Struggling with stubborn belly fat? You’re not alone. Knowing how to lose belly fat can be tough, as your body often resists fat loss due to natural survival mechanisms.
Poor dieting practices, stress, and unhealthy lifestyle habits can exacerbate the issue, leading to cravings, hormonal imbalances, and stalled weight loss.
Explore the science behind how your body stores fat and discover six practical tips to get rid of belly fat and achieve the healthy weight you’ve been aiming for.
What causes belly fat?
Excess belly fat often reflects deeper imbalances in your body’s ability to burn fat, which is often related to dietary and lifestyle habits.
A common root cause is insulin resistance, a metabolic imbalance in which your cells stop responding properly to insulin, a hormone that regulates blood sugar and stimulates fat storage.
To compensate, the pancreas secretes more insulin. As insulin levels rise, your body stores more fat, particularly visceral fat around the organs, while inhibiting the use of stored fat for energy.
Other contributors include chronic stress, poor sleep, and inflammatory foods, which can lead to hormonal imbalances that keep the body in fat-storage mode.
Over time, this can lead to increased abdominal fat, a slower metabolism, systemic inflammation, and a higher body fat percentage, even if you eat relatively little.
Additionally, visceral belly fat is hormonally active and increases levels of estrogen and other hormones that perpetuate weight gain, particularly in the lower abdomen and hips. This creates a feedback loop that makes it difficult to lose fat without addressing the underlying hormonal imbalances.
Watch the video below to learn some of the best strategies to burn body fat.
Hormones and fat-burning
The three primary hormones determining whether your body burns or stores fat are insulin, cortisol, and estrogen.
When these hormones are elevated, they can suppress fat-burning hormones, such as growth hormone, glucagon, insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), and active thyroid hormone (T3), making it challenging to burn subcutaneous or visceral fat.
Even mild increases in insulin levels, typically triggered by frequent eating, dietary carbohydrates, or stress, can inhibit fat burning entirely.
Research published in BMC Medicine highlights that insulin stimulates lipogenesis—the metabolic fat storage process—while simultaneously inhibiting lipolysis, which promotes the breakdown of stored body fat.1
Elevated cortisol levels, often resulting from chronic stress or inadequate sleep, can trigger muscle breakdown into amino acids. The liver then converts these amino acids into glucose, leading to increased fat storage, particularly in the abdominal region.
Additionally, estrogen dominance, often influenced by dietary and environmental factors, promotes fat accumulation, particularly around the hips and lower abdomen.
In contrast, when insulin is kept low and cortisol is balanced, fat-burning hormones become active again.
How to lose belly fat
To successfully shift your body into fat-burning mode, it’s crucial to make meaningful dietary and lifestyle changes that support metabolic health.
Here are six tips to help restore metabolic balance and support natural fat loss.
1. Start Healthy Keto®
Following Healthy Keto® is an effective strategy for reducing belly fat by addressing hormonal imbalances, such as high insulin and cortisol levels.
Unlike traditional ketogenic diets, Healthy Keto focuses on food quality, not just a low carbohydrate intake.
This advanced version of keto eliminates processed foods high in refined carbohydrates, sugars, and seed oils and prioritizes high-quality whole foods such as pasture-raised eggs, wild-caught fish, grass-fed meats, and organic, non-genetically modified vegetables.
These whole foods support stable insulin levels without the harmful additives found in many processed diet foods, which can trigger insulin spikes and promote the formation of advanced glycation end products (AGEs).
AGEs form when sugars react with proteins or fats, creating sticky, oxidative compounds that contribute to inflammation, tissue damage, and metabolic dysfunction. Elevated AGEs are linked to an increased risk of insulin resistance and associated visceral belly fat.
2. Practice intermittent fasting
Frequent snacking triggers insulin release, no matter what you eat.
Eating less often by incorporating intermittent fasting helps lower insulin levels, activate fat-burning hormones, and stimulate autophagy, which is the body’s natural process of detoxification and cellular regeneration.
“Fasting isn’t about eating less, it’s about eating less frequently,” explains Dr. Berg. “Once the body adapts to using fat for fuel, hunger and cravings diminish, making it easier to stay consistent and burn stubborn fat.”
3. Balance protein intake
Protein supports satiety and muscle maintenance, but consuming too much at once can spike insulin levels and subsequently lead to weight gain.
It’s recommended to aim for 3 to 6 ounces (85 to 170 grams) per meal, paired with healthy fats and non-starchy vegetables to support metabolic balance and enhance fat burning.
4. Practice stress management techniques
Chronic stress can significantly raise cortisol levels, which explains why managing stress is crucial for reducing belly fat and restoring hormone balance.
Adopting simple daily habits, such as getting more sun exposure, is one powerful way to support cortisol balance.
Just 40 minutes of sun exposure can help your body naturally produce up to 20,000 IUs of vitamin D, a fat-soluble hormone that promotes cortisol balance and healthy insulin function.
Other stress-reducing strategies include walking in nature, limiting screen time, especially before bed, practicing good sleep hygiene, deep breathing, and gentle stretching exercises.
These practices help activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which naturally counters cortisol release and supports recovery, digestion, and fat burning.
Certain foods can also promote a healthier stress response. Nutritional yeast provides natural vitamin B1 to support adrenal function, while leafy green vegetables and fermented foods can provide magnesium and potassium to promote relaxation and balanced moods.
5. Prioritize fat-burning foods
Certain foods can help you lose belly fat by supporting hormonal balance and enhancing liver function.
Apple cider vinegar (ACV) is one of the most effective natural options to support fat burning. Its active compound, acetic acid, helps improve insulin sensitivity and enhances blood sugar uptake into the muscles, which helps reduce insulin spikes that drive fat storage.
Eggs and salmon are keto-approved choices and rich sources of essential nutrients, such as choline and omega-3 fatty acids, which can enhance liver health, improve insulin sensitivity, and reduce inflammation.
Sauerkraut and cruciferous vegetables support gut health, efficient digestion, help lower cortisol, and aid in breaking down liver fat. Additionally, foods such as avocados, sprouts, and asparagus may contribute to fat loss by supporting detoxification and proper insulin regulation.
6. Limit alcohol consumption
According to a study published in the Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism, alcohol consumption is associated with increased visceral fat accumulation and a higher risk of metabolic syndrome.2
Additionally, the researchers noted that “Light-to-moderate drinking, which has been regarded to lower the risk of cardiovascular diseases, did not show a protective effect on adipose tissue accumulation.”
Even small amounts of alcohol can interfere with fat loss. While alcohol doesn’t directly spike insulin or get stored as fat, it places an immediate burden on the liver, which must prioritize detoxifying alcohol over burning fat. This delays fat oxidation for up to 72 hours after drinking.
Alcohol also contributes to fatty liver disease, hormonal imbalances, and the depletion of key nutrients such as vitamin B1 and folate. This disruption can impair metabolic pathways, leading to symptoms such as fatigue, anxiety, and increased sugar cravings.
Tips to overcome a weight loss plateau
Losing belly fat isn’t always a steady process. If your results have stalled, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing something wrong.
Many people hit a weight loss plateau because their bodies are still recovering from years of metabolic dysfunction, particularly if insulin resistance is involved.
When weight loss slows, small, strategic changes can help. Reducing carbohydrate intake below 20 grams can help lower insulin even further and push the body deeper into fat-burning.
Tightening your eating window with intermittent fasting is another powerful strategy. Shifting from two meals to one meal a day (OMAD) can significantly reduce insulin levels and increase metabolic flexibility.
In addition, occasional prolonged fasting, such as 48-hour fasts once a month, can help reset insulin sensitivity and break through persistent weight loss barriers.
Incorporating more exercises that engage the abdominal muscles can also improve core strength, help tone the midsection, and burn belly fat.
High-intensity interval training (HIIT) or sprint interval training (SIT) can accelerate fat burning by triggering growth hormones and building lean muscle. These short, intense bursts of exercise, followed by proper recovery, support visceral fat loss and metabolic health.
Consuming too much dietary fat throughout the day can also hinder progress. While healthy fats are essential on a ketogenic diet, excess intake may cause your body to prioritize burning the fat you eat rather than tapping into stored fat.
How long does it take to lose belly fat?
How quickly you can lose fat depends on your metabolic health, how consistently you apply fat-burning strategies, and your body type.
Factors such as chronic stress, past dieting, hormonal imbalances, liver dysfunction, and gut inflammation can all slow this shift.
However, once fully adapted to Healthy Keto combined with intermittent fasting, most people report a steady weight loss of about 1 to 2 pounds per week.
The key is to stay consistent, give your body time to adapt, and focus on restoring metabolic balance rather than forcing weight loss. When you focus on getting healthy first, weight loss follows naturally.
Key takeaways
Learning how to lose belly fat requires a shift in perspective from trying to lose weight to get healthy to focusing on getting healthy to lose weight.
Adopting a nutritious low-carbohydrate eating plan, such as Healthy Keto, reducing stress, practicing intermittent fasting, and incorporating regular exercise can help restore metabolic functions.
This supports natural hormone balance and promotes more efficient fat burning, helping you get rid of stubborn belly fat and maintain a healthy weight long-term.
FAQ
1. How can I lose belly fat fast?
Combining a nutritious low-carb diet plan such as Healthy Keto®, intermittent fasting, and high-intensity interval training (HIIT) is one of the best strategies to lose belly fat fast.
2. What burns the most belly fat?
Combining targeted core exercises, HIIT, a nutritious diet, such as Healthy Keto, intermittent fasting, and effective stress management can help your body burn fat efficiently.
3. What workout is best for belly fat?
Short bursts of intense exercise, such as HIIT and strength training, compound movements like squats, push-ups, and lunges, and targeted exercises such as the dead bug are also highly effective.
4. What are the best fat-burning foods?
Taking apple cider vinegar before meals and prioritizing nutrient-dense, low-carb, whole-food options, including eggs, salmon, olive oil, leafy green vegetables, and fermented foods, can support liver health, metabolic functions, hormone balance, and healthy weight regulation.
5. Does walking burn belly fat?
Yes. Brisk walking can help reduce visceral fat over time, especially when combined with a nutritious low-carbohydrate diet, intermittent fasting, and adequate sleep.
Sources
- https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-018-1225-1 ↩︎
- https://karger.com/anm/article-abstract/60/1/52/40511/Alcohol-Consumption-and-Its-Relation-to-Visceral ↩︎
