The other day my girlfriend was feeling sick, so I decided to take my five month old son Lucas out on the town to give her a break.After killing a couple hours wandering around different stores at the mall it was time for both of us to eat so we stopped by the local Rich Tree restaurant located in the mall.While feeding him I couldn't help but over hear the woman at the table next to mine complaining about how it's impossible for her to lose weight around her stomach and love handles.If you look around you'll seen an alarmingly increasing number of people who are having an uneven distribution of fat in their midsection.One of the most common questions I get as a personal trainer is "Paul what exercise should I do to lose weight around my waist?".Well, the truth is there is not really any exercise that's going to target losing fat in a particular area of your body.You can do crunches and every other abdominal exercise out there and you aren't going to target losing fat in your stomach.But the good news is there IS something you can do to help get that belt tighter quickly.This is a pretty big topic, so I've broken it down the article into two parts, this is the first part of the article.First we have to look at why exactly someone gains more fat around their midsection then other parts of their body.We'll look at the two most common causes of increased belly fat.The first cause is unbalanced cortisol levels.For those of you who aren't big nerdy book worms like myself cortisol is a hormone released by your adrenal glands.To keep it simple cortisol's main job is to get your body ready for stress, it's the guy that starts the process that causes your increased heart rate, sweaty palms, dilated pupils and much more when your body is under some sort of stress(Fox, 2002).There have been entire books written on the subject so I'll only be able to scratch the surface here, I'll give you a quick summary.Most people these days are under a lot of stress, how many of you have any of the following in your life; you work very long hours, get to bed much later then you should, you don't sleep as many hours as you should, you sit in front of a computer and TV for hours, you have poor nutrition, you have relationship issues with friends, family and co-worker.These are just a few of the types of stress that can be present in someone's life.Most people think of stress as only mental stress forgetting there are a number of other types of stress your body is under.Most people don't realize that stress is cumulative in your body(Wilson, 2001, Chek, 2004)).Most people have so many types of stress occurring throughout their day eventually your adrenal glands can't produce enough cortisol because they're so overworked.So what does this have to do with adding fat to the "spare tire" area? Well one of the side effects when cortisol is released is increased fat storage.And specifically this fat tends to go straight to the front of someone's gut.So what can you do to jump start getting that fat of your belly permanently? We want to start getting your cortisol levels balanced.What you can do to help this process is to start decreasing the stresses in your life.Obviously everyone reading this article perceives stress differently, and has different types of stress in their lives, and I can't cover all the types of stress out there.So I'll go through the most common problems I see as a personal trainer.1) Make sure that you're in bed no later than 10.30, and wake up in the morning when it begins to get bright outside.If you're going to bed around midnight or later you will be creating problems with your cortisol levels because your body releases hormones such as cortisol based on cycles of the sun.So even if you're getting 8 hours sleep every night and it's at the wrong time you are creating issues with your hormones leading to increase fat around your waste.2) Identify and write down all the people and situations that create the most mental stress in your life.Begin to work on strategies to decrease the stress these things/people are creating in your life.In James Wilson's book "Adrenal Fatigue" he discusses that there are 3 options or a combination of these options; eliminate the person/situation creating the stress, change the situation to create less stress, or change your perspective of the situation to create less stress in your life.3) Take time to yourself and relax.And I don't mean sitting on the couch to watch television or a movie, although there is nothing wrong with taking some time to do this, it is not quiet time.Try to take 10-30 minutes a day to have some quiet time; read, meditate relaxation exercises, take a bath, etc.4) Laugh; most of us get so wrapped up with all the serious things in life, we forget to enjoy and laugh multiple times every day.You don't have to make all these changes at once, pick out one that you feel will be easiest to implement into your current lifestyle.Once you become comfortable with that habit, pick out another one and start working on that.If you're interested in learning more check out "part 2" of this article as well as visiting our website at http.//www.Peak-personaltraining.Com for loads of free resources to help you accomplish your goals.
Thursday, September 6, 2012
How to Target Fat Around Your Midsection - Part 1
The other day my girlfriend was feeling sick, so I decided to take my five month old son Lucas out on the town to give her a break.After killing a couple hours wandering around different stores at the mall it was time for both of us to eat so we stopped by the local Rich Tree restaurant located in the mall.While feeding him I couldn't help but over hear the woman at the table next to mine complaining about how it's impossible for her to lose weight around her stomach and love handles.If you look around you'll seen an alarmingly increasing number of people who are having an uneven distribution of fat in their midsection.One of the most common questions I get as a personal trainer is "Paul what exercise should I do to lose weight around my waist?".Well, the truth is there is not really any exercise that's going to target losing fat in a particular area of your body.You can do crunches and every other abdominal exercise out there and you aren't going to target losing fat in your stomach.But the good news is there IS something you can do to help get that belt tighter quickly.This is a pretty big topic, so I've broken it down the article into two parts, this is the first part of the article.First we have to look at why exactly someone gains more fat around their midsection then other parts of their body.We'll look at the two most common causes of increased belly fat.The first cause is unbalanced cortisol levels.For those of you who aren't big nerdy book worms like myself cortisol is a hormone released by your adrenal glands.To keep it simple cortisol's main job is to get your body ready for stress, it's the guy that starts the process that causes your increased heart rate, sweaty palms, dilated pupils and much more when your body is under some sort of stress(Fox, 2002).There have been entire books written on the subject so I'll only be able to scratch the surface here, I'll give you a quick summary.Most people these days are under a lot of stress, how many of you have any of the following in your life; you work very long hours, get to bed much later then you should, you don't sleep as many hours as you should, you sit in front of a computer and TV for hours, you have poor nutrition, you have relationship issues with friends, family and co-worker.These are just a few of the types of stress that can be present in someone's life.Most people think of stress as only mental stress forgetting there are a number of other types of stress your body is under.Most people don't realize that stress is cumulative in your body(Wilson, 2001, Chek, 2004)).Most people have so many types of stress occurring throughout their day eventually your adrenal glands can't produce enough cortisol because they're so overworked.So what does this have to do with adding fat to the "spare tire" area? Well one of the side effects when cortisol is released is increased fat storage.And specifically this fat tends to go straight to the front of someone's gut.So what can you do to jump start getting that fat of your belly permanently? We want to start getting your cortisol levels balanced.What you can do to help this process is to start decreasing the stresses in your life.Obviously everyone reading this article perceives stress differently, and has different types of stress in their lives, and I can't cover all the types of stress out there.So I'll go through the most common problems I see as a personal trainer.1) Make sure that you're in bed no later than 10.30, and wake up in the morning when it begins to get bright outside.If you're going to bed around midnight or later you will be creating problems with your cortisol levels because your body releases hormones such as cortisol based on cycles of the sun.So even if you're getting 8 hours sleep every night and it's at the wrong time you are creating issues with your hormones leading to increase fat around your waste.2) Identify and write down all the people and situations that create the most mental stress in your life.Begin to work on strategies to decrease the stress these things/people are creating in your life.In James Wilson's book "Adrenal Fatigue" he discusses that there are 3 options or a combination of these options; eliminate the person/situation creating the stress, change the situation to create less stress, or change your perspective of the situation to create less stress in your life.3) Take time to yourself and relax.And I don't mean sitting on the couch to watch television or a movie, although there is nothing wrong with taking some time to do this, it is not quiet time.Try to take 10-30 minutes a day to have some quiet time; read, meditate relaxation exercises, take a bath, etc.4) Laugh; most of us get so wrapped up with all the serious things in life, we forget to enjoy and laugh multiple times every day.You don't have to make all these changes at once, pick out one that you feel will be easiest to implement into your current lifestyle.Once you become comfortable with that habit, pick out another one and start working on that.If you're interested in learning more check out "part 2" of this article as well as visiting our website at http.//www.Peak-personaltraining.Com for loads of free resources to help you accomplish your goals.
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