STAYING REALLY CENTERED, COPING, LIVING FULLY. They don’t diet, don’t count any calories, and don’t deprive themselves and know the best ways to lose belly fat fast. Here’s how to do the same — and lose your muffin top.
I wish I had a dime for every hour I’ve wasted thinking about my weight, obsessing about food, ruing spectacular binges. Like many perpetual dieters, my thoughts about guilt, shame, panic. Those neighbours were a heavy load on my mind and my body
That restrictive dieting mentality doesn’t actually slim you down — and it certainly doesn’t make you healthy. After consulting with lose fat experts, poring over the research, and quizzing all the skinny civilians I know. I concluded that the naturally slender among us actually think themselves thin.
I’ve spent the past few years trying to find out the best way to lose belly fat to transform myself into a thin person (with some success). But my brain remained the final fat frontier. So even though I’ve stabilized at a weight I’m generally happy with, a couple of months ago I decided that I could definitely stand some improvement, both above and below the neck (and especially around the middle). I made up my mind to learn to think the way a thin person does. Based on my research and a few gut guesses, I came up with the following rules to test-drive.
When eating, focus on the food. Don’t let distractions — TV, e-mail — take away from the experience. Let hunger happen. A pang is not an emergency signal from your stomach or a call to shovel food into your mouth. It’s a gentle reminder to eat. Indulge — deliberately. Go ahead and eat that (one) cookie, as long as it’s exactly the one you crave.
Want to know what is best way to burn body fat? Well. Slow down. My skinny daughter, Maggie, and my slim husband, Steve, linger over meals and take breaks; I tend to plow through my food, utensils flashing, until every bite is gone. Exercise every day to burn your fat. Thin people exercise the way heavy people diet. It’s what they do, have always done, will continue to do, as a part of daily life. Fat-thinkers see exercise as, at best, an unwelcome temporary chore to grunt through until the day after the high school reunion.
Socialize on your feet. Thin people make plans to “do something.” Fat-thinkers make plans “for dinner.” Give yourself a break after all that best ways of losing fat. Overeating or skipping a workout does not send thin people into a panic. They forgive themselves, accept imperfection, and instantly resume their lives. Fat-thinkers slide down a shame spiral that leads to pig-outs, sloth — and more guilt.
Exercise for fun! This is your easy way to lose belly fat fast. Like kids, thin adults feel the innate joy of movement and activity. They seek out new and exciting ways to get their limbs moving and hearts pumping. Create a space in your mind where negative fat-think thoughts used to be. If you didn’t brood about dieting or being overweight, how much mental room would you gain? Thin-thinkers have the mental expanse to daydream, plan outfits, rehearse important conversations, write funny Facebook updates, and who knows what else.
I determined to spend three weeks seeing whether following these best ways of losing fat rules could make me a mean, lean-thinking machine. But I reserved the option of customizing them a little so they’d work for me.
