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No matter what time of year it is, everyone always wants to know how to lose belly fat. In the winter, it's because of over-indulging during the holidays; in the summer, you're worried about beach season. Fortunately, there are some real tricks to losing belly fat that work all year round.

One of the best ways to learn how to lose belly fat is to go on a low-carb, carb control or carb-restricted diet. Science has various theories about how or why this works, but these diets are known to go to work on belly fat right when you first start losing. Popular low-carb, carb control and carb-restricted diets include the most famous of them, Atkins; the Carbohydrate Addicts' Diet and the Carbohydrate Addicts' Lifespan Program; The Zone; and perhaps the best-known of them all, the South Beach Diet. While all diets ultimately cause you to lose weight due to caloric restriction, these diets that put the brakes on carbs work on the belly fat first.

Another of the great ideas for how to lose belly fat is exercise. First of all, incorporating an aerobic exercise program into your lifestyle is absolutely necessary if you want to lose fat of any kind. If you're not already exercising, start by walking at a brisk pace for half an hour every day. If you already have an exercise program, make it more effective by incorporating interval training, which means adding short bursts of very intense movement to your regular routine. Once you've got the aerobic exercise down, it's then time to add toning exercises. This is where sit-ups, curls, and the like, as well as more general toning routines like Pilates or yoga, come into play. Over time you will definitely notice a difference in your belly fat. Depending upon your genetics, you may even attain that perfect six pack!

Finally, when discussing how to lose belly fat there are some extreme methods that may be resorted to if you're already practicing a healthy diet and exercise routine but you're still seeing flab around the middle that bothers you. Of course, we're talking about surgery here. Tummy tucks and liposuction are more invasive methods to deal with belly fat, but they're worth mentioning. Liposuction is only performed on people who are at a healthy body weight but due to genetics carry extra fat in certain areas. An incision is made and a vacuum is placed in the incision to remove the fat by sucking. This operation should only be performed by a medical doctor, because it can be dangerous, and if the subject later gains weight, the fat won't grow back in that area but it will bulge out above and below, causing an awkward appearance. Tummy tucks are similar to face lifts except that the skin around the midriff is folded in order to reduce the appearance of belly fat. Now you have a good idea of how to reduce belly fat, from simple life style changes to significant plastic surgery.