Muffin top, love handles, ‘apple’ shape are all loving words to explain a little bit of excess fat around our waistline. For most of us there is nothing endearing about this fat and it is often the hardest part of our body fat to shift. Worst of all, an unhealthy waist can also increase your risk of diseases such as diabetes, strokes and heart attacks.
At mio HQ, we want to help you get waisted and have put some tips together to help you keep your waist in check.
How do you tell if you have a healthy waist?
 First you need to measure you waist:
1. Find the midpoint between the top of your hips and the bottom of your ribs – this is your waist.
2. Take a breath in and breathe out naturally.
3. Use a tape measure to measure your waist.
You are considered to have a higher risk of diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular disease if your waist measurement is:
Greater than 88cm (35 inches) if you are a woman;
Greater than 102cm (40 inches) if you are a man.
Ways to get your waist in check:
Give those ab crunches a break: Contrary to what you might think, doing ‘ab only’ exercises isn’t going to help you shift your belly fat. The best way to lose weight is by combining cardiovascular workouts with weight training. Muscles require more calories to maintain themselves and hence will help you to boost your body’s fat burning capacity.
Don’t yo-yo dieting or crash dieting: Back in the pre-historic days before supermarkets were in every town, people may had to wait days, if not weeks before their hunted down their next meal. For this reason, the body learnt to store as much fat as possible to ensure that they didn’t starve. Instead of drastically reducing your food intake, aim for a more balanced diet which helps you to gradually lose the weight and keep it off!
It is called a ‘beer belly’ for a reason: Beer gets a bad wrap for big bellies but really it should be called a ‘booze belly’ instead. When you drink alcohol, the liver goes into overdrive and has to focus on burning alcohol instead of fat. Drinking alcohol can also dramatically increase your daily calorie consumption. Three vodka & cokes will easily use up almost 20% of your daily intake of calories (i.e. breakfast). The problem doesn’t stop there either… We know that drinking is associated with eating bad food and spending the next day on the couch watching Netflix. The lesson here? Reduce your alcohol consumption!
Our favourite mio products to help you get waisted:
mio Skincare has an entire cellulite and firming range which will help you on your quest to get your waist into shape. Some of favourite products include:
Get Waisted Sculpting Body Shaper: This visibly firming body cream has amazing activessuch as seaweed, red algae and caffeine which help you to increase the firmness of your tummy. The Daily Mail loves this product so much that it gave Get Waisted the award of 5/5 Best Body Shaper against all other competitors.
The Mio Body Brush: The Mio Body Brush is fast and very effective way of helping to exfoliate your skin to reveal smoother, fresher, more vibrant skin. It also helps smooth out lumpy skin and reduce cellulite too!