Pot Belly Archives

Bloating: Your Pot Belly May Not Be From Fats

When many people develop protruded belly, they think they have accumulated a lot of fats in their tummy and start working out to burn the fats. Sometimes, they work out for months, eat low calorie foods and still find out that the belly is not going down. I have seen cases like this before and with what I found out, there are pot bellies that are caused by other factors other than eating too much calories and the resultant fat accumulation. I am going to share them with you now.

What causes Pot Belly other than fat?

Before you start treating yourself, placing yourself on diet and exercising, it is advisable to see a doctor to know what the cause of your pot belly is. I have seen people that are kind of underweight with pot bellies thinking they have fat belly. Yes, we store fat in different places in our body and a good way to find out if you have too much weight is to check your Body Mass Index. You can check it with few click on our website by going to this page (opens in new tab).

bloating and distention — Photo: iffgd.org

If you are overweight according to your BMI, you may want to start with burning some calories by exercising and avoiding foods that make you fat. Often, fats around the belly get burned faster than those in other places. If your belly however remains the same after seeing your BMI come to normal, then you may want to see your doctor to see if you have a bloated stomach or abdomen condition.

ALSO SEE: How Alcohol Causes Fat Belly [Must Read]

Okay! So, What is Abdominal Bloating?

Abdominal bloating is a condition in which the belly (abdomen) feels full and tight. Your belly may appear swollen (distended) and sometimes fell pains (some people don’t). Bloating is caused by a lot of factors that I cannot explain in this post. I am going to write an article on causes of abdominal bloating and how to treat it.

If your stomach bloating is not caused by medical conditions such as heart and liver disease, then it would be gas accumulation caused by any or a combination of the following factors;

Swallowing air, Constipation
Gastroesophageal reflux (GERD)
Irritable bowel syndrome
Lactose intolerance and problems digesting other foods
Overeating
Small bowel bacterial overgrowth

If you want to confirm you have a bloated abdomen, you have to see your doctor first. Don’t do a self-diagnosis or medication.

Another factor that can make your stomach get protruded is a lack of enough abdominal muscles. Out stomach has a tendency to expand when we eat, so if you do not have strong abdominal muscles, the stomach just push it out. People with this challenge would notice that they have flat tummy before eating and a round pot belly after eating. It goes down as your food digest.

Also, if you lie down with your back flat on the bed, you have a flat tummy but stand up, the round ball comes out. This can be devastating. In this case, you have to do three things exercise, keep exercising and don’t stop exercising. Do more of abdominal exercises.

Here are some recommended abdominal exercises you should be doing to get more muscles around there.

Does Beer Truly Cause Pot Belly? Is It Just A Myth?

Here is how beer causes your pot belly

1. There are calories in beer and these ultimately are stored as fat. This is not peculiar to the calories in beer but any calories that you may consume from any source – including foods. It is however so sad for this guy call “Beer” that it seems to be the scape goat every time someone that has a pot belly evaluates his belly. But this is not so far from the truth because it is very easy to overtake the calories in beer. I know guys that take 8-10 bottles in one night.

Photo Credit: dreamstime.com

If we consider the fact that a typical beer has 140-150 calories in it, downing ten in one night contributes about 1500 calories to your body. Since in a lot of men, fats are easy to store around the mid-region of the body, the belly starts protruding.

Let me just make this clear before I muddle everything up. You may have noticed that I talk about eating carbohydrate and get fat stored in your body. That’s how it works. When you take in more calories than you burn, the excess calories are stored as fat.

2. When we drink beer, we usually do not drink alone, we eat suya (which also has its own dangers), beef, chicken wings, pork, Pizza and foods that have contents with high calorific values. This act alone adds more calories to our body but we blame only beer and forget these accomplices.

3. Alcohol increases appetite for food, so when we spend long hours taking beer and gisting with friends, we tend to take more of whatever we are eating. This contributes more to our calorie intake. They all end up as fat in our body.

4. Finally, it has been established that “In general, alcohol intake is associated with bigger waists, because when you drink alcohol, the liver burns alcohol instead of fat.” This is according to Michael Jensen, MD, an endocrine expert and obesity researcher with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

You may be wondering that there are beer drinkers that do not have pot bellies. Yes, there are so many of them that I know too. This is because The part of your body where this fat is stored is dependent on several factors such as age, sex, and hormones. As we get older, our metabolic activities may drop which in turn affect how much we burn the calories that we take in.

Pot belly is linked to a variety of health problems such as type II diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. Therefore, we have to find a way to prevent or get rid of pot belly (if we already have it).