7 Effective Ways to Reduce Your Pot Belly Naturally

If you stand up straight and look straight
down, and you can’t see your toes, then
you probably have a pot belly. Like most
people, your mind probably jumps straight
to solutions like ‘more exercise’ or ‘a better
diet’ as ways to reduce your pot belly
naturally.
But there are actually a lot of things that
contribute to a pot belly, and some of them
are an easy fix.

Here are 7 effective ways to reduce your
pot belly naturally.

1. Good Posture – The Quickest Way to
Reduce Your Pot Belly Naturally
Stand up ‘straight’, and you’ll immediately
see that your belly looks flatter.
Try it and see.
Posture is one of the easiest and most
natural things to change, that will
noticeably reduce your pot belly
naturally. To find your ideal standing
posture, try this:
Stand with your
feet slightly apart
Make sure your
knees are
‘soft’ (not locked
out)
Point your
tailbone down
toward the
ground (push
hips slightly
forward)
Lift your ribs up
and straighten
your spine
Roll your
shoulders back,
and then down
Pull your chin
back
Lengthen your
neck, as if your
head was pulling
toward the
ceiling.
What sorts of cues or reminders could you
use to help you improve your posture?

2. Strengthen Your Core Muscles
Good posture is supported by strong
muscles – especially your core muscles.
Try doing pot belly exercises every week to
work your core.
And there are actually many different core
muscles:
your lower
(transverse)
abdominals
your ‘6-pack’
muscles (rectus
abdominus)
your diaphragm
your pelvic floor
your multifidus
(deep muscle
along your
spine).
As you probably know, certain types of
physical training can help to strengthen
and stabilize these muscles as an
important part of improving posture.
Actually, the double benefit of exercise is
building and maintaining muscle mass –
and this means a healthier metabolism and
greater fat-burning capacity.
Common core strengthening and stabilising
exercises include pilates, yoga, properly
performed strength exercises, horse riding,
Swiss ball exercises and balance-focussed
sports (surfing, skiing etc).

3. Manage Your Alcohol Intake
Reduce your alcohol intake and you will
absolutely reduce your pot belly. At
Downsize Me, we’ve found that our clients
who regularly drink alcohol have bigger
bellies than those who don’t.
During the program, those previous ‘regular
drinkers’ lose more inches off their waist –
they tend to lose their pot belly fast.
Why? Well, it’s mostly due to the fact that
they’re no longer drinking excess, empty
calories. After all, that a bottle of wine is
nearly a meals’ worth of calories.
Then of course, alcohol makes you hungry,
and your inhibitions melt away, so then you
reach for your fourth slice of super
supreme pizza. In other words, you end up
adding a full meal to that bottle of wine
and that gives you a huge calorie load.
If that wasn’t bad enough, when you have
too much alcohol and food together,
then your metabolism lets you down.
That’s because alcohol is easy to burn, so
your body starts working on that right
away, at the expense of everything else.
After you’ve burnt off the alcohol, your
body will start on the next easiest thing to
break down – carbohydrates. Proteins will
be used up next. Lastly, your body will
metabolize fat.
So in conclusion, when alcohol is at the
start of the metabolic queue and your
metabolism is sluggish, then a big part of
the meal you ate with the wine will
probably be stored as fat.
Just to back that up, several studies also
show that the majority of alcohol calories
consumed seem to be deposited as belly
fat (1).
Sigh. It seems so unfair.

4. Improve Your Water Balance
You easily can get rid of that bloated,
puffy, ‘water retention’ feeling
by drinking the right amount of water and
managing your salt intake.
After all, your body likes equilibrium, that
nice balanced state. If you don’t help your
body by getting that balance right, your
body will try to regulate water and salt
levels on it’s own, via the process of
osmosis.
Consequently, if you eat a lot of salty food
and don’t balance that out with enough
water, your body will take up and hold onto
water, in an attempt to dilute the salt in
your cells.
So if you’re feeling like a puff ball, try
reducing your salt intake, and increasing
water intake .

5. Watch Your Portion Size
You may not realize that portion size
affects your pot belly in two ways. And
portion size is one of those things that take
a bit more time and effort to get right.
Consider the short term and longer term
scenarios.
In the short term, eating until overfull
causes your stomach to expand
temporarily and stick out. It’s not rocket
science to conclude that simply eating too
much at one time will give you a ‘food
baby’.
Luckily, that’s a temporary feeling.
But in the long term, overeating leads to
fat storage. Therefore, your pot belly is
gradually increased by regular overeating.
This means that you need to watch your
portion size over each week, and try to
listen to your body’s natural signals for
fullness, so you know when you’ve had
enough.
By managing portion size 85% of the time,
you’ll be well on your way to shrinking your
pot belly.

6. Reduce Stress
Yes, stress belly is actually a thing. If you
reduce stress and manage it better, and
your pot belly will start to shrink.
That’s because when you get stressed,
levels of the stress hormone cortisol
increase, your body dumps insulin into your
blood. This process encourages fat storage
and inhibits fat burning.
Why? Well, in ancient times, this fat
storage process helped us save fat stores
for ‘lean times’.
But let’s face it – we don’t really have
many ‘lean times’ these days – just lots of
stress.
Stress can come from many sources such
as:
processed food
and additives
blue lights from
electronic
devices including
phones and
tables
chemicals (e.g.
body care
products)
other toxins, and
of course,
emotional
challenges.
All of these types of stressors can promote
belly fat.
If you follow a hormone balancing eating
plan like the one we use at Downsize Me,
then you can actually lower cortisol levels
and reduce your stress belly a lot quicker.

7. Check Your Carbohydrate Intake
Carb intake is relatively easy to manage,
and makes a big difference to your pot
belly.
Insulin resistance is one of the biggest
health issues of the modern era.
Of course, there are many contributing
factors, but a big one is the fact that too
many carbohydrates – especially refined,
processed, sugary carbohydrates – all of
which can cause an imbalance in insulin
and promote fat storage (2).
Unfortunately, there is a double whammy
here – ageing means an increased risk of
insulin resistance. In other words, you
probably need to consider your
carbohydrate intake a little more carefully
after the age of 40.
One trick is to make sure you get the right
balance of carbs, proteins and fats at each
meal.
Why? There are two reasons:
If you eat a high carbohydrate diet without
the right balance of proteins and fats, you’ll
get hungry quicker because:
there are no
‘satisfying’
elements in the
meal (proteins
and fats) that
would lower your
blood sugar
then, the high-
carb meal
is quickly
metabolized,
leaving you
empty and
hungry, sooner,
and
the high
carbohydrate
content
spikes your blood
sugar temporarily
which gives you
energy. When
that wears
off you start
looking for
something sweet
or starchy to
increase
your blood sugar
again.
As you can see, it’s important to get your
meal balanced properly to avoid those
situations.
With all that said and done, is there one
thing you could do this week to start
shrinking your pot belly?
Let us know what you will do in the
comments below.