Comment on Can I lose a beer belly working out one day a week?
superkret@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
No. I’m currently in the process of losing my beer belly.
It’s going really well, here’s what I do:
- only drink water, nothing with alcohol or calories
- no snacks or sweets
- whey shake for breakfast, small lunch (sandwich) and a normal-sized supper.
- walk 30 miles per week, generally stay physically active, commute by bicycle.
The good thing is that it works without counting calories or weighing myself.
The bad thing is that I’m hungry half the day, but I figure that’s my body burning fat, so I even kinda enjoy it.
I expect my belly to be gone by midsummer. There’s a FUCKTON of calories stored in a beer belly. A few situps won’t change much.
XeroxCool@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Have you been tracking your weight to confirm it’s working? Are you eating on a consistent schedule? I don’t think you should be hungry if you are. The reason why being hungry concerns me is that being hungry all the time can mean your body is in a starvation mode rather than a fasting or fat burning mode. Instead of burning fat, your body slows down and weakens your other bodily functions to conserve energy and survive a famine rather than look a little sexier.
I used to be hungry upon waking up until remote work in 2020 let me casually skip breakfast. I woke up later and started waiting for lunch. I haven’t regularly eaten it since then despite going back to an office. I rarely feel hungry in the morning unless I have something late (later than my general noon-8pm eating timeframe) and generally sugary (immediate blood sugar spike, leading to higher fat storage and followed by a blood sugar drop). If your body knows when your next meal is, it should be able to hold off on the hungry feeling until then.
superkret@feddit.org 1 week ago
I’m tracking progress by trying on various old pants that have stopped fitting me one after another in the past, and the waistline is shrinking fast.
I eat on a regular schedule, but I’m also at a big caloric deficit. There’s no way to do that without getting hungry.
“Starvation mode” is a myth, by the way. Or rather, your body enters it whenever you’re losing weight. But it can’t sustain its weight when you stay active and eating little.
Don’t worry, as long as I can ride my bicycle for hours on end, concentrate at my job, and stay healthy, I know I’m doing fine. I’ll reconsider my approach when I’m starting to feel weak, or getting brain fog.