can achieve your goal even faster, but you need to take care of a few things. Try to plan your activities. Start from low to moderate then chase a high level. In the start, set a target to run or jog at least for 20 minutes then increase your time slowly and gradually.

Do not put stress on your muscles. Train them to adopt such heavy workouts step by step. If you put a lot of stress on your body and start running for long hours in the start, it will start showing adverse effects on your body. You may suffer from fatigue and muscle cramps. This can lead to extreme disorders as well.

So, be extremely careful about it. Rather than trying to jump to the top instantly, choose to take smaller steps. This will give you better and long-term results.

Cycling

Consultants report that people ask this question a lot about how long it takes to lose belly fat by cycling. Can cycling help in reducing belly fat? The answer to this is simply YES. Cycling is yet another great approach to lose belly fat. It has a great impact on your whole body.

During cycling, your thigh muscles, your buttocks, and your belly, the whole abdominal region is engaged and this leads your body to digest the stored fat to provide the required amount of energy. It not only boosts the body’s metabolism but also has many other benefits as well.

Exercise

Apart from walking, running, and cycling, many other exercises effectively contribute to losing your body fat. On searching, you will find a dozen different exercises in this regard. According to your stamina and time availability, plan your exercise calendar, either weekly or monthly.

But again, at a slower pace and increase it gradually. Keep in mind that a heavy workout starts with counter effects rather than benefiting you. You can either consult a specialist who will guide you according to your capability and need. In another case, you can do it on your own by researching and properly evaluating all the details.

2 Simple Things to Follow

Multiple techniques ensure you yield quick results, but they are temporary. If you want consistent and long-term results, you need to follow the right path. Nothing could be achieved without struggle and hard work. Strong dedication is required to achieve the desired goal.

All you need to begin is just take an oath to remain stick to your motive despite any distraction. Then start taking little steps one after another and you will start witnessing the outcomes. During your journey of losing belly fat, you need to understand two things. The first one is that we need to get rid of the extra fat or the visceral fat first. Second thing is that we need to close all the possible doors from where this fat can again get accumulated in our bodies.

To lose belly fat simply need to focus on two things:

Exercises to lose belly fat

Many exercises can help you lose weight. They impact deeply on the overall physique of your body. They will help you to tone up your biceps, buttocks, thighs, etc. But if you are specifically targeting the extra belly fat around your belly, then you need to choose the proper exercise plan that includes some exercise that is specifically to target belly muscles.

If you are at the gym you will see many of the trainees questioning on their first day at the gym how long it takes to lose belly fat and get abs. Well, don’t be too quick, show some patience. You will start witnessing results sometimes within a week but a lot of hard work is required in this journey.

Among the exercises that are effective to reduce belly fat some are listed below:

Signs You Are Losing Belly Fat

Once you start focusing and take steps to lose belly fat, you will see many signs that will ensure that you are on the right track. Scientifically, within two weeks you can feel your belly starting to go inside and reduce as well. But within those two weeks, you can ensure that you are correctly progressing by tracking some signals.

One of the most important signals that you will notice in the early days is that you will stop feeling hungry all the time. You will witness that your appetite has reduced and your cravings are not bothering you that much as they used to do before.

Another great feeling would be on the point when you will observe that your clothes now fit you differently. You will feel strengthened muscles and physiological well-being as well. This will eventually improve your mood. After consistent efforts, you will see that your body measurements are changing, and apparently, you are getting smarter day by day.

Now, at this point you need to focus, even more, avoid becoming overconfident or losing interest in your commitment. Because here at this point if you become careless and lose your consistency then all this progress would be temporary. After some time you will be standing again at the point from where you begin. So, watch out carefully.

Stages of Losing Belly Fat

While struggling and putting all your efforts to lose weight, you can categorize this whole transformation into two stages.

Rapid weight loss

This is the time when your body will be losing all its extra fat quickly. You can witness the progress of your appearance. Your body size will start to reduce. Your body measurements will start to change quickly. It is usually recorded to appear in the first 4 – 6 weeks of your diet or in the case of exercise it could be witnessed even earlier.

Slow weight loss

After 6 weeks or continuous dedication, sometimes even longer than this, your body tends to lose weight slowly. During this phase, you might feel a weight loss plateau. You could feel that you are not losing weight anymore but it is not that so at all. Due to some metabolic adaptations, a weight loss plateau can occur. All that is required during this stage is patience accompanied by consistency. You need to stick to your goal, not to get distracted or demotivated. If this stage lasts so long, you can go for some modifications in your diet plan or your exercise plan whatever is suitable for you.

Lose Belly Fat after Pregnancy

Among women, this question is being asked a lot. What should a woman do after pregnancy to lose belly fat? It is noticed that after pregnancy, women suffer a lot from the accumulation of extra fat around their bellies. They are curious to know how long it takes to lose belly fat after pregnancy. What exercises can they do to lose belly fat, how long does it take to lose belly fat after C-section, etc.?

Well, it is a bit of a curious case to handle. From person to person the scenario may vary. The woman who encounters C-section needs to be more careful about few things. Even after a normal delivery, we cannot deal with all such women like teenage girls or other young women.

All such women cannot even adopt any random diet plan. A specialist is needed in such cases, which will analyze the whole health profile of the woman and will suggest a plan accordingly. So, all such women who want to lose belly fat after pregnancy need to care a lot before beginning because a little carefulness could lead to disastrous outcomes.

Conclusion

If you were consistent up till now, and have read it carefully then definitely you have got the answer to your question that “how long does it take to lose belly fat”.

Scientifically the duration is 2 weeks, but realistically you can see results sometimes within a week and sometimes after a month. The only thing that creates the difference is selecting the right route for yourself to achieve your goal. Your consistency and motivation add more to it and boost the outcomes accordingly. So, stop making excuses and start making an effort.

FAQs

How quickly can I lose belly fat?

It depends on the effort that you make to do so. If you are exercising regularly then you can witness results within the starting 15 – 20 days. In case if you have opted to diet, the results might take a couple of weeks or a month to get noticed clearly. What kind of foods help me lose belly fat faster?

The best way to lose belly fat fast is through proper nutrition. Eating healthy food helps us burn calories easily and also keeps our metabolism high. This leads to burning off belly fat very rapidly.

What exercise burns the most belly fat?

Different exercises contribute toward burning belly fat faster. Among them, one is cycling and the second one is cardio or running. Both these activities increase heart rate and blood circulation throughout the entire body.

As a result, there is an increased flow of oxygenated blood to the abdominal region. This makes sure that the stored fats get burnt out.

Can you lose stomach fat in 7 days?

Talking realistically, it is not possible to lose all of your extra stomach fat in 7 days. At least, two weeks are required to get clear results.

There are many diets out there and all of them say different things about how long you should be on a diet before losing weight.

It depends on your metabolism. If you eat healthy foods and exercise regularly then it will happen in time. But if you don’t follow any of these guidelines then it can take longer than expected.

What is the fastest way to lose belly fat?

The fastest and the most effective way to lose belly fat is by adopting a ketogenic diet. It not only impacts faster on your body, but it also ensures long-term results. Some people claim that they lost their belly fat in just 10 days. However, this was achieved when they followed a strict regime of eating nothing else except watermelon juice.

Doing regular workouts is another great option. You must know that as soon as you begin working out, you will feel hungry. And this hunger feeling will go away once you reach home. Also, you will find yourself craving junk food and sweets. To avoid this situation, you must stick to nutritious meals during workout sessions.

How can I reduce my tummy in 15 days?

You can adapt the Keto diet for better and effective results. You can also go for exercise regularly to get satisfactory results in 15 days. Are there any other ways to reduce belly fat?

Yes, there are several other methods available that can help you reduce belly fat. One such method is called liposuction surgery. Liposuction removes stubborn pockets of fat from various areas including the abdomen, thighs, arms, etc.

However, it has its own set of risks associated with it. For example, it may lead to complications like infections, bleeding, scarring, nerve damage, etc. Therefore, consult a doctor first before opting for this treatment.

How can I flatten my stomach naturally?

If you want to flatten your stomach naturally, you need to adopt a healthy lifestyle which will contribute a lot to achieve your goal. Maintain a balanced diet intake; avoid junk food, extra oil, etc. Exercise at least three times per week for 30 minutes each session.

Avoid alcohol consumption since it causes bloating. Drink plenty of fluids every day. Do yoga daily to tone up your muscles. Take care of your skin too. Use moisturizing creams and sunscreen lotions. These steps will ensure fast results without causing any side effects.

Is it safe to do crunches after 40 years old?

Crunches have been around forever. They were invented more than 100 years ago. Since then, they have become very popular among fitness enthusiasts. The best thing about crunches is that they burn calories and strengthen your core.

Doing crunches helps build stronger abs. So, even though you are over forty, you still can perform crunch exercises safely. Just make sure that you use proper form while performing them.