Table of contents:
- What is cardio?
- Is cardio effective at losing belly fat?
- Cardio that is wrong can actually add fat in the stomach
Several important organs are located in the stomach, such as the liver and kidneys. Fat around the stomach is needed as a cushion to protect these important organs. However, what if there is too much fat in the stomach?
Belly fat or often called fat visceral too much around the stomach can increase the risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and even cancer. Therefore, it is not surprising that many people want to lose their belly fat. In addition to supporting the appearance to look slimmer, this is also important for maintaining a healthy body.
Many people want their stomachs to be less fatty and look slim. Not only women, but also men. To lose belly fat, they usually do cardio exercises, such as walking, running, cycling, swimming and jumping rope. However, is it true that cardio exercise is effective in losing belly fat?
To answer this question, it looks like we need to know in advance what cardio exercise is and its benefits.
What is cardio?
Cardio exercise is a sport to increase the heart rate, where the heart is made up of muscles. These muscles have to move to get stronger and stronger. When the heart muscle is strong, the blood vessels can flow more and faster blood so that more oxygen can flow to the muscle cells. This allows the cells to burn more fat during exercise and at rest.
Cardio exercise results in more muscle movement over a continuous period of time to keep your heart rate at least 50% of its maximum level. In addition, the benefits of cardio exercise are to strengthen the heart and lungs, increase bone strength, reduce stress, and also improve sleep quality.
Cardio exercise is very helpful for weight loss because this activity can burn fat. Weight loss occurs when the body burns more calories than it receives calories from food. The opposite occurs when the calories burned by the body are less than the calories the body receives. So, if you are already doing cardio exercise, try to eat a smaller number of calories so that weight loss can be achieved.
Is cardio effective at losing belly fat?
Referring to the definition above, cardio exercise plays a greater role in overall weight loss, not just focusing on losing belly fat. To get rid of belly fat, you need other exercises that are more effective in burning belly fat, such as sit up, side plank, low plaque, circles in the sky, squat, and other sports that focus more on the abdominal muscles.
A study from Harvard shows that cardio exercises, such as running, swimming, and cycling are not the best way to lose belly fat. The study involved 10,500 healthy men aged 40 years or more. Researchers analyzed their exercise habits and found that men who lifted weights for at least 20 minutes per day were more likely to maintain excess belly fat compared to those who only did cardio exercise.
Cardio that is wrong can actually add fat in the stomach
In addition, as said by Phil Kelly, the wrong cardio exercise can increase the hormone cortisol in the body which can cause the body to store more fat. So, the wrong cardio exercise may cause increased belly fat instead of losing belly fat.
The wrong cardio exercise with high intensity can increase cortisol levels in the body and does not make the body produce anabolic hormones that promote growth, repair, and fat burning so that no other hormone is produced to compensate for the adverse effects of the production of this hormone cortisol.
Therefore, for those of you who want to lose belly fat, you should do sports other than cardio which is more effective in eliminating belly fat. However, if you want to lose belly fat and also lose weight, you can do cardio plus exercises with more focused movements to strengthen the abdominal muscles, as described above.
Don't forget to do regular exercise and keep your intake so that maximum results are achieved faster. Also do sports according to your ability, don't force it too much so that it doesn't produce negative effects.
