If your lower belly fat won't go away, change this

Your lower belly fat won't go away no matter how much you eat in a calorie deficit. After coaching over 25,000 clients, I've learned the lower belly is the one place a calorie deficit can't always fix. And if you don't know why, you'll keep cutting your calories and doing the wrong thing. So let me show you what's really going on and the change that you should make. And I get it, it's really annoying because you've been in a calorie deficit. Maybe you are losing some weight. You're seeing your face lean out, your arms look different, but the lower belly pouch just won't budge. And so you're trying to research what to do. Everybody is just telling you take your calories lower, stay in a calorie deficit longer, and it still doesn't budge. Here's what's actually happening, and it's going to change how you see that pouch forever, because part of it was never fat. So no amount of a calorie deficit was ever going to burn it off. Think of your lower belly fat a gym bag. Inside the bag are 2 things. Number one, a stack of books. And number 2, a beach ball. The books are your fat. When you eat in a calorie deficit, you pull the books out, and that part works. But the beach ball, that is bloat inside your stomach. And here's the problem: you can pull out every single book, but the bag is still going to look full because the beach ball is inside taking up all the space, and no diet on the planet is going to deflate the beach ball. So if you're getting lean everywhere else, the deficit is handling the fat, but something else is keeping that beach ball full. So the real question is, what is pumping air into that beach ball every single day? Well, it's probably something sitting in your kitchen right now. There are 3 things that almost everyone eats that pumps air straight into that beach ball? And most people think they're healthy or they're just calories, so it's not that big of a deal. And before I tell you what those foods are, what you need to understand is different foods digest differently inside of your body. There are foods that can irritate your gut, cause inflammation and bloating, which would make your stomach look puffy and inflamed day after day. So you can eat these foods in a perfect calorie deficit, lose fat everywhere else, but the lower belly won't budge. You're feeding the beach ball while you're trying to empty the bag. I want you to think about when a mosquito bites you. You get a bump, it swells up, and it gets puffy. Now, did you gain fat there? No, your body is just reacting to something it didn't like. The swelling is the reaction. And the second But you leave it alone, the swelling will go down on its own. Your gut does the same thing with foods you can't handle well. And these 3 foods are dairy, gluten, and alcohol. Now, I'm not telling you these foods are evil and you can never have them, and I'm not telling you they're gonna make you fat. But what most people miss is these aren't just about the calories you consume from them. It's whether your body can actually digest them. I had a client named Allison. She was in a calorie deficit, tracking everything, doing everything right, but when we were taking her progress pictures, we noticed her lower stomach just wouldn't budge. And so when I looked over her food logs, like we do for all of our online coaching clients, I noticed something. She was having 3 servings of dairy and 3 servings of gluten per day. So I challenged her, cut back and limit to 1 serving of dairy and 1 serving of gluten per day. Within a month, eating the same amount of calories, doing the same workouts, her lower belly fat that just wouldn't budge completely went away and her stomach now was flat. So before you think about slashing more calories in your calorie deficit, take a look at how much of these 3 foods you're having. Cut back on them, keep everything else the same, and then watch what your stomach does. But here's the issue, because even once you do that, there's going to be some people watching this who say, Eric, I'm eating clean, I'm eating healthy, I don't eat those foods, I don't drink alcohol, and I still can't lose the lower belly. And that is maybe the reason why you're also stuck, because the next thing that fills that beach ball is probably the last thing you'd ever expect. And it's a lot of food that you have been told is good for you. A lot of people who are eating clean will eat things like chicken, broccoli, cauliflower, beans, all of the healthy stuff, but yet you're still bloated, you're still puffy, you still have the lower belly pouch, and now you're even more confused because you thought eating healthy was gonna get you to where you want to be. And here's a truth that not that many people talk about: even healthy foods can be very hard to digest for your body. And there's a group of foods called high FODMAP food. It's a big sciencey word. It's a very simple idea. FODMAPs are types of carbs that your gut can't break down well. So instead of digesting it, they sit in your gut and ferment. And fermenting makes gas. And gas makes you bloated. And it impacts the other people around you. And here's the kicker: a lot of these foods that we call healthy are high FODMAP foods. Broccoli, cauliflower, onions, garlic, beans. So the clean dinner that you're eating might be causing that lower belly to be more puffed out. And you can think about this like bread dough. You start with a small, flat ball of flour and water. Then the yeast starts eating the sugars in it, and as it eats, it makes gas. And that gas gets trapped, and the dough puffs up to double or triple the size. The flour and the water didn't get bigger. There's not more food. It's the same dough. It's just filled up with gas. That's exactly what high FODMAP foods do in your gut. Same calories, but it puffs your belly like the rising dough. And here's how I figured this out. I came across a guy named Stan Efferding, and something he teaches in his vertical diet. The whole idea is. Built around eating foods that digest well. So I started swapping these high FODMAP foods I thought was healthy, and I put low FODMAP foods instead. I took out broccoli and I swapped it for spinach or peppers. I took out large amounts of oatmeal and I swapped it for grits or cream of rice instead. My digestion almost immediately got better within days, and my lower belly pouch I thought was just always there immediately started to Because it was never about the stubborn fat; it was about the beach ball inside of the gym bag. So here on the screen, I'm gonna put low FODMAP and high FODMAP foods. I would take a peek at them and start to look at what foods you can swap out because once you're past the easy fat loss, the foods you eat matter just as much as how much you eat. And if you want me to build you an exact plan to lose your lower belly fat, build meals for you. And take out all the guesswork in your workouts? That's exactly what we do for our online coaching clients. You can click the link below to learn more. And if you're sitting there thinking, okay, Eric, once I fix this, how do I know if it's actually working? Well, your body gives you specific signs right before you lose a lot of fat. I made a video on exactly that. You can click right here to watch that coming up next.