Dr. Ashley Lucas outlines the 10-3-2-1-0 rule: stop caffeine 10 hours before bed, food 3 hours, screens 2 hours, work 1 hour, and never snooze. Better sleep lowers cortisol and insulin, which reduces how much fat your body stores in your belly.
I use this acronym, 10 3, 2, 1, 0. When you shift the diet and you're able to reduce inflammation and get insulin down, you actually start to sleep better. So 10 is the hours before bed where you want to stop consuming caffeine. Caffeine has a different half life for different people, genetically determined. And sometimes even when we drink caffeine in the morning, we'll still have some of that caffeine residual left over when it's bedtime. Three hours before bed, no more food or alcohol. Two hours before bed, no more screens. One hour before bed, no more work. And then zero is a time that you'll hit the snooze button the next day. So I think sleep is huge. And then stress. Stress is really big. I think in today's society, we have a perspective around stress that it's negative, we have a negative connotation. And when we have that, our body secretes cortisol. When we have elevated insulin levels with elevated cortisol, it creates this hormonal cascade that actually brings our fat from the rest of the body into the belly and helps to store that deep, visceral, active belly fat. It stimulates the body to secrete hormone sensitive lipase. And that I imagine that hormone, like this vacuum sucker that lives on the fat cells in our belly and it just sucks in more fat. That also increases when we have lower estrogen levels in women. So when we go through perimenopause and menopause, we've got elevated cortisol, elevated hormone sensitive lipase, and if we have elevated insulin levels, it's just like this perfect storm to store more fat in the belly.
If I Was Over 50 & 30 Pounds Overweight, This Is Exactly What I'd Do to Burn Belly Fat
