The balloon effect: how to get rid of a beer belly?

The balloon effect: how to get rid of a beer belly?

Why does the beer belly appear and how to fight it: flyhacks and tips inside.

The perfect figure is not easy to achieve, but it is possible. Yes, it’s hard work: you need to constantly exercise and watch what you eat. But it happens that the body is normal, but not the belly – it, round, pulls off your shirt and annoys you with its presence when you look in the mirror.

Where does it come from?

Beer belly is just a name for a type of “gaining mass”. Supposedly, it’s the name given to a belly bloated with liquid because when you drink a lot, your stomach stretches and your belly rounds out. But if the water easily leaves the body, the alcohol, whether it is beer, vodka or cocktails, is processed and with a passive lifestyle deposited in the fat – subcutaneous and visceral (around the internal organs). Cosmetic defect in the form of a ball-shaped belly – it’s half a disaster, the accumulation of fat threatens the appearance of diabetes, hypertension and coronary heart disease.

Alcohol itself is caloric, but it also increases appetite and digestibility of food. And if, for example, we talk about beer and standard snacks – nuts, chips, breadcrumbs, sausages, which also contain a lot of calories and carbohydrates, you can see that for an average trip with friends to the bar you can easily eat the daily norm of calories and not even notice.

So, alcohol consumption and weight loss can hardly be put in the same row. But even if we are not engaged in weight loss, then even here alcohol can harm. For example, doctors strongly discourage drinking before going to bed: alcoholic beverages affect the work of neurotransmitters in the brain, so you may have nightmares all night long and wake up in the morning sleep-deprived and with a strange feeling of “I want to eat, but maybe I don’t want to…”

The body perceives alcohol as a poison, and when it is ingested, it starts to fight it by stopping the breakdown of fats, proteins and carbohydrates, sending everything you ate to form a belly and flabby sides.

Scientific approach

• A University of California study found that after drinking 30 grams of pure alcohol (= a couple of glasses of beer), the body burns fat 73% slower than normal for two hours.
• Swiss scientists found out that men who drink beer for breakfast, lunch and dinner burn 450 calories less than non-drinkers during the day.
• A drunk man eats 433 calories and 9% more fat compared to a sober man.

How to get rid of it?

• The obvious advice is to reduce your alcohol intake or stop drinking during the active weight loss phase, the same goes for snack foods.
• Eat more often and in smaller portions. Add fruits and vegetables to your diet. Drink plenty of water: it will help you consume less alcohol and not get drunk quickly (unless you decide not to drink at all). And spend more calories than you consume.
• Exercise. You can head to a professional trainer to put together a program that’s right for you, or choose workouts for specific muscle groups on fitness apps.
• Make a lifestyle change. Do exercise during breaks at work, give yourself 10-15 minutes in the morning or evening – a few regular exercises will change your fitness and appearance for the better.
• Rest more often, get enough sleep and don’t stress yourself out so you don’t want to go to the bar for a beer after work.
• Be prepared to work on yourself for a long time. Normal, harmless to the body weight loss will be at a loss of 500 grams of weight per week – with a high probability it is fat. Instant results can harm the physical condition of the body, and the weight will return after some time.

To get rid of the beer belly, you will have to try and be patient. The main thing is regularity and persistence.