One of the most commonly addressed parts of the human body is the tummy. Whether we’re on our backs doing crunches or in surgery for a tummy tuck or liposuction, most people, both men and women, are concerned about the way that their belly looks. Here are five quick facts about your tummy to help you get it looking the way you want to.
1. Eating less food will not help to shrink the size of your stomach.
Once you have reached adulthood, your stomach is already the size that it is going to be for the rest of your life. Now, keep in mind that we’re talking about the actual organ, not the external appearance of your belly. So while eating less can help decrease your appetite and increase weight loss over time, the size of the stomach will not change.
2. Thinner people don’t necessarily have smaller stomachs than those that are overweight.
Probably not what you expected, right? A surprising fact is that there is really no correlation between the size of a person’s stomach and their weight. In fact, a thin person can even have a larger stomach than one who is struggling with obesity. Even with one of the stomach-shrinking surgeries, a person can still gain weight. Fat reducing procedures such as liposuction are more effective to contour the body, but you must also live a healthy lifestyle to maintain a healthy weight.
3. Eating right before going to bed will not cause you to gain weight quicker than if you ate the same thing at an earlier time.
I’m sure many of us have heard that eating before bed will make us fat, but most experts actually agree that this is a myth. It does not matter so much what time you eat, but more so depends on whether or not you are consistently burning more calories than you consume. Eating a cheeseburger at noon is the same as eating a cheeseburger at 8pm. However, snacking after dinner may lead to changes in your appetite that can possibly lead to weight gain.
4. Abdominal exercises like crunches or sit-ups will not reduce the size of your stomach, but they are still helpful for other things.
As was said before, nothing (aside from certain surgeries) can be done to shrink the size of the stomach. However, these abdominal exercises can be effective in burning the layers of fat and building the abdominal muscles that house the stomach. It is however important to pair cardio with these exercises to better reduce the layer of fat above the muscles.
5. Loose skin left behind after rapid weight loss or pregnancy cannot be fixed by eating right and exercising.
Excess skin or tissue is a common issue that follows weight loss and pregnancy and can only be really fixed through surgical means such as a tummy tuck. For example, many people tune in to watch The Biggest Loser on television and you may have noticed that as the contestants continue to lose large amounts of weight at a time, they often deal with hanging skin. Many of these contestants opt for body contouring surgeries after losing the weight as a means to address these issues of loose skin around the body and the arms.
Find out anything new about your belly? Let us know! And if you would like to learn more about any of the procedures mentioned, contact your board-certified plastic surgeon by clicking down below.
