Sorry to say this but crunches do not get rid of the fat.

When it comes to getting trim for summer – or any time – it helps to know how to lose belly fat.

Belly fat is that stubborn excess that surrounds your midsection.  It can make your clothes look lumpy and bumpy.  It can also hang over your belt and embarrass you.

But you don’t have to live with stubborn belly fat.  There are some specific things you can do that will help you lose it.  When you know how to lose belly fat, the process becomes much easier for you.  Believe it or not, there are some things you can do to reduce the fat in this one specific area of your body.

Start my making sure you  plenty of water.  Water retention can happen when your diet is too high in sodium and you don’t keep it hydrated.  Unfortunately, that often causes bloating which enhances the belly fat on your body.  Even though it’s not technically fat, it can make you look like you have more fat than you do. And nobody wants that!

Ditch the alcohol if you want to lose the belly fat.  Alcohol can cause you to collect fat specifically in your abdomen.  There’s a reason the term “beer belly” exists.  Alcohol is one of those substances that is dangerously high in calories and is frequently consumed in large amounts because it’s liquid.  When you drink a lot of alcohol, you’ll have more problems with fat around the middle.

If you don’t have proper sleep patterns, you’ll also have problems with belly fat.  When you lack sleep, the hormone cortisol becomes out of balance.  This hormone will actually cause fat to go straight to the belly area.  That means you’ll have more belly fat regardless of your diet.

In addition to sleepless nights, high stress can affect your cortisol levels in a bad way.  You’ll have more belly fat when you live a high stress life.  So if you’re looking for how to lose belly fat, making sure you reduce stress as much as possible will help.  If you can’t remove the source of your stress, exercises like yoga and meditation can help you to normalize cortisol levels.

Understanding how to lose belly fat can help you to be more successful.  While some amount of belly fat can be caused by genetics, making sure you get rest and reduce your stress levels can really help.  Avoiding alcohol and opting for water instead can also help.

Exercises like the plank, the bicycle, reverse crunches and leg lifts can help you tone your belly area but until you melt off the fat layer you’re just going to have a toned midsection covered with fat.

Be prepared to go on a diet – yes, I diet diet. You need to take in less calories per day than you burn off.

You then should work on weight training and strengthening workouts. If you’re not to sure how to go about this I suggest visiting Truth About Abs.
They have great information and you’ll be able to discover the most effective way to burn that belly fat and get the mid-section that you always wanted in less time than you thought it would take.

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Men and women alike now are striving to get 6 pack abs – it looks just like a washboard, and it’s something everyone wants, but few know how to achieve it.  6  pack abs are muscles that go from your chest to your pelvic region and do not have any layers of fat covering or hiding them.

The muscle runs flat and there are some tendons that crisscross over the muscle, which make it all separate and appear as a washboard effect.
The muscle helps with any movement in your body that’s associated with your core, so it pays to strengthen the muscle for more than just aesthetic reasons.

You also have some oblique muscles that are both external and internal and attached to your ribs.  The external ones are diagonal in your body and the internal ones appear at a right angle to them.  They are there to provide extra support for your body.

The abdomin  is another muscle hiding under the layers of belly fat that you may currently be holding.  It helps support the abdominal wall and helps with your core strength.

Knowing what your ab muscles are helps you to train them more efficiently. You can first work on burning the layers of fat off of your torso so that your ab muscles have the potential to show up.

Then work on defining your abs so that they evolve into a 6 pack, washboard tummy.
Start with simple exercise.  You may believe that standard crunches or sit-ups are the exercises to do to get six pack abs, but you would be incorrect. Crunches and sit-up only work one set of muscles you need to vary your routine to hit the full range of ab muscles.

Try the twisting crunch, the plank, swimmers backstroke, the towel roll, the bridge and the best exercise of this group – the bicycle. If you are not sure how to do these exercises pick up an exercise book like The Truth About Six Pack Abs .

Over time, you’ll see your abs become stronger and you won’t be afraid to take off your shirt and let others see what you’ve worked so hard to achieve.

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You want to lose tummy fat, but you’re not sure exactly what’s the best love handle workout? Shortly you will discover the exact steps you need to shed the unwanted fat around your waist.

Forget about everything you have ever heard, this is how you can lose tummy fat

•    Restore a proper dietary intake.  Skip simple sugars found in sodas and fruit juices. They only cause your insulin levels to spike and are the main reason your energy is depleted late in the day. Start to consume 5-6 small meals a day.

•    Drink more fluid and up your fiber intake.  Combining these two in your diet plan is a great way to push unwanted fat through the digestive system. Fiber allows the extra fat to be digested instead of being housed in fat stores.

•    Up your protein intake to 1.5 grams per body weight for men and one gram per body weight for women.  Try and eat a lean source of protein with every meal. Sources of lean protein include, fish, egg whites, turkey and roast beef. Instead of making lunch meat sandwiches, just eat the meat instead. It will help eliminate the simple sugars found in bread.

The best love handle workout starts with implementing cardio coupled with weight training. Lift weights without giving yourself ample resting time. Move from station to station with little rest.

Guess what?  Skip the cardio machines!
If you are going to lift weights on Nautilus like equipment and shorten your rest periods, that is all the cardio you need.  In order to lose weight you must add lean muscle tissue.

The lean muscle tissue will help you replace fat cells, turning you body into a fat burning furnace.  The more fat cells you lose the longer you’re metabolism will burn.

You can lose tummy fat if you are determined and set goals.  People who set goals accomplish twice as much as those who aimlessly go through life.  You can begin losing weight around your midsection with a good love handle workout coupled with a healthy eating plan.

You should start to see results in three weeks with any exercise routine and diet change.  It does take some time so you shouldn’t give up after a week or two. Allow six weeks to really see the massive gains you are making.

Have you seen the “Biggest Loser”?

Then you understand it will take sometime before the changes start showing up in the mirror.

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Right now stand up and take a look down at your belly.  When you look down can you see your toes or does your belly hide them?

Now sit down again.  Do you have a roll or rolls around your middle that resembles a spare tire? Are your love handles hanging over your waistband?

Are you frustrated when you put on a bathing suit and see the belly fat around your middle?  Do you see a lumpy, bumpy silhouette when you put on a new dress?  When you look in the mirror, do you see a spare tire hanging over your belt?  If this sounds familiar, you may be ready to lose belly fat.

You need to ask yourself a few questions to decide if you’re ready to take the steps you need to lose belly fat.  First, how do you feel about your situation?  Are you frustrated by your body?

What are the reasons you want to lose belly fat?  Is it so you can wear a bikini this summer?  Is it to make your clothes feel better?

If you’ve been thinking about how to lose belly fat for some time, it’s time to take the next step.  You’ll need to gather as much information as you can so that you can make a plan.

There are many sources of information including books, the internet, weight loss centers, and information from friends and family members.

At this stage you need to put together all the information you can find, and then decide which pieces will work best for you to lose belly fat.

You’ll need to set a goal for yourself including how much you would like to lose in pounds or inches, how you will do it, and by what date you will accomplish your goal.

Once you have all the information you need, it’s time to put your plan into action.  This is the hardest part of your quest to lose belly fat.  You’ll need to arrange your life so that you can begin losing the belly fat right away.

That means you may need to make sure you have specific foods in your pantry, arrange your schedule so you can get enough sleep each night, and remove as much stress as possible.

After following your plan for a while, you’ll find that you reach your goals.  At this point, you have a critical step to make – maintaining your success.

This part of your plan will allow you to continue keeping your body trim after you lose the belly fat.  If you go back to your old habits, that belly fat will find its way back to your middle.

When you’re ready to lose belly fat, you need to take action.  Once you’ve achieved your goals it’s time to maintain them.  You can have the body you’ve always wanted with these two simple steps.

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Can you get better results with shorter workouts?

To find out the answer to that question, see what fitness expert Jon Benson had to say. Editor’s Note:  Fitness author Jon Benson shared this letter with me and gave me permission to share it with you. Enjoy!
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If I had to pick out the number one reason most people fail to achieve good results in the gym, guess what it would be?

Over-training. Exercising too much.

Sounds counter-intuitive, but trust me: It’s quite real.

Folks write to me all the time and say…

“Jon, I don’t get it. I cannot lose body fat and I’m running six days a week for an hour and training in the gym five days a week for 45 minutes!”

My answer back is usually:

“You are training 4x more than me, and I’m a fitness pro!”

Look, do you take 21 aspirin for a headache, thinking the more you take the faster your pain will go away?

No?

So why apply the same logic to fitness? Only a certain amount is required. Beyond that, you are spinning your wheels.

When I wrote 7 Minute Muscle (available here:  7 Minute Muscle) I exposed all the lies about training too long and why this is not the best way to achieve the results you want. Check it out if you want the facts.

One more thing:  75% of your progress will come in the kitchen, not in the gym or on the treadmill.

As for me, I would much rather eat smart and train less than train all the time and be forced to eat 6-8 times a day just to recover from it all.

That makes no sense to me at all.

You?

7 Minute Muscle <— Less Is More!

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Here is what Jon had to say -

A lot of my readers ask me how long to rest between sets while exercising.

The answer is: It depends on your goals.

If you are training to increase strength, I recommend resting a bit longer – up to two minutes for exercises like squats and heavy dumbbell work.
But if you want to burn the most amount of body fat and gain lean muscle, I recommend resting for very short periods of time.

“The Iron Guru” Vince Gironda used to recommend leaving your hands on the bar between sets — now THAT is short rest intervals!  He would frequently rest only 15-20 seconds between sets.

This is similar to the strategy I use in 7 Minute Muscle — very short rest intervals and very intense training. Smart, short, efficient. That’s the way to go.

A good place to start is simply reducing your rest intervals by 10 seconds.

No matter what workout you’re using, decrease your rest by 10 seconds between sets. You may not be as strong on the last few sets (if you are training traditionally… if you use 7 Minute Muscle your rest is “built-in” and not an issue.) Over time you will work your way back up to the same amount of sets and reps but done in far less time.

This means more work output, which means more muscle if your nutrition is good.

This is the best way to train most of the time:  Limited rest, intense sets, and short workouts.

They are the ones that produce results.

Go here for more information –> Short Effective Workouts

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Circuit training is an intensive form of fitness training that combines cardio and strength training in which a set of exercises is completed one right after the other. Each exercise is performed for a specified number of repetitions or for a prescribed time before you move on to the next exercise.

For many athletes and fitness buffs, circuit training is a great way to give yourself a total body workout (both aerobic and strength training) in a short workout.

A lot of people feel that if they don’t spend at least an hour or more working out at the gym that they won’t see results. But that is not true. You can do a concise intense short circuit training work out and get an even better session than you might get from from a slow workout for an hour and a half at the gym.

Circuit training is a workout that puts together lifting weights and aerobics. In a circuit training workout you do your exercises quickly and you don’t rest a lot between sets of exercises.

Circuit training is a really tough but very effective workout. Some people avoid circuit training because it is such a challenge. Others love circuit training because even though it can push you really hard – it is much shorter than a traditional workout and many feel that they can do anything for a short period of time especially when they see the fabulous results of this type of workout. Circuit training has been found to burn fat faster and build shapely muscle more quickly than almost any other type of workout for the amount of time invested.

To engage in a circuit training workout that will really get you results, you want to start with a three to five minute warm up and then do five minutes of cardio that builds in intensity – this gets your heart and body ready for the circuit. A sample circuit training workout could have two to three complete circuits with each circuit containing six strength training exercises and six cardio exercises that are completed one right after the other with little or no rest in between. You could complete a workout like this in as little as twenty to thirty minutes while burning hundreds of calories.

Circuit training is a fantastic option for getting a total body workout if you are short on time. You just can’t beat circuit training for an effective efficient workout!

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In my practice I have never advocated to a patient that his goal in fitness should be to satisfy the people who have devised any given set of capabilities. This is not because I do not strongly advocate participation in any and all forms of physical recreation. All types of therapy, be they pill or scalpel, must be predicated on the needs of and advantages to the individual. This is also true of exercise.

My own practice ranges from athletes on the United States Olympic Team to patients who are bedridden with a variety of serious ailments. But many of my bedridden patients are in as good shape for them and their potentialities as are the Olympic athletes.

Physical fitness is judged on a sliding scale. One patient in particular has a flair for zestful, vigorous living. As an indirect result of his participation in World War I, he eventually required bilateral amputations of his legs above the thighs. But when he came to our summer cottage, this handicap as always was of secondary importance. Having divested himself of his artificial limbs, he would be carried by a couple of the younger men to the end of the dock and unceremoniously dumped. After the initial horrendous splash, he would bob to the surface, sputter a bit, and then make off for deep water.

Your own base line or yardstick is you at this moment. From now on you improve, you deteriorate, or you hold the line. This is where you start. And a medically sound beginning it is.

Consciously or unconsciously each sportsman has devised his own fitness testing. It may be formal (one more push-up, lopping two seconds off his hundred-yard swimming time, or returning to normal pulse less than three minutes after exercise) or informal (“it sure was easier to climb Mount Yahoo this year!”)—but it is there.

The most currently inept fitness enthusiast can outline his own testing program by using the following rules:

1. Measure areas relevant to your own recreational activity.

If you bicycle, time yourself once in a while over the same route. Do not think that a certain number of deep knee bends will greatly improve your ability to pitch a pup tent.

2. Always test yourself under the same conditions. Time of day, mood, weather, recent sleeping habits, and many other factors should be as similar as possible.

3. Measure for greater endurance. If you are now able to dog-paddle for 21 minutes, see if you can up this to 22 minutes. Or if you are weight-lifting 20 pounds ten times, see if you can press eleven times.

4. Measure for greater strength. If you are now completing six laps of the pool in 21 minutes, how about six and a half laps in the same time? If you are now pressing 20 pounds ten times, how about 25 pounds ten times?

5. Measure your own improvement. Fitness tests should not compare one sportsman with another or be used on a one-shot basis. Repeated evaluations are the key to good fitness tests. They should be used as a guide for the individual sportsman in his evaluation of self-improvement. In fact, most sportsmen know their general condition without ever resorting to formal testing.

6. If you are seeking general fitness, then devise over-all tests. Fitness should be total and not restricted to one area of the body. It makes little sense to work the legs hard without paying some attention to the arms. In testing yourself, test arms, trunk, and legs.

7. Make the goals simple enough to accomplish in a few weeks—or you will go stale and lose interest. A fifty-year-old executive who has been sedentary for twenty years may find a single push-up impossible. And it might take him six discouraging months to be able to do two. Obviously he should be doing “modified push-ups” rather than regular push-ups

If the above suggestions are incorporated into your own program of fitness evaluation, more technically scientific methods are unnecessary. However, properly understood, these tests do have value. Perhaps you may wish to adapt portions of them for yourself.

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With all of the miss-information about how to get six-pack abs, I thought that today I would post an article by one of the leading fitness trainers and fitness competition winners – Vince Delmonte.

Enjoy!

Ab Exercises | The Best Ab Exercises
By Vince DelMonte

When it comes to getting a solid six pack, doing the right ab exercises is crucial.

You can spend hours doing needless sit-ups that aren’t really going to have all that much benefit, much to your disappointment. Taking the time to choose smart ab exercises will save you not only gym time, but a great deal of frustration as well. In this article we will discuss the best lower ab exercises and the best home ab exercises as well.

The best movements for the abdominal muscles are going to be ones that reduce your overall stability. The reason for this is because this will require all your muscle tissues, even the ones deep within the core, to contract in order to maintain balance. When you perform regular sit-ups, for example, they are really only going to target the more superficial muscles; one that will still help, but not get you near the results you could be seeing.

So what ab exercises are ones that reduce your balance?

Basically, anything done on an unstable surface is going to get the job done. This would include movements such as walking across a balance beam, performing one leg squats, one arm shoulder presses, or bent over dumbbell rows standing on one leg and of course, utilizing an exercise ball for any laying abdominal movement you perform.
Working on a BOSU ball and stability ball ab exercises are also excellent options. As long as you have a set of free weights and stability ball then these would qualify as your best home ab exercises as well.

By far the most effective lower ab exercises are hanging leg raises while you use your lower abs to rotate your pelvis which is the secret to performing this effectively. Lying leg raises, lying leg raises on a 45 degree incline and cable crunches are also rock hard ab exercises.

Another area you might want to venture into with your ab exercises are those that utilize heavy weights.

While this will not necessarily get you ‘cut’ so that all your individual muscles are showing – that takes having low levels of body fat, what weighted movements will do is help further build the muscle tissue and make your abs “pop”.

The more muscle mass you have, the faster your metabolic rate will then be, so in an indirect way, that could in fact help you burn off excess body fat.

Furthermore, doing weighted movements will also increase your strength greatly, reducing the risk of injuries from any other type of exercise you may attempt. Weighted ball crunches with a stability ball on your chest is my favorite home ab exercises.

When choosing when to perform your ab exercises, if you are looking for performance, do them on a separate day from all your other work. Just like any muscle group, you want to be fresh when you do them.

If, on the other hand, you are more just doing them to help build some strength, but more to round out your exercise program, then you should be doing them at the end of your workout session. This will prevent them from fatiguing early, because they are going to be predominately used in all the other lifts you perform (heavy squats for example).

In many cases this rule can be bent though.
For example, if a client comes to me and their abs are the weakest muscle group then performing them at the end of the workout makes no sense because they will be pre fatigued from the workout and you will not be able to train them as intensely so prioritizing your abs at the start of the workout can become the exception in this case.

So, next time you are creating your workout and are picking out ab exercises, keep these points in mind. Having good dedication to performing these exercises on a regular basis and then following a clean diet based around raw vegetables and proteins are the two main components to developing that six-pack you’re hoping for.

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About the Author:

Vince DelMonte is the author of Your Six Pack Quest found at http://www.YourSixPackQuest.com

He specializes in helping chubby guys and gals get six pack abs without gimmicks, supplements or dieting.

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In a quest to increase energy levels and stamina many suck down energy drinks, which will often leave you feeling more drained once the caffeine wears off, so you have to suck down 2 or 3 a day.

Others have found that to super charge their energy levels NO (Nitric Oxide) works wonders. The only problem with many NO products is that their taste is so horrible that unless you are a real die hard you avoid them like the plague.

What you may not know is that Labrada has recently introduced Super Charge Xtreme NO with Beta Alanaine that actually tastes so good that you’ll find it hard to believe that it truly is a super charged NO.

With it’s 3 phase complex you feel it’s energy in a little as 15 minutes and it continues working throughout your workout all the way in to your post workout recovery period.

Currently available in three really good tasting flavors; fruit punch, grape and orange.

If you have found that your not getting enough from your current NO product, it’s time your tried Labrada Super Charge Xtreme NO with beta alanine.

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