Wouldn’t it be great if you could flatten your tummy with just a few changes to what you eat? It’s not as simple as that, but a few tweaks can help to boost your complete strategy.
When you’re trying to eat to flatten your tummy, you’ll need to change how you eat overall. That said, you the right tweaks here and there can make a surprising difference. This is particularly true if your diet is already relatively healthy and just needs a bit of polish.
Want to Flatten Your Tummy? Understand Metabolism
Your metabolism isn’t an organ or a system in your body. Instead, it’s a number of chemical processes that your body must complete to keep you alive. It involves all the steps your body takes to turn your food into a form of energy you can use.
After all, your body doesn’t actually run on food. It runs on the energy it makes when you give it food. That energy is used to breathe, to digest, to heal wounds, to pump your blood and to get you through the workouts that will flatten your tummy.
Your body needs a certain amount of energy to complete all those tasks that keep you alive. That minimum amount of energy is called your basal metabolic rate (BMR). Everybody has their own BMR. It depends on a huge number of different factors. These can include everything from your age gender, height, weight, genetics, how active you are and many other elements.
How Your Metabolism Can Flatten Your Tummy
We’ve all met that lucky person who can eat whatever they want without affecting their weight. For the rest of us, we need to make an effort. You need to change your lifestyle habits to flatten your tummy.
Among the reasons some people can stay slim without even trying, while the rest of us have to work hard is their metabolism. A person with a fast metabolism can blast through a higher number of calories than someone with a sluggish one. At the same time, if you have a slow metabolism, it can make it much easier for you to gain weight.
Therefore, if you have a slow metabolism, you need to know the right tactics to overcome your disadvantage. You can’t control your height, gender, age and genetic factors. However, you can eat the right foods to keep your metabolism working for you not against you.
Revving Up Your Metabolism to Flatten Your Tummy
If your metabolic rate is less than stellar, there are a few things you can do to speed it up. Your lifestyle can play a role in getting things going again. One of the best things you can do is to simply start being more active. You don’t even need to join a gym! Just head out for a brisk walk or two every day and that’s all you need to get started.
That said, here are some more tips to help you to boost your metabolism and flatten your tummy. These are best used in conjunction with regular exercise. Moreover, they’re also most effective when you combine them with the dietary tweaks to be discussed farther along.
Use the following tips to boost your metabolic rate on top of your exercise and dietary changes:
• Stay hydrated
The odds are that you’re at least partially dehydrated on most days. The vast majority of us are not drinking enough water. This is particularly true when taking our high sodium and high sugar diets into consideration. That type of lifestyle requires us to drink more water, which most of us don’t adequately do.
Keep a glass of water or a bottle of water next to you at all times and let yourself sip away at it. It is vital for energy and keeping your metabolic rate where it should be. Drink even more when you work out or when the weather is especially warm.
• Be reasonable with caffeine
A little bit of caffeine won’t hurt your metabolism. In fact, a daily cup of coffee or two (or green tea, if that’s what you prefer) can give you a metabolic boost to flatten your tummy. That said, if you drink too much caffeine, your body can build up a tolerance to it so it won’t work as effectively.
• Get the sleep you need
Make a priority of getting enough rest every night. This has a surprising impact on your ability to flatten your tummy. Sleep deprived people will typically choose the wrong foods, overeat and won’t perform as well in physical exercises. That will only hold you back from achieving your goal. Instead, focus on improving your sleep hygiene and enjoying a good snooze each night.
• Manage your stress
A bit of stress is actually good for you. It makes life interesting and keeps you motivated to achieve. However, too much stress can be quite damaging. It can also hold you back from being able to flatten your tummy. Learn how to manage your stress and keep it under control.
• Get enough vitamin D
Yes, the sunshine vitamin can actually help to flatten your tummy! If you think your metabolism is lower than it should be, consider having your vitamin D levels checked. If they’re lo, supplementing them may return your metabolism to its proper rate.
Dietary Tweaks to Flatten Your Tummy
The following are some important areas where a few small changes can be a big deal to flatten your tummy.
• Foods high in vitamin D
Keeping your vitamin D levels where they should be, is important to your metabolism. To do this, you could take supplements, but you can eat foods that contain this vital nutrient. Among those foods are: milk, soy milk, tofu, fish, eggs and mushrooms. That said, sunlight is a great source of vitamin D to flatten your tummy. Why not have a healthy snack out in the sun for a few minutes?
• Dairy
Milk and yogurt are a great source of calcium. Research has indicated that keeping up your calcium levels can help the body improve its fat metabolism. What does that mean? That yogurt in your lunch is helping to flatten your tummy! Just make sure it’s not the flavored type, which is extremely high in sugar.
• Dark green veggies
Dark green veggies such as kale, spinach, broccoli and asparagus are packed with minerals and even contain a decent amount of protein. They’re also very high in fiber. This can help your body run at its best and can help to fill you up so you can flatten your tummy more easily.
• Cold water fish
Oily fish are high in omega-3 fatty acids. They can give your metabolism meaningful weight loss support. Adding these fish to your diet also gives your body a boost of fat burning enzymes. This type of difference can be important to your ability to flatten your tummy. After all, when your body is burning fat more efficiently, you see the difference more quickly.
• Seeds and nuts
This is an area where there is a great deal of confusion regarding nutrition and weight loss. Most athletes will tell you that they love snacking on seeds and nuts. This is because they’re great for energy, nutrients and fiber. That said, because seeds and nuts are high in fats and calories, dieters often set them aside. They don’t realize the difference they can make to flatten your tummy.
This is a mistake. The key isn’t to avoid eating these foods. Instead, they must be consumed in small portions. A small handful is usually enough for all the benefits without adding drawbacks. Some almonds, walnuts, brazil nuts and pistachios, as well as sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and chia seeds are great choices to flatten your tummy.
• Extracts
The right extracts can also be very helpful in speeding up your metabolism. If you want to flatten your tummy, look into products containing green tea extract or green coffee bean extract. Research has been examining these two ingredients over the last few years. They have been starting to appear quite promising in terms of the advantage they can give to the metabolism. Moreover, the antioxidants and polyphenols they contain offer the body a range of health benefits.
As you can see, most of these dietary tweaks aren’t just great to flatten your tummy. They can also support your body as a whole to improve your overall health.
This is an important attitude to keep as you alter the way you eat to flatten your tummy. Remember that it isn’t just a matter of losing the weight right now. You must also focus on maintaining that weight loss over time. To do that, you will need to shake the mindset of thinking for the short term.
If you truly want to flatten your tummy in a permanent way, these types of dietary changes should be a major focus. They let you get the very most out of the food you’re eating both for nutrition and a healthy body weight. This can also help to ensure that this time when you lose weight, it will be the last time you need to do it.
