Get rid of your belly fat: How skipping rope can help?

Skipping or jumping rope is more than just child's play. In fact, you see many professional athletes include skipping rope in their training routines.

That alone tells you that skipping rope does help in giving you a flatter belly because you don't see many athletes with big tummies.

There are two types of belly fat. There's the subcutaneous fat that is fat under the skin; and the visceral fat, that is dense fat found inside the abdominal cavity and surrounds your vital organs. Of the two, visceral fat is more harmful and harder to shed off.

More than being sexy, you should get rid of your belly fat for healthier reasons. Having excess belly fat can put you at risk of heart disease, heart attacks, high blood pressure, stroke, type 2 diabetes, asthma, breast cancer, colon cancer, and Alzheimer's disease.

There are a lot of causes for belly fat. There's your poor diet, too much alcohol, lack of exercise, stress, genetics, poor sleep, and smoking.

So, how to lose that belly fat. Top of the list is improving your diet. This means minding the calories that you get from food. You have to switch to more greens like vegetables and fruits, avoid food with high sugar content, trans fat, processed food, basically everything that is not healthy.

You can supplement your healthy diet with exercise. It doesn't have to be hardcore, 30 minutes of exercise a day will already be of great help. And, this is where skipping rope comes in.

According to the Daily Express, skipping rope is a full-body workout in itself. When you skip rope, not only will your legs get a workout by jumping, or your shoulder and arms for turning the rope. You stabilize your body by using your abdominals.

Skipping rope for 10 minutes is like you running a mile in eight minutes. Skipping rope for one hour allows you to burn 1,600 calories. So, you can just imagine what that does to your belly fat.