Five Tips for Getting the Flat Belly You’ve Always Wanted

By: Dzhingarov

Unfortunately, it is very easy to develop belly fat. For both men and women, belly fat is often the most problematic area and one that requires a unique strategy for eliminating.

 

woman with flat belly
By Richard foster under CC BY-SA 2.0

 

Tips on how to get Flat Belly 

Below are the five essential tips for getting the flat belly you have always desired:

Focus on the Entire Body

The typical response to a flabby belly is performing a thousand crunches and/or sit-ups every day. Even though it might seem counter-intuitive, it is more important to focus your attention on your entire body, and not just in slimming down your stomach area. The love handles and excessive bulge in the belly area represent your body’s excess fat, and not flabby muscles. This is why focusing on abdominal exercises do not provide the ultimate solution.

 

Effective Exercise

Obtaining washboard abs or a flat stomach requires extensive exercise focused on impact workouts on various muscle groups. Performing exercise routines over the entire body while burning excess calories produces better results. To be its most effective, consider performing a combination of cardio and strength training exercises performed in succession with each other, with very little rest in between. Recent research has found the effectiveness of high intensity interval training. This trining involves working at your max level for a short period of time and than working at lower intensity and then repeating the pattern. People who trained this way lost more fat and did not have to exercise for as long.

 

Weight Loss through Foods

Even the most intensive workout might not be enough to remove the excessive body fat and keep it off. Consuming the right foods requires avoiding bad ones including microwave dinners, potato chips, sweets and sugary beverages. Consider replacing junk food with high quality whole organic foods. These would include legumes, beans, berries, low-fat proteins, and only a minimal amount of nonfat dairy products. If you find yourself struggling with eating the right foods, you may consider looking into a weight loss program to help you make the choices to help you lose the weight you need to lose.

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Replace Saturated Fats

Consider consuming complex carbohydrates that digest slowly. These include all-natural oats, and whole-grain bread. Replace saturated fatty foods with unsaturated fats in extra-virgin olive oil, natural nut butters, and fatty fish. These food sources are extremely beneficial to your overall health. When you aren’t sure about a particular food item, take a few moments to read the label. At times, unhealthy foods can be disguised as healthy, so be watchful for that.

 

Strengthening the Core

Strengthening your core abdominal muscles is worth the effort when striving to achieve a flat belly. These types of exercise include “planking” where the back and chest muscles are strengthened through exercises that require balancing. There are numerous variations of core building exercises, including plank-ups, reverse plank, side plank, plank twists and others.

Obtaining a flat stomach will require losing weight through exercise while consuming an effective diet. Because results take work and time, it is best to find a workout exercise program and a diet that are easy to maintain.