Low Fat Diet and Belly Fat

If you are looking for a way to lose belly fat, your first thought might be to go on a low-fat diet. Makes sense, right? Reduce your fat intake, and your body fat – including your belly fat – should go down too. But in reality, it is not that simple.

The first thing to understand is that the body creates body fat as a way for the body to store any calories that it does not need right away. Those calories can be from any kind of food, whether it is high in fat or low in fat. It is the number of calories that matters.

It is true that fat is high in calories, but other kinds of food can be high in calories as well.  Foods high in sugar, for example, are notoriously high in calories. And here is the part that can trap you – foods that are manufactured to be low in fat are very often high in sugars.

The reason is that low-fat foods often are not as appealing to our taste buds as the high-fat versions, and so the manufacturers add extra sugar to boost the flavor. But it is those calories, remember, that get converted into fat and stored on your body as belly fat. So if you want to lose belly fat, do not just reach for low-fat foods – look at the label first, and check the calories!