Lose That Stubborn Belly Fat and Get Those Nice Flat Sexy Abs
The Slick Magazine Lies
Have you ever seen the magazines with the slim lady or ripped guy on the front cover next to that article promising you how to get six pack abs from their simple ab workouts. "Get flat sexy abs in three weeks with our new ab workout routine!" Many people still fall for this and beat their poor midsection with hundreds of reps of crunches and all their variations every day. And many will get hard abs. So what's the problem?
Simply put if you have a fat belly all those ab exercises will NOT burn this fat away so you won't be able to SEE your nice hard abs. Your fat will be obcuring it! Abs exercises barely elevate the body's metabolic response to burn fat. They only burn slightly more calories than simply lying on your back. So if you keep blasting away at your midsection with all those fancy crunches you wont so much as touch your belly fat. Your "abs" may be there underneath the fat but how would anyone know?
The University of Massachusetts did a study where men did 5,000 sit ups a day and they did not produce fat loss in their bellies or torsos and did not reduce waist size for them. 5,000 sit ups! Now what is your 3 sets of 25 crunches going to do for your belly?
So how do you win "the battle of the bulge"? A two pronged approach works best. You should relegate your crunches and abs exercises to a relatively small part of your routine. Take that time you were spending on abs exercising and split it between doing intense resistance training and cyclic, variable cardio. Heres a example of a workout you can do and it only takes 11 minutes:
a. 1-arm dbell swings (alternate arms every 5 reps) - 3 minutes straight as many
reps as possible.
rest 1 min
b. 1-arm dbell snatches (alt arms every 5 reps) - 3 minutes straight as many
reps as possible.
rest 1 min
c. Dbell renegade rows (alt arms after each rep) - 10 reps each arm.
rest 30 seconds
d. Floor mountain climbers - 30 seconds max reps.
rest 30 seconds
e. Floor mountain jumpers - 30 seconds max reps.
Total workout time = 11 minutes of metabolism boosting insanity!
This may look easy but just the first 6 minutes of non-stop resistance exercises will challenge even athletes. You can scale this up or down as your level of fitness dictates.
What about cardio? Yes you can add cardio to the mix with good results especially if you do cyclic cardio. Wind sprints is a good example. This type of "stop and go" running boosts your metabolism much faster than say jogging and has the advantage of being easier on the joints and feet. Other exercises such as a treadmill routine will work best if you change it up in a variable manner as well. So instead of doing 15 minutes at 4 mph try doing 5 minutes at walking 4 mph then 5 minutes at running 8 mph then finising with walking at 5 mph.
The other way to attack the fat problem is through your diet of course.
There is increasing evidence that eating foods high in trans fats, sugar or high fructose corn syrup encourages fat production in the belly. These substances are typically present in most processed foods and should be avoided like the plague. Skip the sugary sports drinks and instead drink lots of water. Try eating a bowl of melon for breakfast and snacking on raw pecans and raisins instead of potato chips. You can actually eat more natural, unprocesssed food than junk food because of their higher fiber and bulk. Of course you still have to watch your caloric intake but it is easier to do if you shift your diet to foods in their natural unprocessed state.
Losing that stubborn belly fat doesn't have to be an uphill battle. As long as you switch the focus of your routine as I outlined above and begin to shift towards a more biologically correct diet you wont wear those baggy shirts anymore and may want to go topless!
For a free book detailing 27 ways to boost your metabolism and fire up your training visit http://www.5starfitnessreviews.com
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/
Added: June 6, 2008
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