Fat gets stored when you consume too many calories and have too little physical activity. Some people tend to store fat around their belly rather than on the hips because of their genes. In women, getting older can change where the body stores fat.
Even if you're thin, you can still have too much visceral fat. How much you have is partly about your genes, and partly about your lifestyle, especially how active you are. Visceral fat likes inactivity.
Essentially, the skinny fat condition is developed by dieting badly and not exercising properly. Given that the amount of energy you burn is affected by the amount of muscle mass you have, as you lose muscle you will gradually burn less calories than before.
Everybody is different and the way you lose weight might also vary from another person. Not many of us know that belly fat can also be a result of stress. This is because when you are stressed, cortisol levels in the body rise, resulting in storage of fat around the belly area.
One reason belly fat is so hard to lose is that it's considered an “active fat.” Unlike some fatty tissue that simply sits “dormant,” belly fat releases hormones that can have an impact on your health — and your ability to lose weight, especially in the waist and abdomen areas.
Your stomach fat is just harder to shift, factually
Because different areas of the body have different amounts of each of these cells - with some parts having a higher amount of alpha cells than beta, and vice versa - the areas with more beta fat cells will inevitably be more difficult to shed excess fat.
Exercise for a Toned Belly
You should also strength-train two to three times each week. Strength training helps you build muscle tissue, which boosts your metabolism to help you burn more calories and fat each day, and it also helps you look more toned.
From a clinical perspective, an individual is considered “too skinny” if they are deemed underweight. According to the Centers for Disease Control, an individual is underweight if their Body Mass Index (BMI) is below 18.5 [1].
According to our experts, the reason you gain weight so rapidly in your midsection and not in, say, your calves and forearms is because the adipocytes (or fat cells), which are found throughout the body, are more plentiful in the hips, butt, stomach, and thigh area for women and stomach for men.
While there isn't one magic food that will melt away belly fat, studies have reported certain foods have special belly-fat-burning benefits, such as avocado, artichokes, whole grains, kefir, green tea, eggs, peanuts and chickpeas.
Clinically underweight or dangerously skinny for a man would be: A BMI of 15, 16, 17, or 18. A weight of 100–120 pounds (46–55kg)
under 18.5kg/m2 – you are considered underweight and possibly malnourished. 18.5 to 24.9kg/m2 – you are within a healthy weight range for young and middle-aged adults. 25.0 to 29.9kg/m2 – you are considered overweight.
Some people who are underweight find they get sick all the time, or they feel very tired. That may be because they are not getting all the nutrients they need from their diet. They may also find their hair gets thinner or falls out, their skin gets very dry and their teeth are affected.
Causes include poor diet, lack of exercise, and short or low-quality sleep. A healthy diet and active lifestyle can help people lose excess belly fat and lower the risk of problems associated with it.
If reducing overall body fat, including belly fat, is your ultimate goal, aerobic exercises that increase your heart rate, such as walking, running or swimming, and aerobic exercise combined with strength training are the gold standards when it comes to exercise that supports weight loss.
People who regularly eat and drink more calories than they burn each day are more likely to gain extra weight, including belly fat. Getting older also makes a difference. People lose muscle as they age. And the problem is worse for those who are not physically active.
Mostly, losing weight is an internal process. You will first lose hard fat that surrounds your organs like liver, kidneys and then you will start to lose soft fat like waistline and thigh fat. The fat loss from around the organs makes you leaner and stronger.
This is because when we are under stress, our bodies think that we need extra energy reserves in case of an emergency. As a result, even if we are eating healthy and exercising regularly, our bodies will still hold onto some of the fat in order to keep us safe from potential danger.
As against areas such as legs, face and arms, our stomach and abdominal regions possess beta cells that makes it difficult to reduce the fats easily and lose weight in these areas. However, as per research, belly fat is the most difficult to lose as the fat there is so much harder to break down.