With summer rapidly approaching, now is the perfect time to slim down and get yourself into the best shape of your life. No matter how overweight you are at the moment or how many failed diet and exercise programs you have been on in the past, it is important to know that you can lose weight and dramatically improve your health and appearance. Read on to learn about clean eating tips and flat stomach exercises so you can build the type of sexy beach body that you have always desired.
Food Tips
First things first, in order to lose a noticeable amount of weight and get a flat belly, you must completely overhaul your diet. You cannot eat candy, junk food, potato chips, etc. and expect to have a toned, fit midsection. Avoid eating out at fast food restaurants at all costs and focus on consuming natural whole food meals that you prepare for yourself. Place an emphasis on lean, low-calorie protein sources such as free range chicken breasts, turkey breasts, egg whites and skim milk. When it comes to carbohydrates, you want to avoid consuming simple, fast-digesting, high-starch carbs such as white bread and instead eat mainly slow-digesting complex carbohydrates such as whole grain bread and all-natural oats. For fats, you want to greatly reduce the saturated fat in your diet. Do not, however, totally eliminate all fats. The unsaturated fats found in fatty fish, nuts, nut butters and extra-virgin olive oil are very beneficial to your health. Consume them in moderation. Forget about drinking sugary, empty-calorie soda pop and fruit juices. Drink lots of pure water. Drinking half your body weight in ounces in water every day will help you lose weight in a hurry by substantially reducing daily calorie consumption.
Flat Stomach Exercises: Crunches
Now that you know a little bit about healthy eating, it is time to learn about the best flat stomach exercises. Properly training your abdominals will strengthen and tone your midsection and give you the great look that you desire. Basic abdominal crunches are a great exercise for your upper abs. Lying down with your back on the floor and your knees bent, slowly curl your shoulders forward toward your knees as you squeeze and “crunch” your abdominal area. Hold for a split section at the top of the crunch and really flex your abs to get a great peak contraction. The key to performing crunches properly is to avoid swinging and using momentum to complete the movement. After performing three sets of standard ab crunches, move on to reverse crunches. Reverse crunches are performed in the opposite manner as traditional crunches. In the normal crunch body position. You curl your pelvis to raise your knees toward your chin. The exercise movement really stresses your lower abdominal region. It is a great exercise to perform if you, like most people, tend to store fat in your lower ab region. After performing three sets of traditional and reverse crunches daily for a few weeks to a month, your abs should be strong enough to transition to more difficult abdominal exercises. Hanging leg raises are an extremely effective abdominal exercise. Although very hard, they are worthwhile and can produce amazing results. Start off with the bent knee version of leg raises. Hanging from a pull-up bar, slowly curl your knees upward toward your chest using only your ab muscles. It is sort of like a hanging reverse crunch. As your ab muscles get stronger, you can straighten out your legs and perform full hanging leg raises to get a high-level abdominal workout and build a stomach made of steel. When performing flat stomach exercises, never cheat to complete additional repetitions. Cheating on an exercise only cheats you out of the results that you are looking for and serves no benefit. Use your stomach muscles to complete all exercise movements and never use momentum.
Flat Stomach Exercises: Core Training
While the basic crunch can be effective, research shows that working on core exercise is the most effective flat stomach exercises. These are exercises that engage all of the muscle groups in the core. The muscles of the core run the length of the trunk and torso in the abdominal, lower back and hips regions. These muscles all affect body posture and when you do flat stomach exercises that affect those areas, the results are incredible. This assumes you have cleaned up your eating.
Several flat stomach exercises that target upper flexion, lower flexion, double flexion, side flexion, twists (work your obliques in transverse twisting plane), and extensions will work out your core from all angles. The home program called RevAbs has some of the best flat exercises I know of. Many of the exercises use a Brazilian martial art known as Capoeira.
Other great flat stomach exercise come from these programs as they really focus on core training: Ten Minute Trainer, P90X, P90X2, Insanity, ChaLean Extreme and Les Mills Combat. Each of these programs builds in core training whether it is super stacking exercises, using balance and weights to activate core groups, plyometric exercises, of mixing martial arts exercises. I have done all of these programs and continue to target the core in different ways. They are challenge, but effective flat stomach exercises.
TOP PROGRAMS for Flat Stomach Exercises
Flat Stomach Exercises Won’t Do It Alone
Along with a healthy daily diet and regular abdominal exercises, to lose as much weight as quickly as possible you need to include regular cardiovascular aerobic workouts in your routine. In addition to being great for your heart and lungs, cardio workouts burn a significant amount of calories and help you to create a daily caloric deficit. Burning off more calories than you consume on a daily basis is the only way to tone and flatten your tummy. You can have the most muscular abs in the world, but you will be unable to see them if they are hidden under a thick layer of adipose tissue. Find an exercise that you enjoy. Beachbody fitness programs, yoga, group aerobic classes, bike riding, tennis, team sports, martial arts classes and dance classes are all great exercise options. Something as simple as a daily walk around your neighborhood will help you to lose weight.
Losing weight and getting a perfect midsection is going to take some work on your part, but you can do it. Follow the tips from this article and believe in yourself to achieve all of your fitness goals. Connect with me by getting a free Team Beachbody account and I will coach you to get results from your flat stomach exercises and to stick with your plan every step of the way.
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