I don’t binge eat, I exercise 3 times a week, or as much as my schedule permits having a 2yold, work, partner and social commitments. I don’t drink. Still I get belly fat now that I am 35+. Wtf? Haas anyone solved this? Did you change diet? Sleep more? Exercise differently? Lower carbs? By how much? Please help me lemmee
Well assuming you’re medically in good health, it’s really calories in calories out. Not saying changing your macros won’t have an impact, but it might not be the biggest fix. And you’d probably be getting more sleep if you could, so let’s just skip that. So it’s really eating a little less and exercising a little more/better. Generally people with visible abs and our age are usually a little hungry.
So on the calories out side, it’s changing how you exercise. How much is weight training? How long you going for/what’s the intensity? Cardio is valuable but more difficult for impacting weight loss if you’re already in good shape.
Personally I’m not joe 6 pack, but I did notice a substantial difference once I stopped ducking around 30 mins every other day and started doing a program from some trainer on YouTube.
To lose weight do you need to take a look at what you eat, how much you eat and how often you eat. 70% is diet and 30% is exercise when losing fat. A good way to keep track and get an understanding is by writing everything down, what you ate, how much, if you did any exercise, what kind of exercise, if you were sitting on the sofa all day or were you moving around and so on. You can also write down your weight and measurements to see if it change up or down depending on what you did every week. It is easier to fight the enemy if you know what it is.
What I do to keep my weight: I usually do a check after my meal on a scale between 1 and 10 how I feel, 1 is starved, 5 is neither hungry or full, 10 is so full your stomach hurts. I always aim for 6 or 7, above that and I ate too much. No sugar like candy, soda, restaurant meals or any other stuff with added sugar and I only eat three times a day. I only drink or eat out when I am with friends or coworkers.
Our bodies adapt so you should surprise it now and then to get ride of the fat. Experiment and keep track on what you do and your results so that you can actually see what works best for you, we are all different after all, and losing or keeping your weight is all about will power and habits. you need to find a good balance otherwise you may never stick to the new routines.
Lose* losing* lost* easiest way to remember is to imagine loost which is not a word
Overweight comes from food mostly, training has a smaller effect on that. What helped me was to track calorie intake. I use the app “Waistline” for it. It also showed me that my protein intake was on the low side and I learned, that eating not enough protein makes me more hungry, which lead to eating too much calories.
Aging is a removed.
The best trick I’ve found is swimming, especially front crawl. It’s a crazy efficient workout that’s easy on my old man (38) body.
Cycling is also great but might be hard to fit into your lifestyle (I live in a city and without kids so it’s pretty easy for me to bike places rather than drive.) I also play soccer a few times a week but again, might be hard to fit into your lifestyle.
That being said, working out can only do so much. At the end of the day, it’s a calories in calories out game. Some stuff is surprisingly fattening, might be worth writing down your diet for a couple of weeks and checking with a nutritionalist (maybe chatgpt?) Or doing some research on it. We generally underestimate how much we eat and how much of it is junk, especially when our youthful bodies let us get away with so much.
Good luck!
PS:, for a great demo of how we underestimate our diets, I present:
Great ideas thank you! I definitely want to do more swimming. And I can bike in my city from and to daycare/work.
Will check the tube video. And recording diet is a good idea too thank you!
deleted by creator
How did you learn that? Lol I thought that was obvious. How much should you push?
deleted by creator
If there’s actual unexplained weight gain it’s worth getting your bloods and stuff done in the doctors. Rule out some contributing factor like thyroid or something.
After that it’s not about exercise unless your out-exercising your intake, which most people aren’t unless they’re really monitoring and making sure.
So check your diet, particularly alcohol and unnecessary crap. If you want to find out really how much you’re eating, you could track for a while and see if you learn anything. I know I did once I did that, if was quite illuminating.
I am older than you and don’t have fat belly. Few questions:
- What do you eat?
- how much you eat per meal?
- how often do you eat?
- what exercise you do?
- do you drink a lot of beer.
- do you do core strength exercises?
If you have a burger with fries and a pint of beer every day, it’s normal.
For me postural and core strength exercises are more effective for belly fat, but the real difference is the diet. Less alcohol, almost no fried food, moderate carbs before sleeping, a good balanced diet (i.e. eat everything but cooked healthy).
I eat quite a lot of carbs in general (I am italian), but also a lot of soups, vegetables and extra virgin olive oil as primary fat in my diet (again, I am italian). I don’t drink coca cola or similar, I do not count calories, as it is counterproductive (at least for me)
I’ve lost over 100 lbs in my 30s, it’s actually very simple it just takes dedication.
First, accept that there is a reason you’re getting fatter. Many companies spend a lot of money trying to convince us that losing or gaining weight is a magical process and they sell the diet/pill/book/exercise/app that will fix the problem.
We know why weight changes and it’s deadass simple:
Calories in - calories burned = weight difference
That’s it.
Something as simple as eating a slightly larger bowl of cereal can put you 200 calories over a day, and there are only 3500 calories in a pound.
So step #1 accept that weight changes are simple. And that you can change your weight simply by taking in fewer calories than you burn.
Step #2 track everything you eat. Everything. Do it for a week and figure out how many calories you’re taking in. I can guarantee you’re eating a lot more than you realize.
Then step #3 spend two weeks eating 100 calories a day less than you ate previously. Weigh yourself at the end of the two weeks. If you lost weight keep going, if not take off another daily 100 calories. Repeat this process until you achieve your ideal weight. That’s it.
Exercise can help but we don’t burn nearly as many calories exercising as the marketing departments of fitness companies tell us we do. So focus on the intake side of the equation. I exercise every day and I don’t factor that in to my calorie target at all.
Maybe it’s even more exercise. My dad exercises every day with exceptions here and there, and he still has a belly. It’s not huge, but he’s maintaining weight now, not losing it even with all that.
Time to say goodbye to being young, there’s no point in denying you’re an old person now. Your body started failing you and it’s going to get much worse. No energy, pain in random parts of your body. That’s what being 35+ is.