What's the best exercise to lose fat around your belly?

Having excess fat around the belly can increase your risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

This is why it's important to lose fat around your middle. But what's the best way to do that?

Can you target fat around the belly with exercise?

The short answer is no you cannot target fat round your middle with exercise.

While exercises like sit-ups and crunches can help strengthen your abdominal muscles, they will not significantly reduce the fat that sits on top of them.

That’s because it’s impossible to reduce fat in a specific area by exercising that body part alone.

How can I lose fat around my middle?

The only way to lose fat around your middle is to lose overall fat from your body. You can do this by being more active and eating healthy foods.

The reason you lose fat when you move more and eat less energy (calories) is because your body uses up more calories than it has creating what’s called a ‘calorie deficit’.

Over time, this helps your body burn stored fat called triglycerides, including fat from around your belly.

But when your body needs fuel during exercise, it uses triglycerides from all over your body, not just from the area you’re exercising.

• Find out how many calories to eat a day if you’re trying to lose weight.

Which exercises support overall fat loss?

The most effective type of exercise to help you lose fat overall – including fat around your middle – is aerobic exercise.

When you do aerobic exercise, your heart works harder to pump blood around your body to deliver oxygen to your muscles as you exercise.

To do this, your body needs energy, which it gets from burning (metabolising) fat stored in your body.

As part of a healthy lifestyle, the UK Government's guidelines suggest aiming for either:

• at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic exercise per week
• at least 75 minutes of vigorous (high intensity) aerobic exercise per week.

But you do not have to exercise at high intensity to burn calories.

Moderate intensity activities that leave you a little out of breath, but still able to speak in full sentences, can burn calories too.

These could be gentle home workout videos, housework, gardening and playing with children or grandchildren. 

More vigorous high intensity exercises include brisk walking, dancing, running or swimming.

If you’re new to exercise, start slowly and build up gradually. Take time to warm up before and to cool down after exercise. And if you begin to feel more breathless, slow down and rest.

While other types of exercise do not burn as many calories as aerobic exercise, they can still support weight loss.

For example, strength training can help you build muscle. The more muscle you have, the more calories your body naturally burns, even when you’re not exercising.

And some people find stress can lead to them eating more calories or reaching for less healthy foods. So gentle exercises that relieve stress, such as yoga or tai chi, can be helpful too.

Which workouts are best to support healthy weight loss?

If you want to try aerobic exercise, why not do our low-intensity 10-minute aerobic exercise routine? You can do it at home and build up to moderate intensity.

Doing compound exercises, which use lots of different muscles, can also help you burn calories and build muscle at the same time. Get started with these 4 effective compound exercises.

If you find walking or standing difficult, seated exercises – like this expert-led chair-based exercise routine – can increase your aerobic fitness levels too.

And for more home workouts that can help you build muscle, give our strength exercises or resistance band workouts a go.

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