Losing abdominal fat is something that many people, especially in America, struggle greatly with. The availability and convenience of terrible, processed foods makes it a lot of work to eat healthy and live at your optimum weight. Here's three strategies that you can start doing today that will make a difference in your life if you take action on them.

Strategy #1: Focus On Eating Food That Is Actually Good For You

Today in our advanced culture, our grocery stores are lined with all sorts of food. The problem is that 80% is not healthy at all and most of it actually promotes fat gain in our bodies.

The biggest factor that will determine if a food is good or bad for you is the processing involved to create it. For example, a box of mac n'cheese is more processed than a fresh apple. The more processed the food is, the worse it will be for your health. If you want to have any chance of losing your abdominal fat, you'll have to clean up your diet and start eating whole foods.

Whole foods are fruits or veggies straight out of the ground. They haven't been tampered with or cut up and turned into something else. When you're buying anything at the grocery store, you should get used to taking a look at the ingredients. If something you want has a long list of ingredients that you can't pronounce, you can bet that it is unhealthy and not fit for you to eat.

Strategy #2: Get Your Portion Size Under Control

This is something that most everyone has a problem with or at least struggles with. We all have eyes bigger than our stomachs and most of the time when you dish up your plate you probably put way too much food on there.

The truth is that your stomach is only about as big as your fist (when clenched). After you eat a meal, it takes about 15 minutes for your brain to tell you that you're full. This means that you probably end up eating for that 15 minutes, then you have to take a nap because you're so full you can't function.

The trick to eating smaller portions starts when you first put food on your plate. Here's a couple ideas that will help you eat less at your meals. First, use a smaller plate. When you grab the biggest plates out of your cupboard you will have the tendency to fill it with food. And unless your big plates are really small, you will end up eating way too much.

The second thing you should do is compare your fist to what you have served up on your plate. If the food on your plate makes your fist look small, you probably have too much food on your plate! Start serving yourself a portion about the size of your fist, eat it slowly, then see if you're still hungry after a few minutes have passed. Eating the proper amount at every meal will greatly help you lose abdominal fat quickly.

Strategy #3: Use The Hunger Scale

Think of your hunger as a scale from 0-10. If you are at a 0, you will feel very hungry and it's time to eat. Once you hit a 5, you should feel satisfied (not hungry or full) and should stop eating right there. If you've hit a 10 you have eaten way too much and are extremely full (think Thanksgiving dinner).

Putting your hunger and eating habits on a scale will help you keep track of how you're doing and give you something to work on. What you should do is record the number you start at, and then the number you end at. For example, if you're just slightly hungry when you sit down to eat, then eat a bit too much so you feel a bit full, your numbers might look like this: meal #1: 2-7.

Keep track of how you do at every meal over the next week. Try your best to stay within the 0-5 range, but don't stress out if you go over. It's important to be honest and accurately record your progress. And just so you know, most of the time you won't stay in the 0-5 range, especially in your first week of keeping track. Just shoot for those numbers and keep trying to improve.

In Closing

If you start to change your eating habits, you will lose abdominal fat, no matter what you have tried and failed at in the past. In fact, if you stick to healthy, whole foods and actively use the hunger scale, you will naturally slim down to your optimum weight.

However, you should also start exercising on a regular basis and develop a workout plan that you can stick to and enjoy doing. When you combine the power of healthy nutrition and intense workouts, you will burn off your fat fast, without any of the terrible side effects that come from the fad diets or pills.

This is the only healthy way to lose abdominal fat and tone up your abs. Everything else either doesn't work, or gives you temporary results that won't last. If you really want to get healthy follow these strategies and start on the road to great results.