You’ve gotten a lot of advice on here, but I don’t think I’ve seen this…are you able to “suck in your gut” if you try hard and it improves how it looks? If so, it might not even be visceral fat, but just poor muscle tone in your abdominal area. If this is it, then core strength exercises are the way to go. Practice sucking in that gut more and more until it becomes the default, and strengthen your abs and obliques.

you don’t even have to work out.

you can get there simply with diet.

that said, dieting doesn’t target where the fat comes from.

Core strength training (like sit ups, push ups, etc,) will help with muscle definition, and that can improve the appearance, but if you break down how much say, a pound of body fat is in excercise vs how much that pound is in hambergers… well. restricting calories will always be more effective for weight loss.

has your doctor said you need to lose weight? 130 pounds sounds not-overweight.

130 lbs???

Beer belly?

Are you like 5’3"? Otherwise… What???

Are you 5’3"? I don’t mean that to be offensive I am genuinely asking. I haven’t weighed anywhere near 130 since I was maybe 12?

Do you want a six pack or do you just want the belly bulge to go away?

Every little bit helps. Generally speaking if you can work a few push ups and sit ups into your daily routine it will likely have more effect than doing an hour long dedicated work out once a week.

Start out with 10 sit ups every morning right when you wake up and do 10 every night before you hop in bed. Add more as you get comfortable or do them periodically throughout the day.

CICO

Calories in <<< calories out

You can lose your beer belly sitting on a sofa all day doing nothing, just as long as you’re intaking less calories than you burn.

Do strict keto, the majority of a beer belly is water which bonds with fat at a 3:1 ration so when you’re burning fat as your primary fuel you’ll piss half of it out in the first month without any change in physical activity.

A beer belly, despite the name, is not exactly from beer. A beer belly isn’t specifically from the caloric spikes associated with heavy beer drinking (where a certain amount of alcohol for a certain inebriation is accompanied by a massive intake of simple carbs compared to liquor). It’s due in part by genetics. It’s called visceral fat, meaning it’s intertwined with your torso’s organs and muscles. The concern here, particularly when beer-bellied people are heavy enough to show notable fat between their knees, elbows, and faces, is there’s likely fat/cholestoral buildup in the circulatory system. The beer belly is a heart attack predictor (but please understand overall weight is part of that indicator, not just location of fat). Some people are prone to adding fat relatively evenly across their body while some are prone to a beer belly. This variance in fat distribution is why skin-pinch based BMI tests are not accurate for health (testing arm skin misses beer bellies) and why weight/height BMI charts aren’t either (can categorize distributed-fat risks a little too closely to beer bellied fat).

As for a solution, I support low-carb diets as you’ve indicated you’ll try. They come with risks and peculiarities. As someone with sizable forearms and calves but about 40lbs of beer belly, keto has worked great for weight loss. The consequence of not being careful with eating (counting carbs but not calories to types of fat) is my cholestoral is still high when I do keto stints.

As you consider a low carb diet, I want to point out some misconceptions for keto, since that’s mostly what you’ll find. Atkins and Weight Watchers are close to keto. Paleo has a similar major component by prohibiting simple processed grain (white flour) but isn’t the same otherwise. It’s not a high protein diet - eat a normal amount. It’s not a high fat diet - higher than the sugar industry-funded diet studies blaming fats will recommend, but still a normal amount. It does push you to choose better fats (nuts, avocado) rather than bad fats (bacon, butter) but fats fare a little better as a snack than proteins.

A major misconception is that fats make you fat and dietary cholestoral gives you coronary cholestoral. Both are indirectly related by directly false. Your belly is not stuffed with butter and cashew oil. It’s stuffed with human fat. Fat is a category, not a particular substance. Your body has to convert food into body fat. When you eat lots of sugars or simple carbs (which quickly turn into sugar in your stomach), your body is happy to waste energy converting the other food into body fat because you’re rapidly adding energy (sugar) to your blood. While sugar highs aren’t exactly real, sugar crashes absolutely are. It’s why a big pasta meal can leave you hungry in an hour. So what if you stop eating sugar and simple carbs? You can’t put walnuts in your bloodstream. Your body has to take that fat and convert it into body fat, and then that body fat gets converted into blood sugar. It’s a lengthy process that costs a lot of energy. It takes a week of dedication to make it work. When you get ketosis in full swing, your body will fuel itself with body fat as it takes time to convert dietary fat into body fat for later. Similarly for dietary cholestoral, you can’t take egg yolks and coat your arteries. Your personal cholestoral is produced by your body and is related more to total dietary calorie intake, dietary proportion of saturated fats, and genetic disposition for fat distribution.

Personally, a major benefit from keto is simply being able to confidently turn down all sugar and simple carbs. Beer, cake, cookies, sugary drinks, chips, bread, ice cream, and candy. I can easily convince myself that a little treat won’t hurt in a non-keto month but I have poor self control. A little becomes a lot. Part of that is because I’m “cleaning up” carby foods I abstained form during a keto month. But on keto? It’s an easy rule to follow since I’m as happy with cheddar as I am with ice cream. While I’ll come off for a few months to a year, the monthly keto cycles make my weight chart look like a slinky going down stairs.

The fact that you describe yourself as skinny and low weight suggests that this is not about calories. Do you have a high carb diet? That tends to cause fat to collect in the midsection. If you’ve ever seen starving children in Africa, you may have noticed that a lot of them have a similar stomach bulge, despite being clearly malnourished. It’s from their diet that’s high in grains.

I think the conventional wisom is diet is more important than exercise in losing weight, although I think most people would recommend working out once a week regardless if you would lose weight or not, basically any working out would be positive if you aren’t at all, it couldn’t hurt to do sit ups and push ups and see where that takes you.

What you’re talking about would help, but not as much or as quickly as you’d like.

As others have said, changing your diet would help much more. Beer bellies are correctly called beer bellies because of all the carbs.

Don’t try to change too much at once. This is preventative, and not a major emergency, so you can be a bit kinder to yourself. At first, merely reduce your intake of unhealthy foods. Completely eliminate them later on. Wean yourself off things rather than trying to go cold turkey. Dieting is very much a mental game. When you get used to eating less unhealthy crap, there’s a good chance you’ll crave it less.

Don’t eat mindlessly out of habit or boredom; ask yourself if you’re genuinely hungry, and if there’s a healthier option available (and make sure there is. When you go grocery shopping, buy more healthy snacks to make up for the junk you’ll be buying less of).

You’re very smart for paying attention to this now. It’s much, much easier to adjust your diet now than it is to try and correct things once your weight has become a serious problem.

Lastly, I’m no expert. Search “diet plan for beginners” for more suggestions. Talking to your doctor wouldn’t hurt, either, especially if you’ve got a condition we’re not aware of.

Exercise won’t change much.

What you need to do is eat less calories than you burn — so eat a little less, and you will lose weight.

if you stick to your workouts and train to failure, your muscles will grow.

however to eliminate fat, you don’t exercise. you eat less. when you are eating below caloric maintenance, your body makes up the difference in fat. you can’t control where the fat comes from. you just have to maintain that for a long time and it’ll go away. everyone stores fat differently. some in legs, some in stomach, etc.

but you cannot exercise away body fat. it’s like 80/20 diet exercise

I agree with the comment saying that 130lbs doesn’t sound overweight, unless you’re 5’0 or under. Does your belly look obviously big to you in photos, or has anyone else ever mentioned it? Your perspective when you look down at your belly will make it look larger to you, so it might only be you that sees your belly as too big.

Keep in mind as well that in any photos of men you see who are body building, they have often dehydrated themselves to make their muscles stand out more. If you’re properly hydrated you’re never going to look like that, even if you exercise every day.

But strengthening your core muscles is really good for your back, so it’s probably not a bad idea to do sit ups and push ups.

You don’t have to work out at all. Just eat clean and don’t drink. It helps if you use a calorie tracker, so you know what you’re taking in numerically.

Nope.

Diet. Not exercise.