How Long Does it Take to Get a Flat Stomach?

In this article, we’ll discuss getting a flat stomach and how long it takes to get a flat stomach.

Alas, there’s no quick fix to losing weight in any part of the body, let alone around the stomach in particular. Fortunately, there is a reliable way to shed body fat, including around the belly, and once and for all get (or restore) that flat stomach you crave.

It simply requires deliberate and consistent attention. However, thanks to new technology, there are other options other than the traditional “eat less and exercise more” programs—we’ll get to that in a minute. This technology could be a game-changer for people looking to develop a more attractive midsection.

What Makes Belly Fat Unique?

You may think that all fat is fat, but the truth is not that simple. There are actually at least two different types of fat, and the type of fat in your stomach is different than the fat found in many other parts of your body.

Most of the unwanted, excess fat people notice on their bodies is subcutaneous fat sitting directly below the skin. Of all the fat in the human body, 90% is subcutaneous fat.

Belly fat, however, is among the remaining 10% that is visceral fat. Unlike subcutaneous fat, visceral fat doesn’t sit directly below the skin but rather deep down in the abdominal cavity where it surrounds the organs.

Why is Excess Belly Fat Harmful to Your Health?

Excess belly fat doesn’t only affect your physical appearance. It also affects your physical health. A certain amount of visceral fat around the organs is necessary to provide them a safe cushion against impact from your bones, muscles and other organs.

Too much visceral fat around the organs, however, can raise your risks of getting heart disease, type 2 diabetes and certain cancers like colorectal and breast cancer.

The Science of Fat Loss

Unfortunately, the science of fat loss remains a relative mystery to researchers, who have yet to determine quite how it functions. That said, they have made many useful strides in our current understanding of fat loss.

We know that we eat primarily for nourishment and energy. Nutrients like vitamins and minerals keep the bones, muscles, organs and other parts of the body healthy and strong.

The calories in food are used to produce the energy the body needs each day to function at its best. Specifically, the body “burns” the calories in food to convert them into energy.

We also know that there are an estimated 3,500 calories in each pound of fat. Based on that figure alone, it should ostensibly take 3,500 calories more than your body needs to burn for energy to add an extra pound of body weight and, by the same token, 3,500 calories less than your body needs to burn for energy to shed an excess pound of body weight.

That means you should simply be able to calculate a set calorie deficit for your diet each week to produce your desired fat loss.

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. For starters, there are a wealth of factors besides caloric intake that also influence fat loss, including:

• Hormones
• Genetics
• Medical conditions
• Medications

That said, a calorie deficit is nevertheless a key component in losing fat in general and belly fat in particular. More on calorie deficits will be discussed below, but first, let’s tighten our focus from losing fat in general to losing belly fat in particular.

How to Lose Belly Fat

Visceral fat such as is found in the stomach responds wonderfully to diet and exercise. That’s good news.

The bad news is that you can’t target belly fat in particular. What that means is, the more you diet and exercise properly, the more you’ll see yourself starting to lose weight in other parts of your body. Keep that up long enough, and eventually, you’ll start to notice that stomach of yours getting flatter.

The reason for this is simple: your body generally sheds subcutaneous fat before it sheds visceral fat, and more particularly, belly fat. That’s because the human body places greater value on visceral fat, and particularly belly fat than subcutaneous fat, as it has evolved over centuries to protect itself from famine.

Moreover, different body types hold onto fat more in particular areas than others and lose fat from different areas first.

People with a pear-shaped body type, for example, tend to hold onto fat around the hips and thighs, while people with an apple-shaped body type tend to hold onto fat more around their waists and bellies. That means people with apple-shaped bodies may well take longer to lose belly fat and get a flat stomach than people with pear-shaped bodies, all else being equal.

How Long Does it Take to Lose Belly Fat?

Given these facts, just as it takes different lengths of time for different people to lose fat in general, how long it takes to lose belly fat and get a flat stomach is likewise different for different people.

Further adding to these factors, each body’s rate of fat loss changes as the body loses weight, as the body is always recalculating how much fat to store for potential future uses based on current circumstances. As such, your rate of fat loss might increase or decrease as you lose weight, and it might plateau.

Creating a Calorie Deficit

There are two ways to create a calorie deficit necessary to lose fat in general and around the stomach in particular:

• Eat fewer calories.
• Exercise more.

If you cut 300 calories out of your daily diet and burn off 300 calories each day from exercise, you’ll create a daily calorie deficit of 600 calories and a weekly calorie deficit of 4,200 calories. The larger your daily and weekly calorie deficit, the faster you will lose body fat, including, eventually, the fat around your stomach.

How long that “eventually” is, exactly, is another story.

How to Get a Flat Stomach Faster

As you now know, one way to speed up the pace of losing body—and belly—fat is to increase your calorie deficit. The question then becomes how to produce the largest calorie deficit possible without undernourishing or overexerting yourself.

The answer is to choose the highest-calorie foods to cut out and perform the types of exercise that burn the most calories. In this way, you can reap the greatest results with the smallest effort.

It terms of diet, the highest-calorie foods also conveniently happen to be the lowest in nutrients, those being high-sugar and deep-fried foods. What’s more, foods like these and others low in nutrients and high in preservatives and other artificial ingredients also get in the way of losing weight by requiring the body to eat larger portions and more snacks and meals in order to get the basic daily nutrients it needs.

By the same token, the more nourishing the foods you choose to eat, the less food you need to eat to get your daily nutrition.

Emsculpt to for Toning and Fat Loss

Soine Dermatology offers emsculpt to both strengthen abdominal muscles and help with fat loss. It’s a new and additional way to target fat along the midsection.

As a matter of fact, in one of our previous articles that addressed emsculpt treatment benefits, we discussed a study of 33 patients who received four, 30-minute emsculpt treatments.

After one month, the study showed an average fat reduction of 19%. And the highest reduction of fat was around 26.6%. The fat loss, coupled with an increase in abdominal strength and muscle tone, led to a customer satisfaction rate of 91%.

Consider the results of combining emsculpt with the more traditional ways of slimming down—eating healthy, and exercise. The results could be a game-changer for many.

If you are struggling with your midsection and would like to slim up while toning your abs, let’s chat. We think we could help you achieve lasting results you will love with the help of non-invasive emsculpt.