No Stupid Questions

Your beer belly, is it hard or jiggly?

If it's a hard beer belly, that means you have lots of visceral fat, fat inside the rib cage. This is a strong indicator of metabolic syndrome.

The single best way to tackle that beer belly is to go low carb, this reduces your blood sugar, letting your insulin levels come down, allowing your body to actually function properly. The human body, really, really, really, really does not like visceral fat, and will remove it with urgency when allowed to.

If you like data, buying a continuous glucose monitor, then playing a game where you keep your glucose as flat as possible all day. The beautiful thing about this is you get instant feedback and know exactly how well your doing.

A absolutely great resource on doing this intervention is: https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb

This is the hormonal model of human metabolism, other people have mentioned calorie in calorie out CICO - which is technically correct, but practically unhelpful. Humans are amazing hormonal homeostasis machines, the hormones need to be functioning properly. You can eat 100 g of uranium, and have trillions of calories in your body, but you're not going to be able to use it. It's much better to get your hormones into balance and allow the body to self-correct and stay at optimal.

The great thing about going low carb, is you will lose that visceral fat, your blood pressure will improve, sleep will improve, pre-diabetes will improve, sexual function will improve... Basically everything, the metabolism touches every part of the body! Insulin is extremely important, getting it into control has massive benefits.

All of this! And you won't even be hungry! If you're doing low carb, you can eat as much as you want, as long as you keep your blood sugar down. BBQs steaks eggs bacon cheese, as much as you like at any time. Alcohol : avoid beers, if you must drink vodka or whiskey. -- all of this works because your body will be able to tell you when you're full. Have you ever eaten a steak, and it tastes absolutely delicious at the beginning, but the more you eat it the less and less delicious it tastes? That's how all foods should be. that's the human body self regulating. Sugar messes that system up!

Alternative: Teach kids to cook, on the premise of being a good dad. THEN kids cook ALL the meals!

Yeah! I made your life easier!

Humans are horribly, miserably energy efficient.

Seriously we evolved as exhaustion predators: pick an animal and just keep walking after it until it drops, then eat it. That's our whole schtick. We are the goddamn terminator.

Just being alive and breathing uses up about 1500-2000 calories a day.

An absolute bastard of a workout will use up maybe 100 on top of that, which makes up for like a spoonful of peanut butter.

As such, you can't practically lose weight via exercise alone. You need to bring calories-in down to less than calories-out.

The tricky part is doing it in a controlled and sustainable manner so you don't just say fuck it and scarf down two whole pizzas for lunch in a week's time because you're hangry and don't care any more.

I agree with the comment saying that 130lbs doesn’t sound overweight, unless you’re 5’0 or under. Does your belly look obviously big to you in photos, or has anyone else ever mentioned it? Your perspective when you look down at your belly will make it look larger to you, so it might only be you that sees your belly as too big.

Keep in mind as well that in any photos of men you see who are body building, they have often dehydrated themselves to make their muscles stand out more. If you’re properly hydrated you’re never going to look like that, even if you exercise every day.

But strengthening your core muscles is really good for your back, so it’s probably not a bad idea to do sit ups and push ups.