The battle of the bulge sneaks up on the average dieter; getting rid of it, on the other hand, is a long, drawn out battle that sometimes causes so much frustration that the dieter will simply give up or even consider the more drastic aspects of surgery to get rid of unwanted belly fat. Loss of this fat is not as easy as shedding pounds from other parts of the body, but there are some tips and tricks that will make it possible.

Successful belly fat loss in five easy steps starts with an enjoyable exercise:

1. Sleep! Sure, you know better than believing that you can lose weight while you sleep, but in the extended sense, you can help your body - and your belly - to shed some fat. If you get less than five solid hours of uninterrupted sleep, your body's production of insulin is inhibited and any sugar carbs consumed are not metabolized, and calories are not burned but instead piled on as fat. Ideal are eight hours of sleep for proper functioning.

2. Exercise your abdominal muscles with sit-ups. Nobody likes doing them, but if you do five at a time, and maybe an hour or so later do another five, you will find that at the end of the day you can come up with a sizeable amount of sit-ups! Make it a matter of pride to see how many you can do in a day and then gradually work your way up.

3. Rest your abdominal muscles. It is counterproductive to keep on exercising your abs every single day in the beginning. Take a day between exercises and instead focus on different muscle groups then.

4. Reduce your dinner carb intake. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Atkins diet (and those other ones which also center on a reduced carbohydrate and increased protein intake) works because an overload of carbohydrates will metabolize into fat when eaten prior to sleep. Focus on protein and fiber rich veggies instead for dinner, and you will be rewarded with weight loss - and thus also belly fat loss.

5. Reduce your junk food intake. Yes, this is the time to get out that old food journal again and chart for one week everything you are eating. Don't worry about recording calories, just write down what it is that you are ingesting. Do not forget to also list your soda and other drink intake! At the end of the week, seek out non-essential food items you can cut down; let's say you drink 24 non-diet soft drinks per week - next week, see if you can cut it down to 20. Couple this with a few other little tweaks here and there, and you will have cut down your weekly calorie intake - and thus your belly fat development - considerably. Keep on cutting and trimming, and over the course of the year you will find that a lot of junk is eliminated and a lot of belly fat loss is recorded.

Do not give up when the going gets tough, but stick it out. Before long you will be rewarded with great results!