There is no doubt that sugar is one of the big causes of stomach fat. It is in virtually everything we eat these days and is hard to escape for those of use with a weak spot for sweets. For every teaspoon of sugar you consume comes an extra 15 calories and if this can be avoided, it will make your goal to lose stomach fat and get sexy abs much more achievable.
So what are the alternatives to sugar? We've all seen the adds for "zero-sugar" soda and many hundreds of other products that claim zero calories. The problem is the method they go about to provide "zero calorie" products.
The options for alternative sugar products are as follows:
- Aspartame products such as Equal, NutraSweet and Canderel
- Xylitol
- Stevia
Aspartame based products are the popular choice and this is one of the reasons that over 50% of the population are overweight. Aspartame is an artificial sweetener which has known harmful chemical by-products such as formaldahyde (a toxic substance known to cause damage to the human body) and phenylalanine (shown to decrease Leptin - an extremely important hormone which regulates metabolism - by 34%).
Clearly aspartame based sweeteners are going to have a detrimental effect on losing belly fat.
Xylitol is a natural sweetener derived from fruit fibers and has 34% less calories than sugar. It tastes great, it's got numerous health benefits and it's often recommended by dentists as a sugar alternative which "doesn't promote tooth decay".
Finally, Stevia is a natural sweetener derived from the Stevia plant. It has zero calories, is much sweeter than sugar and has no adverse effects to human metabolic functions. This makes it an ideal sugar replacement to help lose stomach fat. The taste is a little bit different to what you may be used to from using sugar but in a short amount of time, most people love the taste and have no trouble using it as a sugar alternative.
I would recommend in any case that natural sweeteners are more beneficial than artificial sweeteners to help in getting rid of belly fat to expose a flat, "6 pack" stomach.