That awful extra pudge known as belly fat can be the reason why your favorite jeans have started to feel more snug - but there's something worse about the bulge than its effect on your fashion sense. When the fat in your abdomen expands, it could bring with it some serious health trouble, meaning that you need to find a way to get a slimmer stomach, and you need to find it fast.

Your expanding waistline is made up of visceral, and subcutaneous fat. While most of the fat in your body is subcutaneous (the pinchable stuff that protrudes over your belt buckle), about 10% is made up of visceral fat - located deep within your abdominal region, around the organs. Though neither form of fat is good for you, particularly if you want to reduce your waistline, visceral fat is particularly dangerous because it links to serious medical conditions like diabetes and heart disease. On top of that, it churns out inflammatory substances and stress hormones like cortisol which leave you even further in the "risk" category.

The good news, is that visceral fat burns away quicker than subcutaneous fat. In fact, with your waist slimming belt to help cast off water weight, and a few of the tips outlined below, you can get a slimmer stomach and reduce your waistline, in a matter of weeks.

Step 1: Take Up Strength Training (But Don't Forget Aerobics)

Regular dieting and cardio exercise can help to reduce your waistline, but it leaves the stomach behind looking pudgy and soft. On the other hand, researchers with the Harvard School of Public Health have found that those who spend 20 minutes a day in strength training have smaller levels of abdominal fat, and leaner stomachs!

While visceral fat yields quite easily to aerobic exercise like swimming, biking, or running (just about anything that gets your heart beating faster), it's worth throwing some strength training into your efforts to get a slimmer stomach. Strap on your waist slimming belt and follow a few miles of jogging with a quick weight session.

Step 2: Crunch Out those Compound Moves

Since experts suggest that the possibility of spot reduction is a myth, despite the fact that you can use your waist slimming belt to help focus your workout, you're also going to have to work your entire body if you want to reduce your waistline and get a slimmer stomach. Your strength training workout should help here, by burning away fat not muscle, but remember to add in compound moves like bench presses, deadlifts, and squats, too.

The more compound moves you do, the more muscle groups you engage, meaning that your body is so busy focusing on your workout, that it can't hold onto that excess fat too!

Step 3: Pack in More Protein… and Vinegar

The more muscle you have in your body, the more adept you become at burning fat. In fact, a program found that while a pound of fat will burn 2 calories per day, a pound of muscle burns six (while looking a whole lot better!). As most body builders know, eating plenty of protein is vital to building muscle. While upping your protein intake shouldn't also involve enhancing your calorie intake, it should mean looking more closely at the foods you eat, and figuring out how to fit protein into your diet.

While you're at it, it may be worth stocking up on the vinegar too. According to a study conducted in Japan during 2009, obese individuals consuming two tablespoons of vinegar a day showed a significant decrease in body fat - particularly visceral fat.

Step 4: Cut Those Calories and Pile on The Polyunsaturates

Losing fat, whether your focus is to get a slimmer stomach, reduce your waistline, or cut down on the number of chins you're sporting, requires a calorie deficit. In other words, you need to burn more calories than you consume on a regular basis. While exercise can help you achieve that, a healthy diet will give you the weight loss you're looking for much faster. After all, though an hour in the gym can burn 400 calories, so can simply swapping a burger with something leaner.

While you're cutting down calories, keep in mind that saturated fats pile on more visceral fat that polyunsaturated fats. Simply put, it's worth swapping your chips with nuts, fish, and seeds when possible. Just remember - everything in moderation.

Step 5: Chill Out, and Get Some Sleep

Finally, while exercise and diet should help you to reduce your waistline and achieve your physique goals faster, just like a waist slimming belt can help you to get a slimmer stomach, it's important to remember that you're building a lifestyle, not enjoying a brief change in habit. This means that you need to look at the way you live your life on a whole, and consider factors such as sleep, stress, and relaxation - the things that affect your hormonal system.

The higher your stress levels are, whether you're freaking out about demands at work, or you're simply not getting enough beauty sleep, the more likely you are to store fat around the midsection. This means that if you want to reduce your waistline, you need to learn to manage your stress, and preferably work on getting those essential eight hours of sleep each night.

Reduce Your Waistline Fast

Remember, while your aim might be to get a slimmer stomach as quickly as possible, the best thing you can do if you want to sculpt (and maintain) your ideal body, is work on changing bad habits into good ones. Forcing yourself to take on unreasonable diets that leave you feeling starved, or pushing yourself into hours of exercise everyday isn't going to give you the sustainable results you want. Be realistic with yourself, and your goals.

Let us know how you get on with your fat-loss efforts in the comments, and feel free to share your tips with the community.