When you reach “middle age”, your middle will shout out that fact, especially if you don’t watch what you eat and you don’t bother to exercise. It’s inevitable. For those who already spot a tummy or a pot-belly, you’ll know that it’s a Herculean effort to even lose a millimeter of the fats accumulated there.

Hopefully, these 6 steps extracted from Sara Ost’s post will help achieve a toned torso quickly.

1. Forget about sit-ups! You can ignore isolated exercises like sit up and crunches if they had never worked for you. Did you know Navy SEALs and professional athletes never do a single sit-up and shun crunches? According to Sara Ost, some military training guides actually discourage isolated abdominal exercises.

While isolated movements can tone individual muscle groups, for true core fitness, it’s better to do integrated exercises that strengthen your entire body – with defined abs being the happy side effect. Point 5 will explain this further, but two simple, highly-effective integrative exercises you can try are the standing weighted arm lift and the hot potato.

2. Lose weight first.
   All fitness gurus will emphasize on stomach exercises, and there are lots of sexy abs infomercials on the TV.

Save your money. Until you drop excess pounds, you simply won’t see your abs, whatever their state of fitness. (Yes, your abs – everyone has a natural six-pack under there somewhere!) Lose weight and your abs will show up quite nicely, even if you never do a single sit-up. Men generally need to maintain about 8-14% body fat; women should add 10 to that.

3. Reduce empty calories.
   We don’t need empty calories. Empty calories can lead to irritability, headaches, cravings, mood swings, and possible nutritional deficiencies.

Cutting empty carbohydrates and sugars out of your life will not only trim your middle; you’ll reduce your risk of diabetes, too. That said, I don’t think you have to become a bloodthirsty carnivore or suffer on low-carb beer for the rest of your life. That’s an approach that is certainly immoderate and definitely not healthy. But do cut back on refined, worthless calories from cakes, cookies, pastries, crackers, chips, big bowls of pasta, and white bread.

4. Get rid of liquid calories.
   We love our cokes and sodas but they are basically sugared drinks. Beware of freshly squeezed fruits with added sugar solution added in whenever you ordered from your favourite cafe.

And while it’s commonly accepted that juice is healthy, I suggest cutting back. Even 100% juice is still going to spike your blood sugar. A real piece of fruit provides fiber and fills you up; juice just gives you extra calories you don’t need.

5. Take up integrative exercise system. Exercise help in our overall health and not just our abs. So why not do it?

What do I mean by an “integrative” exercise system? Anything that incorporates resistance, stretching and weight-bearing movement. Excellent choices are yoga, pilates, the Bar Method, martial arts, dance, boot camp classes, and any sports. I’ve had great personal success with yoga; after shedding the excess tummy pudge, it only took a few weeks of yoga for the abs to peek out. Furthermore, an integrative exercise program elongates your muscles, lubricates your joints, and releases the pressure that compacts your vertebral column. Better posture = better abs.

6. Reduce stress, balance hormones.

Our hormones have a direct relationship to immunity, metabolism, and much more. And stress is a very sure way to disrupt healthy hormone regulation.

It’s so important to find a way to reduce and manage any stress in your life (again with that yoga!). However you choose to handle stress, don’t shirk this aspect of weight management and health. Your abs are depending on you!

What Sara Ost had shared is sensible and logical. However, There are many routes to Rome, and you might also want to check out Mike Geary’s The Truth about Six-Pack abs. Over at his website, Mike Geary listed 5 facts on losing belly fat and invite men and women to separate section to find out how they can gain a flat abs successfully without doing crunch and sit-up or cardio exercises.

Additional Reading:

Fat Loss for Idiots

The Advanced Guide to Fast Weight Loss for Busy Women

Burn the Fats Feed the Muscles

Fat Loss Secrets

[tags]flatten abs, weight loss, trimmed abs, six-pack abs, pot belly, lose tummy[/tags]