Exercise Better Than Dieting for Belly Fat Loss

Belly fat is something many of us struggle with, especially after pregnancy and going into menopause. The fat stored during pregnancy and the change in estrogen is responsible for fat distribution to your abdomen. And while watching what you eat is essential, a recent research review shows exercise may be even more effective for specifically targeting visceral fat. Visceral fat is the fat that wraps around organs deep in your abdomen. This type of fat increases your risks for things like heart disease and diabetes. So losing it is good for your health. 

Photo by Andres Ayrton:

In a recent research review, researchers compared how well exercise versus cutting calories reduced visceral fat in people with overweight or obesity. Researchers looked at data from 40 different studies with over 2,190 participants. Some people dieted, some exercised, and some did neither. Everyone who dieted or exercised lost visceral fat. The results showed that ONLY the exercise groups showed a dose response, where increasing exercise meant more visceral fat loss. Cutting calories did reduce visceral fat, but diet didn’t show the same dose effect. Eating fewer calories didn’t necessarily equal more fat loss. So in this case, more exercise was better than further calorie restriction.

Exercise causes fat loss via an increase in energy expenditure, while caloric restriction results in fat loss via a decrease in energy intake. Researchers theorize the results can be attributed to exercise preserving muscle while dieting alone possibly causing muscle (lean mass) loss. More muscle means you’re burning more calories at rest, so you definitely don’t want to lose muscle while attempting to rid the postpartum belly fat.

Why This Matters for Moms

Early postpartum before you’re able to do vigorous exercise, nutrition and calorie reduction might be your best tool for losing some of the stored abdominal fat from pregnancy. But, be sure to keep in mind:

• adequate protein is important to prevent muscle loss (mom butt)

• there are increased calorie requirements while breastfeeding, and the energy and nutrients needed for tissue healing come from a healthy diet

When you’re able to safely return to physical activity, exercise will be an important part of your fat loss plan. Rather than continuing to cut calories, you’ll increase your exercise.

Another perspective is that yes, your body does need to accumulate fat during pregnancy, but maintaining a healthy weight and not gaining excess visceral fat is also important. So more points for prenatal exercise during pregnancy!

The Takeaway

If your mommy pooch concerns you, focus on both your diet and physical activity. To better your chances of losing the fat around your abdomen, make sure that exercise is a part of your program. If the researchers’ theory is correct and losing muscle mass is responsible for the dose-effect difference between diet and exercise, make sure strength training is the foundation of your fitness program. Lastly, keep in mind that this research review was conducted on overweight and obese individuals, but did not specify if any of the participants were early postpartum or approaching menopause.

Feeling Overwhelmed When You Think About Returning to Fitness?

As we all know exercise has many physical and mental health benefits. We all are also probably somewhat familiar with exercise guidelines and recommendations. So why does beginning an exercise program after having a baby feel so difficult? The answer is that there are many real challenges for new moms. Being a military mom adds another layer of barriers and stressors. Sleep deprivation, lack of time, changed priorities, minimal support from family, fear, birth complications, pain, lack of postpartum exercise and healthcare resources, and pressure to lose weight and perform, are all very real barriers (not excuses!). Although every mom’s journey back to exercise will be different, these three general strategies can make your return to exercise a little less overwhelming.

1) Understanding Changes to Your Body: Having information and knowledge about the anatomical and physiological changes during and after pregnancy will validate why you feel weaker despite exercising during pregnancy, or why you can’t seem to lose the last five pounds, or why you’re experiencing soreness like you never have before. Understanding how the changes to your body impacts fitness is essential, yet most postpartum care doesn’t include such information. Having this understanding will help you make sense of why workouts feel so difficult, why you’re not seeing progress at the rate you’re used to, and hopefully allow yourself some grace during those first few months after having your baby. 

There could be an entire book about this, but hormones play a huge role in muscle development and exercise recovery. Hormones don’t stabilize immediately after giving birth, and even when they begin to “balance out”, other hormones due to lack of sleep and stress can keep your hormones at levels that will impact your ability to lose weight, workout at higher intensities, and recover after a workout. Additionally, hormones can have an impact on your mood, affecting your motivation to exercise and desire to hit the gym like you used to. If you’re breastfeeding, you’ll have an even longer delay of hormones getting back to pre-pregnancy levels, so having the understanding that breastfeeding doesn’t automatically make it easier to change your body composition due to so many other factors, is also really important.

In addition to hormones, you need to have an understanding of tissue healing. You may be feeling stronger and ready for more physical activity, but whether you’ve had a vaginal delivery or c-section, your abdominal wall and pelvic floor tissues can take 9-12 months to fully heal and regain strength. Having this understanding is important so that you’re not choosing exercises that will do more harm than good, hence stunting your progress and inhibiting fitness results. Exercise is important in healing, but not over stressing the tissues is crucial in progressively increasing strength and function. This means if running feels overwhelming, that’s OK. Recent guidelines suggest that running and other high impact activity shouldn’t even happen until at least 12 weeks postpartum, and after proper strength training.

Hormones, tissue healing, and other factors don’t mean that you can’t exercise, in fact you absolutely should. Those factors also don’t mean that you won’t see results. What those changes to your body do mean is that you shouldn’t expect to exercise at your same pre-pregnancy level right away, and that initially, your program will probably need to look different. Having this understanding about the changes to your body means you’ll be able to gradually progress in fitness. As long as you’re moving forward with no setbacks, you’ll get there.

2) Prioritize: Being able to prioritize will help ease some of the pressure and stress around exercising. You’re probably used to thinking of fitness as aerobic, strength, and flexibility. And you’re correct, these are all major components of fitness. However, as a new mom it’s important that you make the most of your time and energy. To set yourself up for success, you should prioritize the type of workouts and exercises you’re choosing. Your first priority should be on healing. This includes any tears, incisions, scarring and any emotional trauma, depression, or anxiety. So if you once prioritized high intensity cardio and heavy weights, you’ll need a mental shift to feel good about the workouts your body needs. Next you should prioritize core strength and function, specifically addressing any concerns for abdominal separation, back pain, or pelvic floor dysfunction (pain or incontinence). Next make sure you’re functional. Functional strength training is somewhat of a trendy term, but for moms it means that you can perform all of your daily movements and demands of caring for a baby without pain. As it relates to exercise, it means you have mastered all of the major movement patterns (squat, lunge, hinge, push, pull, rotate/anti rotation) with good technique, and ability to recover. Your last priority is progressing to more vigorous physical activity and your traditional fitness goals. After you have the foundation of core strength and functional movements, you should be able to advance comfortably and with reduced injury risk. This is a simplified progression, but I like to think of Core, Function and Fitness as a pie chart with different percentages. You’ll always be working on all parts, but the percentage of each will change based on your priorities and needs.

3) Mental Shift: This has been touched on a bit already, but the first step in returning to exercise is mental. The fitness requirements of the military are relevant, but this comes secondary to how you view postpartum physical activity, especially now that you have a year to meet your military fitness and body composition goals. Your body has changed so your workouts will and should as well. The goals you once set were for a different body. Exercise should be a tool and if you begin to look at it that way, you will choose and plan your workouts differently, and with less stress. During the first few months, what type of exercise will help you heal? What type of exercise can you do without childcare? What workouts are realistic with the time you have? If you’re not sleeping, when is the best time of day to exercise and the appropriate intensity? Shifting your perspective about fitness and exercise is not a sign of weakness, but rather a helpful and smart tactic.

Now that you have those three general strategies to help you overcome the numerous barriers you face as a mom returning to exercise, I want to make it very clear that being a mom does not have to negatively impact your fitness. Moms actually have an advantage when it comes to fitness. By training in a very specific way and a way that you’ve never trained before, you have the ability to have a stronger core, be more functional, and feel stronger than you’ve ever been. Why? Because now your training will probably include pelvic floor muscles and breathing techniques, making your core function optimally. By caring for a baby, you’ll probably need to address posture, aches, and pains caused by muscle weaknesses/tightness, that you just ignored before. Your workouts as a mom will now have more meaning and serve many more purposes. If you can understand what your body needs, prioritize the proper exercise progression, and change your mindset, you will feel strong and confident in your body again.

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