Exercise is extremely useful way to lower your blood sugar. When you exercise, the muscles need the glucose for energy and it lowers your blood sugar naturally. There are different types of exercises programs that can be used to help you including:
• Long distance running covering a distance of 10K or more
• Interval training, including a mixture of short sprints and longer runs
• Resistance training, such as the P90x program and many others
• Flexibility training, including Pilates and yoga
If you want to reduce visceral fat, don’t exercise at a constant pace. Interval training will benefit you whether you’re trying to get fit or lose weight, and whether you’re a weekend warrior or a high-performance professional athlete.
Interval walking is one of the most convenient exercises. It doesn’t require any special equipment and can be performed anywhere. Weight training with only short periods of rest between sets (one minute) is one of the best all-around exercises, in my opinion. The anaerobic aspect of weightlifting causes muscles to fatigue rapidly. And don’t forget kettlebells, which also cause an anaerobic burn.
Finally, exercising first thing the morning before breakfast can make a tremendous difference. I exercise immediately after my morning protein shake. Exercising before eating anything might be a little better, but the main problem comes from consuming carbohydrates. If you start exercising with a belly full of carbohydrates (or one of the high-carb energy drinks in your hand), your body will use that for fuel and never have to burn any extra body fat or glycogen stores. Protein and fat take longer to digest, and when consumed immediately prior to exercise, they won’t get into the system quick enough to be used as the primary source of energy. After 45 minutes to an hour of hard exercise, protein will start to be available for muscle repair and growth.
….. Burn more energy than you consume and you will lose visceral fat, regardless of your genetics or other circumstances.
That said, there are a few other things you can do to speed up the process.
Cut out all trans fats from your diet.
There’s a reason why the Institute of Medicine recommends that our trans fat intake be “as low as possible.”
The stuff is bad.
Don’t drink a lot of alcohol.
What do we call a large accumulation of visceral fat?
A beer gut.
You now know why.
Studies show that while drinking frequency doesn’t seem to affect visceral fat levels, drinking intensity does. That is, the more you drink on each day you drink alcohol, the more likely you are to increase visceral fat stores.
So, if you’re struggling to lose visceral fat, cut back onthe alcohol.
Do resistance training.
Weightlifting isn’t just for building muscle. Studies show it’s also extremely effective for losing visceral fat.
Read this article to learn how to create a resistance training program that will work for you.
Do high-intensity interval training (HIIT).
Research shows that high-intensity interval training is not just better for overall fat loss–it’s particularly good for reducing abdominal and visceral fatness.
Interestingly, research shows this is true whether total fat mass is reduced or not.
That is, even if you don’t decrease your body fat percentage, regular aerobic exercise reduces visceral fat storage. The exercise promotes a healthier distribution of body fat (your body simply stores its fat elsewhere).
Another visceral fat elimination strategy..love the circulation effect he discusses at 4:03 minute mark. Since Fat is within silos.
Subcutaneous fat that lurks beneath the skin as “love handles” or padding on the thighs, buttocks or upper arms may be cosmetically challenging, but it is otherwise harmless. However, the deeper belly fat — the visceral fat that accumulates around abdominal organs — is metabolically active and has been strongly linked to a host of serious disease risks, including heart disease, cancer and dementia.
You don’t even have to be overweight or obese to face these hazards if you harbor excess fat inside your abdomen. Even people of normal weight can accumulate harmful amounts of hidden fat beneath the abdominal wall. Furthermore, this is not fat you can shed simply by toning up abdominal muscles with exercises like situps. Weight loss through a wholesome diet and exercise —
activities like walking and strength-training — is the only surefire way to get rid of it …
Your fasting insulin level reflects how healthy your blood glucose levels are over time. Insulin helps sugar move from your blood into your cells, where it can be used or stored. Chronically elevated blood glucose leads to insulin resistance and numerous chronic diseases, including diabetes and heart disease. Elevated blood glucose and insulin resistance are epidemic today. An estimated one in four Americans are either insulin resistant or diabetic.
I work with an endocrinologist and not once has he did an insulin level test..Have you had it done before?
Diabetes is a chronic condition in which blood sugar levels rise higher than normal. There are two types of diabetes, and each presents its own challenges. The most common form, type 2, represents over 90 percent of diagnosed patients and presents itself most frequently in overweight adults with a family history of diabetes.
In type 2 diabetics, the body’s insulin can be ineffective. This malfunction initially causes the pancreas to create a surplus of insulin. Over time, the pancreas cannot make enough effective insulin to keep blood glucose levels normal.
Conversely, type 1 diabetes is typically diagnosed in children and young adults and occurs when the body does not produce a sufficient supply of insulin. Only 5 to 10 percent of diabetics are type 1.
Both type 1 and type 2 diabetes can have long-term health consequences. The good news is, diabetes — especially type 2 — is a disease that can be controlled by lifestyle modifications
The beneficial effect of exercise on glucose control in patients with type 2 diabetes is related to improved cardiorespiratory fitness and a shrinking waistline, a new study suggests. Other effects of exercise — such as improved VO2 max, muscle mass, or fat distribution — were not linked with better HbA1c levels.
The results have clinical implications for the design of exercise training programs used to treat individuals with type 2 diabetes and provide further evidence that combining aerobic exercise with resistance training is the best approach, something guidelines already stress, says senior author Timothy S. Church, MD, from the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The new findings come from a secondary analysis of the Health Benefits of Aerobic and Resistance Training in Individuals with Type 2 Diabetes (HART-D) trial in individuals with complete follow-up data; the original results, published in the Journal of the American Medical Society in 2010 (JAMA. 2010;304:2253-2262), showed that 9 months of supervised aerobic training, resistance training, or both had a similar, favorable impact on HbA1c levels.
According to the authors, previous studies probing how body fat distribution, muscle strength, and fitness influenced long-term glucose control either had small, homogeneous samples or lacked a control group.
The HART-D trial “created a unique opportunity to really look at what [aspect of exercise] was creating a positive change in HbA1c,” Dr. Church told Medscape Medical News.
The trial randomized 262 sedentary patients to a control group or to 3 types of exercise for 9 months. They all had type 2 diabetes that was not optimally controlled: 20% had heart disease, and 20% had neuropathy. “These were high-risk individuals with diabetes…what you see in the clinic,” Dr. Church said.
The current analysis examined data from 201 of these participants with complete follow-up data. These patients were diverse: 39% were African American and 64% were women, and they ranged in age from 30 to 75 years. Overall, they were obese (mean body mass index [BMI], about 35) and middle-aged (mean age, 58 years) with relatively poor baseline fitness.
The aerobic exercise consisted of brisk walking on an inclined treadmill, at 50% to 80% of maximal cardiorespiratory fitness. The resistance training consisted of standard weight-bearing exercises in the gym.
On average, patients in the weight-lifting group or the aerobic group spent 140 minutes per week in the gym, and patients in the combined exercise group spent 110 minutes a week doing aerobic exercise and 30 minutes a week doing resistance training, Dr. Church said.
The researchers looked for changes from baseline to 9 months in HbA1c levels, weight, BMI, waist circumference, body fat, measures of fat mass, VO2, and leg muscle strength and estimated effort expended during exercise, or estimated metabolic equivalents of task (METs). Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) was used to determine the participants’ body fat composition.
Participants with increased estimated METs and reduced waist circumference were 2.81 times more likely to have lower HbA1c levels and a reduction in the use of medication for type 2 diabetes compared with those without improved fitness and central adiposity.
In the current study, “we didn’t see things like changes in muscle mass or change in fat mass,” said Dr. Church. “It was surprising to see fitness — measured by how long you stay on a treadmill — and belly fat as the big drivers” behind better glucose control.
Combined Aerobic and Resistance Training Is Best
Much like a drug-dosing study, this trial was designed to determine the optimal exercise regimen, not to find out how to get people to exercise, Dr. Church explained.
The original HART-D study involved more than 20,000 supervised exercise sessions, he noted, and participants had excellent compliance (more than 80% adhered to the program).
In a real-world setting, patients can perform aerobic exercise without supervision, although initial direction is needed for resistance training, he conceded. Patients can be counseled about attending local YMCAs or doing home-based exercise programs.
“The [new] study provides more evidence that the optimal benefits [occur] when you combine aerobic exercise plus resistance training,” which agrees with the current recommendations, Dr. Church commented. It also sheds light on a potential mechanism to explain why exercise works, he added.
The authors have reported no relevant financial relationships.
Diabetes Care . Published online May 13, 2013. Abstract
Belly Fat Elimination Process
Cutting-edge fat-loss exercise that will get your heart pumping and your muscles burning in almost no time, says BJ Gaddour, C.S.C.S., owner of StreamFit.com. It starts with one of the most effective exercises invented: the squat. When done correctly, a squat trains a lot of muscles, particularly big ones like your quadriceps, hamstrings and glutes. In fact, it burns more calories per rep than almost any other exercise
A great article and shows that with advanced research, we can redefine what we know.
…At the end of the program, the men had increased their maximal oxygen uptake, or endurance capacity, by an average of 10 percent or more, with no significant differences in the gains between the two groups.
Metabolic and cardiovascular health likewise had improved in both groups, with almost all of the men now displaying better blood sugar control and blood pressure profiles, whether they had exercised vigorously for 16 minutes per session, or four minutes per session, and despite the fact that few of the men had lost much body fat….
In 12 exercises deploying only body weight, a chair and a wall, it fulfills the latest mandates for high-intensity effort, which essentially combines a long run and a visit to the weight room into about seven minutes of steady discomfort — all of it based on science.
“There’s very good evidence” that high-intensity interval training provides “many of the fitness benefits of prolonged endurance training but in much less time,” says Chris Jordan, the director of exercise physiology at the Human Performance Institute in Orlando, Fla., and co-author of the new article.
Diabetes is a chronic condition in which blood sugar levels rise higher than normal. There are two types of diabetes, and each presents its own challenges. The most common form, type 2, represents over 90 percent of diagnosed patients and presents itself most frequently in overweight adults with a family history of diabetes.
