How do l get rid of abdominal fat?

Premenopausal women tend to accumulate fat around hips and thighs where it serves as a source of energy during pregnancy and lactation. In the peri-menopausal and postmenopausal stage when it is no longer for the woman to become pregnant the fat accumulates around the Omentum -Central Obesity– just like a man. Here the fat is close to the vital organs and supplies a quick source of energy. Omental fat is accentuated by stress and is very different to subcutaneous fat – under the skin.
Stress can lead to eating comfort food. It is therefore important to use MINDFUL EATING–look up the inernet using these terms. 
Reducing stress can be accomplished by the Yogic practice called SAVASANA. Reducing OMENTAL fat is assisted by UDDIYANA -check internet.Eric    pericros@alphalink.com.au

I agree with much of what Eric has said, but would add that the accumulation of unwanted *subcutaneous* abdominal fat is an almost inevitable event of the passage of time.

It is of course possible to reduce total body fat by diet and exercise, and yoga if you like, but these strategies do little to affect the distribution of fat. Thus, at 49, if you achieve passable slenderness at the abdomen, you'll likely be far too thin in the face and at other locations where a little volume is generally preferred.

Therefore, if you want to reduce fat from a *specific area*, like your abdomen, you'll need medical intervention at that *specific area*.

And, of course, to reliably remove subcutaneous fat from a specific area, and thus re-equilibrate your distribution of subcutaneous fat, nothing yet succeeds like liposuction, safely performed under local anaesthetic.

I have over 20,000 clients had thousands lose abdomanal fat, in my 9 gyms over 25 years through following the world wide government health department  recommendations of what also issue as the proven method. Which is cut down calories in a healthy diet,  and exercise over 60 - 90 minutes day.  till you lose weight, every day,   the fat will melt off all your body as well as from around your internal organs in your abdominal area. This is the worst fat,  the fat around your heart, and liver, and lungs that adds to you reason why your stomach sticks out.   Reducing your protruding abdominals.  
I have reorded thousands that wanted to take the lazy  way and have some one else do it for them with liposcution how ever the fat comes back on, and because you dont exercise 60 - 90 minutes every day you will get weak and your will become weaker every year especially after the age of 50.  Then the come back to us to do it properly.  I have also had clients who were also friends of mind die from stomach surgery.  
Do it the healthy, safe way.  do it the way millions do it around the world. There are millions training in gyms up to 90 years of age everywere,  they would not be doing it if they did not see results.  And if you cant go to a gym,  get some free exercise videos from youtube, there are thousands, and do the full body exercise at home,  stretch, pushups, sit ups, squats, dance to film clips,  there is no better looking body then a dancers body. and dancers dance every day especially when they want to improve. 
and get a sexy strong toned body without excess skin.  
stay fit and healthy and you wont have a sucken face. 
Diet and exercise this way for 6 months straight, you can do it yourself. its easy. and fun.

Great answer Vangel

No-one would argue about the importance of exercise to weight loss. I am a marathon runner and regular City-to-Surfer with a 22 BMI - I'm with you.

As, no doubt, are the personal trainers and athletes who have come to me for liposuction on those specific areas that have stubbornly persisted despite such people achieving wonderfully low body-fat percentages.

As you know, liposuction is not a good way to deal with excess weight as such. Weight management is all about calories in and calories out (putting aside, for a moment, conversations about diseases and age-related hormonal changes: no doubt you're aware of such factors).

But, if there's too many fat cells in a specific spot, we can remove them. Whatever happens later, those cells won't come back. Like amputating a toe: no matter what you do or eat afterwards, you won't grow a new toe.

Unwanted adiposity is multifactorial - needs a multi-pronged approach.

Allow people the best of everything.

This is good. I love a debate.

Many points to make, but I'll stick here to just two

1)

You are correct that age-related hormone change and various disease are *often* blamed for overweight and obesity when the *main* problem is lifestyle. Further, even when a certain illness is actually present, such an illness occurs in the context of a whole person who can *also* be a lazy glutton or who can *also* exercise and eat healthily to improve their situation.

However, you do many people a disservice if you believe and promulgate the idea that  "over weight diseses and hormone issues, are an excuse for the consulting expert to use when they fail helping some one lose weight due to lack of diet and exercise skills and experience“ without any caveat or elaboration because, I can assure you, conditions such as Cushings syndrome and hypothyroidism and PCOS and Prader  Willi syndrome, etc, *do* exist and, whilst of course such persons need to be encouraged to exercise and diet they *also* need a bit of understanding that their condition is not a mere ”excuse".

I hasten to add - liposuction is not appropriate for these people. They need other sorts of medical care.

2)

Except at the extremes of gross overweight and gross underweight, fat cells do not multiply and nor do they, generally, apoptose. Fat cell numbers stay pretty constant throughout adult life. As a person puts on weight, the individual fat cells get bigger and as a person loses weight the individual cells get smaller. 

If you remove a fat cell, fat can no longer be deposited at that spot. End of story. In this sense, liposuction is like an amputation of fat cells from a particular spot - hence the amputation-of-toe analogy.

That this is true can be easily seen in the situation where, sad to say, liposuction treatments have been unevenly performed. If, after all recovery has occurred, unevenness of liposuction results persists, then such unevenness will continue to persist despite subsequent weight loss or gain (although it will be less apparent if weight is lost). Irregularity of fat cell numbers is associated with an uneven appearance - this, as much as anything, demonstrates the constancy of fat cell distribution in absence of intervention

As you rightly point out, some patients who have liposuction will go on to re-gain the *body weight* they may have lost in the liposuction procedure. Every experienced performer of liposuction has seen this happen - me included. Patient comes for treatment carrying, say, 70kg. I might remove 2kg of fat from, say, love handles. Patient therefore leaves with a (dry) weight of 68kg. Then, a year or two later, they are back to 70 kg *but the love handles are still better than they were prior to the treatment* because *those cells are still gone*.

As I said right at the start, liposuction is about treating a *specific area*. It's *not* about total weight loss.

Total weight loss is mostly about diet and exercise, sure, and treating medical conditions and understanding the limits of such treatments and understanding the complexities of each individual patient. There is also a *huge* place for bariatric surgery, as it is the only intervention proven in the long term to bring about real weight loss across real numbers of people, but I'll let you discuss that with some other doctor, please. Patients who look to liposuction to help them reduce the number on the bathroom scales will be disappointed. I absolutely applaud exercise in everyone and enthusiastically partake in it myself (and, just quietly, I'll race you, Vangel, around the block any day of the week. Just for fun).

But exercise is not the only answer to everything to do with adiposity. It's not that simple.

“For every complex problem there is an answer that is simple, neat, and wrong”

H. L. Mencken

As I mentioned in my original post postmenopausal women tend to develop Omental fat. This is, in my opinion, best tackled with reductioon of stress. In john's original post he suggests that abdominal fat is inevitable in later years. I am 83 years old, have been training for 69yrs and do not have excess abdominal fat. What is more I do not have a drawn face as John w ith his marathon backgrounmd seems to think is an inevtble concomitant with a slim waist. He says that Liposuction is not the best way of reducing abdominal fat and yet he is suggesting a method that not the besti. I would suggest that the reason for reducing abdominal fat is to improve one's health. I have read that even removing Omental fat surically does not achieve this.
Again why do doctors talk in terms of weighti instead of discussing body composition. A person can gain muscle lose fat and the scales will tell you, you have gained weight.
 I would add that at 83 I am not really unusual  I know several men and women who are in fine shape at 89.

John, I made the point that I am not exceptional.  The one thing I have in common with all the others who have maintained their abs is that we have never stopped training and we have used strength training. I also jog but strength training is the base.

Writing as a non-clinical health professional, there is increasing evidence that visceral fat tissue acts as, in effect, an endocrine organ. By that I mean that it secretes a number of bioactive proteins (leptin, adiponectin, TNF and IL-6 are examples). Excess levels of these proteins seem to be risk factors for Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

The contrast is with subcutaneous fat tissue - it is thought to be essentially “passive”  (though it does secrete leptin) -  just serving as a fat store.

Abdominal fat tends to be linked with 2 main hormones – Insulin and Cortisol. Therefore carbohydrate and stress reduction strategies may be effective.  High intensity interval training (if appropriate) has also been associated with improvements in abdominal obesity.

Hello,
In addition I would like to add that, exercise and physical activity aside (which are crucial!), a lack of sleep and stress will increase the levels of fat storage in the abdominal area.