Got tummy fat? Hate it with every fiber of your being? Obviously, glaring at your tummy in the mirror won't get rid of your problem. Now, exercise and weight loss might, but whether or not they will is largely a matter of luck. Luck?  Sure. After all, nobody--including diet gurus and bariatric medical researchers--has yet documented a direct line to the fat cells in our tummies. The truth is that tummy fat is usually the first fat to appear in our bodies and the last fat to exit.

Ahem. Here's where I come in. Based on having a tummy since childhood that refused to go away, instead becoming more tummy-like every year and finally burgeoning into a full-blown "tummescense" after I had a baby, I've learned exactly how to trim my belly fat problem. (Note I say trim the "problem," not the belly fat.)

You may not like my solution. It's free, but it's a slap in the face to every two-lettuce-leaves-with-vinegar-please-restaurant-eater friend you have. But I can guarantee you one thing--if you can do it, then your abdominal area's girth will never agonize you again.

Oh, and though I seem to be talking to gals like me, everything I say applies to both sexes and alternative lifestyle choices.

First, a bit about tummy fat. Pretty much everybody has some, if only just a little bit. We're endowed with tummy fat partly to help keep our internal organs toasty warm and partly to provide a protective barrier for those selfsame organs. Women have more tummy fat for "extra special" reasons relating to their reproductive functions. In other words, having abdominal fat comes with being one of those critters called homo sapiens.

If you're overweight and have an apple shape, you have lots of belly fat and much less fat elsewhere. If you're a pear shape, your tummy fat stands out less than the fat around your hips and butt. You're at greater risk for heart attack and other health problems if you're overweight and apple shaped than if you're shaped like a pear.

However, that doesn't necessarily mean that losing tummy fat puts you at less risk. Biomedical research hasn't established that at all. Still, you'll hear researchers say, "You're at risk if you're fat. So stop being fat!"

Why is this form of reasoning a problem? Researchers know, but don't often share with the non-scientific, that establishing that X causes Y does not also automatically establish that reversing X causes a reversal of Y. You need more research for that. Yet the media doesn't like to wait and happily produces vaguely worded headlines like, "Losing Weight May Lower Your Risk of Diabetes" or similar when it presents summaries of research demonstrating that being fat is associated with being diagnosed with diabetes.

The assumption that belly fat weight loss will lower your risk of cardiac problems is unsupported by the mere research that belly fat is associated with cardiac problems. It's like saying, "Being red haired puts you at greater risk for bruising easily. Therefore, dying your hair brown can lower your risk of bruising easily."

See the problem? If being a natural red-head puts you at high risk for bruising easily, then changing your hair color still doesn't change your genetics. Oh, changing your hair color might help--but only if it were actually causing the problem, and then too, only if that causal relationship is reversible--i.e., getting rid of the hair color gets rid of the problem. Otherwise, it won't do anything except make you feel like you're doing something to help, and it may even hurt because of the unforeseen effects of treating your body like an inorganic machine that just needs a new paint job. But the body is a lot more complex than that.

Does this mean that you shouldn't lose weight? The answer is, nobody honestly knows. More research is needed to establish whether weight loss diets improve our health risks in both the short term and the long term, and if so, how much. And if they do help, then we need to also ask whether weight loss diets--which essentially are periods of starvation to the body and trigger it to go into automatic survival mode, including the slowing of the metabolism (known in diet-speak as plateauing)--have not-so-positive side-effects as well. Very rarely does any cure come without costs. Because of the Hippocratic oath, the field of medicine is constantly asking itself, "is the cost greater than the cure?" Regarding weight loss and health---the jury's still out.

In the meantime, you're left with the problem of your tummy fat. Assuming you're going to try to get rid of it but may have trouble--and most people who lose weight gain it all back, and then some--you could use a backup plan. That's where I can help. Maybe.

My favorite way to banish a problem that won't go away is to redefine it. What I mean is, when I realize I'm hopeless at organic chemistry and no amount of studying is ever going to change that, then I stop looking at my "D" average in O-chem as a character flaw. No longer am I "stupid" about organic chemistry. Instead, I'm not interested in the subject. No offense meant to those who like it--I just choose to gracefully bow out of the activity. And since I have no plans to become a doctor, this is not a difficult decision to make.

Tummy fat is the same. I learned decades ago that I'm not willing to bash myself for my failure to eliminate my tummy fat. Rather than spend all my time depressed about what a loser I am for not losing, I decided to learn to treat my tummy fat as a friend. I decided to lose the weight-loss blues and pull confidence out of a hat.

It wasn't easy, not with the media and my friends telling me I was crazy to be confident about something so utterly abominable as belly adipose tissue. I was enabled in my efforts by two things: 1) my bachelor's thesis research on the health implications of obesity, which opened my eyes to the fact that body fat is not always medically a dangerous thing, and 2) my growing experience of cultural and historical differences in views on tummy fat. Why, some societies actually didn't/don't hate bulging bellies at all--some do, but my God, some don't.

When I realized that I had as many legitimate reasons to feel happy about my stomach as I did to feel crappy about it, I realized I had a choice. I'm an optimist, so I chose happy.

To trim your belly fat problem, stop thinking of it as a problem. At the very least, stop being so harsh on yourself. Start thinking of yourself as beautiful. Why? No reason. Just do.

This is what I did:

I started dressing more attractively. The idea here was to give myself as few reasons as possible to feel insecure. As lovely as it would be to ignore contemptuous looks, it wasn't happening, and I did want certain people to think I was pretty. So I had to give folks reason to think me more attractive.

To dress better, forget fashion. Nine times out of ten, the styles that follow the current fashion are not going to flatter your figure. Instead, buy classic clothes with flattering cuts.

I'm personally shaped like an hourglass, and I started wearing outfits that emphasized my waistline instead of hiding it. If you're an apple shape, the most flattering clothes will de-emphasize your waist--like empire waists. Emphasize your length and let things flow over your midsection and draw the eye to your shape above and below the belly. Tailored and form-fitting is fine, but avoid clothes that cling to your belly but not your shoulders or hips. For both body types, aim to outline and smooth your natural body lines.

The next thing I did was to stop making self-deprecatory remarks. Saying "I'm so fat" and "I shouldn't eat that" did nobody any good, myself least of all.

Along these lines, I also stopped brushing off flattering comments from both women and men and started taking them seriously. If someone said I was pretty, I stopped dismissing their opinion as biased and simply chose to take them literally.  I did a happy dance ("Yippee!  I got a vote for pretty!") instead of scrutinizing myself in the mirror to see how the blind fool could possibly see beyond my bulging belly and thighs.

Something strange started happening then. My best male friend in college, who had vowed he didn't go for plump girls, developed a crush on me. So did other guys. And that's when I learned that self-confidence, not my tummy fat, was what tipped the scale for guys when it came to finding me attractive.

I thought for sure after I had my baby that I wouldn't put on more weight. And at first I lost weight automatically--that tends to happen when you breastfeed. But it quickly came back, with extra. And now I can honestly say my tummy has never been so well-bellied. ("Like a full-sail," my husband says now maritimishly, reading over my shoulder.)

And it's strange, but I really don't care. I'm still hourglass shaped. I'm not in the group who's at high risk medically. Even if I were, I recognize that there are limits to how much I can change my body, and even limits to how many sacrifices I'm willing to make.

Oh, there are times I still feel insecure. But to my husband--the only one whose opinion I really care about--those moments of insecurity are far more of a problem than my tummy fat ever could be.

He's not alone in that. It may seem as though men uniformly prefer women to be slim as a willow, but here's a news flash: not all do. Bellies are considered one of the most erotic areas of the body for many men. And even for those guys who do like reed-thin women, what a good number of men want, even more than their ideal, is for their partners to be self-confident.

I mean, think of your friends, family and coworkers who are always trying to lose weight. Are they low maintenance? Or do they require a heck of a lot of emotional support because they lack confidence? Who's more fun to eat dinner with--somebody who complains through the meal about fat grams, or somebody who relishes her food?

The trick to trimming your tummy fat problem is to realize that your tummy fat, whatever else it might be, is not very important in the grand scheme of things.  There are easier and funner ways to gain social acceptance than paying for expensive diets.  And if health is your main concern, I advise you to research the topic thoroughly before you go all out and assume that eliminating your tummy fat through fair means or foul will ultimately improve your health.

So now I've had my say...what do you think?