Who says abdominal crunches melt away inches from your waistline? Too many people! Whether informercials, or so-called professional fitness trainers calling themselves experts, all too often try to promote their exercise equipment, nutrition potions, and fitness programs for profit using the “do this and fat will melt away instantly from your belly” strategy.
In my opinion this is unethical marketing. You do not use a marketing strategy with principles that undermind exercise science. That is wrong! What ends up happening is the consumer hears it, buys into it, and tells ten other people. Therefore, this false fitness tips streads like a giant wildfire.
What gets hurt? The consumer.
Will doing abdominal crunches everyday quickly burn every inch of fat off your stomach, and love handles? Absolutely not! As a matter of fact, I truly believe more than 70% of the population really thinks that doing situps will take fat off your midsection. Whose fault is this? Partially the companies selling abdominal exercise machines. They portray their machine as the end all, be all secret belly fat solution. Just do this exercise twice a day, and you will we walking on the beach with ripped abs.
My job as a professional fitness trainer has been to untangle the thinking of many of my clients, subscribers, and web surfers; thus, protecting them from lack of fitness workout results as well as extreme frustration. The “crunches melt body fat away” theory will quickly set a new enthusiastic fitness participant up for failure.
Today I am going to save you from all this fallacy by laying the truth right on the table.
Doing abdominal exercises alone will not instantly melt away belly fat. This is a faulty fitness tip that will be squashed once, and for all right now.
Don’t buy into the do these 6 type of ab exercises, and fat will magically disappear. Yes, people want to believe this because they desperately want an easy, quick solution to their challenge.
The quick solution is this. In order to lose stomach, and love handle fat you must follow a complete, well rounded fitness, and nutrition program, not just do crunches. To get results you need a coordinated effort between physical activity, and calorie restriction. That is the key to success, not just doing a few abdominal exercises.
My truthful fitness tip for buring belly fat is to do the follow:
1. Be on a consistent cardiovascular program to improve your aerobic capacity, as well as burn additional body fat.
2. Be on a consistent 2 days a week strength training program that includes the major muscle groups, including abdominal exercises.
3. Decrease your caloric intake by 250 – 500 calories each day from your weight maintenance caloric value. This will help you lose bodyfat throughout your whole body, including your waistline. The combination of the cardio, plus strength training, plus a sound nutrition program will melt away bodyfat from your belly a lot quicker than doing 1000 crunches day.
The bottom line is you can’t spot reduce. What that means is by doing a particular exercise does not mean fat will magically melt away from the region you are working. Fat shinks throughout the whole body.
This article will now set you straight on all the false fitness tips regarding crunches, abdominal exercises, and the melting away of stomach fat. Your new found results will begin to thank you.
If you participate in a fitness, or diet program, and want to protect your results from all the false fitness theories swirling around quickly get our multimedia fitness tips.
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I had been hearing about this “Lemonade Diet” for several months, mostly because of things said in passing by people on TV and in magazines. I was in a really bad place with my diet and exercise program. After 10 years of really rigorous working out I was sick of it all. I over exercised to overcompensate for how much I ate so I was able to maintain my weight and health through excerise alone and never really learned to eat properly. Well, when all that exercise began to take a toll on my joints I decided it was time to make a change, I’ve always heard your diet should be 80-90% of your health focus. Problem was I was so confused and so apathetic about changing anything in my life I needed a DRAMATIC change to kick start me. Thus I researched cleanses and decided on the Master Cleanse, mostly because it was cheap and easy ( I also looked at getaway cleanse retreats that would have cost thousands of dollars). And being at home with all my old vices really forced to me to take stock of the habits I had acquired with regard to food.
Do not kid yourself — this diet is not easy. It brought up a lot of things for me emotional and psychological with regard to food. I was able to remain on the minimally required 10 days but I know others that did not make it that far. It’ s a mental test more than anything else. Surprisingly, even after not eating for 10 days I was never physically hungry.
There is a lot more to the diet than just Lemonade so I STRONGLY recommend reading the book and not just listening to what you may have heard someone else say. The book is a really short read but packed full of information, but there is also the audio CD which only requires an hour.
In the end I heard most people gain back half the weight they lose, but I have not but I have also adopted a much healthier way of eating. The book worked for me, it gave me the kick start I needed! I wouldn’t recommend to everyone — for anyone eating the standard American diet this will definitely be beneficial but hard! A real character builder. But you know, I only lost 9 pounds and I’ve achieved better results with exercise and calorie restriction and without the mental stress. If you are going to do this it has to be for health not just weight loss or you won’t make it through. Good Luck!
Any sort of cardio will help when trying to loose belly fat! Go for a run everyday. Or maybe a bike ride! Swimming is also a great way to get strong abs and tone all of your muscles. It can also help to cut down on things like potatoes and other carbs and have more protein. Interval training will really help too. Hope that helps!
Between me and my husband we’ve owned more MP3 players over the years than I can count, including Sansas, iRivers, iPods (classic & touch), the Ibiza Rhapsody, etc. But, the last few years I’ve settled down to one line of players. Why? Because I was happy to discover how well-designed and fun to use the underappreciated (and widely mocked) Zunes are.
I ditched crunches ages ago, I confess they are okay to start with, I only do the bicycle crunch these days. I have had further success building the abdominals with kettle bells, the front swing plus the around the world exercise can really help develop a good solid six pack!
I was very surprised when my doctor informed me that I had developed impaired blood fasting sugar.
I have always been a very active person and I thought that my eating habits were healthy. It turns out being reared in the south that my diet included way too many carbohydrates. So I started to do the things mentioned in this article. I started to eat right and developed an exercise program that I could live with. At this point I have lost 28 pounds and lowered my blood pressure to 120 over 80. I did this within 6 months time. I feel so good about myself that I know this new lifestyle will stick. The most surprising thing that I learned though is the importance of drinking water. To lose fat, water is the key, apart from the proper diet choice and exercise. How does drinking water help in fat loss?
* It curbs hunger: Water is a natural appetite suppressant. Insufficient fluid can lead to over eating. Your brain does not differentiate between hunger and thirst. If there there is a slight dehydration the thirst mechanism may be mistaken for hunger and one may eat when the body is actually craving for water. In other words, when you think you are hungry, your body may in fact be telling you that you are thirsty!
As most food contains some water, if you don’t drink enough water, you may be subconsciously driven to eat more to gain the necessary water supply and as a result, you gain more calories and more weight!
* Water makes you feel full. Because it is filling and calorie free, water is part of the solution when it comes to weight loss and maintenance. Water takes up room in your stomach, making you feel full. This means you’ll eat less and feel less hungry.
* It replaces sugary drinks: A half-cup of fruit juice contains between 45 and 80 calories. Sodas, sugary drinks and shakes all contain calories. By drinking them, you would be adding a considerable number of calories. On the other hand water has zero calories. So, to replace sugary drinks and cut down on your calories, keep a glass of water in your hand and sip it instead of grabbing a mixed drink or any other type of drink.
* Water boosts your metabolism. The findings are reported in the December issue, 2003 of The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. The researchers Michael Boschmann, MD, and colleagues from Berlin’s Franz-Volhard Clinical Research Center tracked energy expenditures among seven men and seven women who were healthy and not overweight. The subjects, after drinking approximately 17 ounces of water, increases the rate of burning calories by 30% within the time frame of 30-40 minutes.
A person who increases his water consumption by 1.5 liters a day would burn an extra 17,400 calories, for a weight loss of approximately 5 pounds in a year. Increase metabolism means increase the calorie burn and fat loss. This is how you can achieve fat loss by drinking water.
Though people may have different opinions about fat loss by drinking water, water can surely curb hunger and encourage you to replace high-calorie drinks. Water is one of the best ways to keep your mouth busy without adding calories, and also, drinking water has other health benefits as well.
How Many Glasses of Water Should You Drink Each Day?
One rule of thumb is to drink 8 eight ounce glasses of water per day or approximately 2 liters. While this is not a bad starting point, I recommend you determine how much water you need by your weight. Take your weight in lbs and divide it by 2. The result is the amount of water in ounces that you should drink per day.
If it is hot outside, or you are exercising you want to increase that basic water requirement by a few more glasses.