You sounding like Rocky Balboa "its about taking the punches and getting back up" - Quite the warrior arent yaaruif wrote:Thanks Mr Glass. I don't quite feel that way but enough is enough right. Only get one life have to do what you have to do. I could slip behind 100 times in my goals to be healthier and happier but as long as I keep getting back up and giving it another go I think I'll be ok eventually :)
Right then, Abs talk :)
In answer to Rawr_oxo and others here who seem to be doing a lot of situps, let me first warn you of a very common misconception. You can do 5000 sit-ups a day and you wont lose an ounce of fat in the middle. Fact. What sit ups will do for you is build your ab muscles. NOT lose BODY FAT. So you can have the greatest looking abs in the world but if you dont burn the excess fat off, those beautiful abs will be hidden. SO....
IF you want to lose the body fat around the midsection, you simply have to continue BURNING the FAT by doing cardio. You see when lose the body fat, the loss of fat occurs all over the body. You cannot "target" the areas of losing fat. Furthermore the rate of loss is different in different parts of the body and differs between each individual. And in most cases, after losing most of your excess body fat, guess which part of your body has the last portion of it?... yep, your midsection
When you get to that point, that last part takes a bit of work getting rid of, but it will go, just be patient But it gonna be by doing sit ups. But continue doing your core exercises to maintain a stable strong core but do not go excessive on it. Your body needs to be well balanced by doing exercises on ALL your major muscle groups in your body.
So I have 2 healthy suggestions for you, to getting rid of the fat
1. If you maintain the same calorie consumption in your current diet, then do more cardio. Make sure you sweat. Dont just sit on a stationary bike pedalling and read a Woman's Own (or Maxim, lads). You're in a gym. Make the most of it. Work sweat. If you're not sweating, you are wasting your time! More you work, the more you burn the fat. What ever cardio machine you use, make it fun. Time yourself and then try beat your best time on further visits.
Then after say 3 weeks change your cardio routine to include Interval training. By this, what you need to do is run (or cycle, cross trainer whichever) for 2 mins, then sprint hard for 30 seconds. then repeat this for a period of 15mins if you are a beginner, 20mins for intermediate. As you progress, sprint for 45 secs then 1 minute, also increase your speeds as you become fitter. A further fatburning mechanism is to include hill intervals also. This is magnificent way to burn fat quickly, as your heart rate continues to pump for the rest of the day, burning more fat, than a "normal" run/cycle/etc.
If you dont like the gym, do classes like what Valda does. And mix those classes up, Boxercise, circuit, pump, etc. They all make you sweat but its all about how much effort you put in. Give it everything you got. Grunt! Scream! When I was doing the recent classes which were full of girls, I didnt hear any of them screaming or grunting, I like to hear them grunt and scream....wait, where am I going with this? um backtrack..
The other way to lose fat is of course to maintain your current amount of exercises/cardio and slightly decrease your calorie consumption per week (but not too drastically, otherwise your body will go into a starvation mode and preserve fat)
One other fat loss trick is to work out your weekly calorie deficit and split it into 6 low calorie days plus 1 high calorie day (your comfort/reward day!). Its very effective, works for me and is what most fitness professionals recommend.
The other most powerful fat burning trick is to split your meals into 5 a day. So breakfast, mid morning, lunch, mid afternoon, dinner. This has the effect of increasing your metabolism rate. Which means all your physical activities and exercises will burn more fat than usual.
So...that was a bit of a long answer to whats the best way to lose fat around the midsection, sorry. But to summarise and recap, you cannot isolate where you lose fat. Core exercises builds your core muscles. Just that. However, if you do an abs blast, you can both lose a bit of fat (but NOT neccessarily around the midsection! and tone your abs at the same time).
