Invisible Visceral Fat in the Belly and How to Lose it

Invisible belly can be a real menace when it comes to getting truly lean and healthy. Visceral fat is stored between internal organs and compromises health in many ways.For example it can act as a store house of toxins, which can be causing you certain discomfort already. The problem with visceral fat is that you don't have to be obese to have it. Slim people can have substantial amounts of this type of fat in their belly. More than 30 millions of Americans have it. Also it is very difficult to target with conventional exercise or cardio training. 

At this point, the type of training you choose will make a huge difference in your fitness levels, body shape and composition. Popular cardio consists of 30 or more minutes of low to moderate workout. This type of training teaches the body to store fat during the recovery periods, between sessions. The fuel of choice during this type of exercise is fat and this is why this type of cardio became so popular in the first place; it is supposed to be the best approach in creating a lean and healthy body. But it doesn't. 

You see, if the body “realizes” that the type of exercise we prefer and systematically do uses fat as fuel, then it makes sense that the body will try to restore this type of fuel for the next session of training. There must be available fuel for the next cardio session and it has to be fat. So, during the recovery periods, the body stores as much fat as it can so that it is well prepared for the next session. And it will do so consistently as long as we choose a type of training that uses fat as a fuel. 

The core element of Interval training is alternating periods of high and low intensity cardio exercise. This type of training uses as fuel muscle’s glycogen. Although this may seem like a paradox, this is the most efficient way to burn fat. As with the conventional cardio, the body realizes at some point, incredibly quickly in fact, that the type of training we are accustomed to uses glycogen for fuel. So its major concern during the resting periods is to restore the glycogen stores in the body and be ready for the next session. While in this process, other types of stored energy, such as fat, that are not priority fuel, will be burned for other functions. The body uses stored fat because it "perceives" it to be not very useful. The focus is to have the glycogen stores ready for the next training session. This is why interval training triggers fat loss for up to 2 days after the actual training session. 

What most trainers failed to see in the past, is the adaptive power of the body. Our body adapts extremely quickly to what we provide it with i.e. food, exercise, stress, any kind of environmental stimulus really. Also, it tries to find the most efficient way to handle the different tasks we habitually get involved with. It doesn’t make sense, from the body’s perspective, to keep fat stored if it is not used consistently for any of our everyday activities, provided of course that we are into some kind of training regime. So now you know why you must switch your conventional cardio with interval training. It targets every possible hidden fat in the body, even visceral fat that you can’t reach with any other form of exercise.


Source: www.articlecity.com
Author:Helen Davies