Clench your fist. Squeeze it a few times. Now imagine that fist inside your chest, pumping over and over, hard enough to pump blood and oxygen throughout your entire body—about sixty thousand miles’ worth of veins and arteries—and never resting, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Is it any wonder your heart needs all the support it can get?
The most important thing your heart needs—besides someone to like your Facebook posts—is a constant, nourishing supply of blood from the coronary arteries. When we talk about heart disease, what we’re talking about is basically a hiccup in this critical delivery system: blood flow is blocked and cannot get to the heart to feed it. More than 720,000 Americans suffer heart attacks each year, according to the CDC.
There are a number of factors that contribute to your heart disease risk, from things you can’t control, such as family history and age, to things you can control a bit, including stress level, cholesterol levels, and blood pressure. But there’s one major risk factor for heart disease that you can control: belly fat. A study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that normal-weight heart patients who have excess belly flab are less likely to survive than obese patients whose excess pounds are concentrated in their thighs and buttocks. Here are 9 ways to lose belly fat—and unbreak your heart, compliments of the New York Times bestseller Zero Belly Diet, to lose belly fat on hyperspeed while eating the foods you love. All of them have been scientifically proven to fry flab in 6 weeks or less!