The stomach area is one of the main problem areas people are always seeking to reduce.

In order to successfully reduce fat in this area, there are some very important concepts to understand.

The first one is that in order to reduce the stomach area, you must burn off the fat is that is hiding over your muscles. In order to burn fat, you must build lean muscle mass.

Lean muscle mass burns fat. In order to burn off more fat in your body, you need to strength train to build muscle. The more muscle mass you have, the more your body will be able to burn fat throughout the entire day, even when you’re not working out.

The next concept is that you can’t spot train any particular area in your body. The reason for this is that exercises that isolate certain muscle groups don’t burn fat, they only tone the muscles underneath. Isolated exercises also frequently cause injury because they put strain on focused muscle groups of the body, as opposed to exercises that use many major muscle groups to use the body as a whole unit.

Sorry to say, but if you have been doing lots of crunches and sit up exercises to reduce your stomach area, you won’t see a lot of success. Spot training doesn’t work and doing lots of situps make your back prone to injury due to the amount of stress it puts on it.

Given this information, effective exercises to reduce stomach fat should consist of multi-joint exercises that utilize major muscle groups of the body as a whole. These types of exercises strengthen the core while burning fat and building muscle. It’s also a great idea to have do a cardio workout for 6 pack abs a few times a week.

Exercises that use the entire body such as pull-ups, push-ups, lunges, deadlifts, and squats are all excellent multi-joint exercises to reduce stomach fat. You won’t get a better full body workout than one consisting of a combination of these multi-joint exercises. They will get your blood pumping and jumpstart your metabolism and start burning away fat.

Another thing to remember, however, is that nutrition plays an equally important role in reducing fat in the stomach area. You must consume a nutritious diet that is high is protein, low in fat and full of whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables (everything organic if possible).

Beware of eating empty calories, saturated fats, and processed foods. These foods keep the fat on your body and will counteract any progress you make with your workouts.

If you fail to eat a healthy diet, you won’t reduce any fat in your stomach area no matter how many exercises you do. If you focus on workouts that consist of multi-joint, full body exercises and feed your body with good food, you will be on your way to reduce your stomach area and getting a trim waistline.

The first thing most people think about when they get inspired to get 6 pack abs is doing lots of crunches or situps. If you want to tone your stomach, you should do stomach exercises, right? Although this theory seems logical, I am going to explain why it doesn’t hold true and why it couldn’t be an any more ineffective strategy for getting those nice 6 pack abs.

The reason why crunches and situps won’t get you 6 pack abs is because ab crunches and situps only tone the abdominal muscles. While toned abs are necessary to have 6 pack, what crunches and situps fail to do is burn the layer of fat that is covering the abdominal muscles. As you can see, this isn’t the best workout for abs.

You see, what most people don’t realize ,is that there is a good chance they already have a set of decently toned abs. The real reason why they can’t see them, is because they have a stubborn layer of excess belly fat hiding their ab muscles.

In order to burn the layer of fat that is hiding ab muscles is you must do compound, full body exercises like squats, planks, and lunges (exercises that engage all of the body’s muscles, including the core muscles). These type of fully body exercises speed up metabolism and burn fat and calories.

One thing to understand about compound, full body exercises
is that they require you to use all of the muscles in your body
in order to be performed correctly – including your core. And by
working your core, you be indirectly toning your abs.

Another thing to realize is that “spot treating” certain areas of your body doesn’t work. When you isolate certain muscle groups to workout, they don’t burn fat.

Exercises that work specific muscle groups such as situps, are also prone to injury because they work the body in individual parts rather than strengthen the body as a whole. This is another huge disadvantage of to doing lots of situps and crunches.

In addition to compound, full body exercises, nutrition plays a huge role in getting a 6 pack. In fact, no matter how many exercises you do, if you don’t have the proper diet, forget about getting a 6 pack because the layer of fat will never come off. This is a common mistake many people make as well. When trying to get a 6 pack, you must fuel your body with nutrient dense, whole foods to give it the energy it needs to recover and rebuild muscle tissue.

Eat frequent mini meals throughout the day to feed your metabolism and eat lots of good fats, high quality proteins and a colorful selection of vegetables and fruits. Eliminate processed foods, saturated fats, sugar, caffeine, consuming too many salty foods, and avoid these 4 worst fatty foods.

So, while crunches and situps are still a helpful part of a workout regime, they shouldn’t be the main focus on your quest to get 6 pack abs because they do not produce the results that many people believe they do. Also focus on feeding your body healthy, nutritious food that is will contribute to a fast metabolism and refuel fat burning muscles.

Is the excess fat on your stomach more dangerous to your health than the excess fat on your hips and thighs?

Yes, the excess fat on the abdominal region is associated with chronic diseases like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer high blood pressure, and high cholesterol.  This means the more excess stomach fat you have, the higher the risk you are for any one of these chronic medical conditions.

Fat in the abdominal area consists of two types:  subcutaneous fat and visceral fat.  Subcutaneous fat is the fat right beneath your skin and above your abdominal muscles.  Visceral fat is the fat that lay deeper and surrounds the abdominal muscles.

Both of these types of fat have negative health conditions associated with them, but visceral fat has especially higher health risks of developing the above mention health conditions.

The natural aging factor contributes to the dangers of belly fat as well.  As humans age, their metabolism naturally tends to slow down. This causes their body to store more fat as opposed to muscle. This is true especially for women, because they tend to carry even more fat than men.  As aging progresses, especially after menopause for women, the fat storage in the body shifts from hips and thighs to the midsection.

A person’s waist can grow larger without gaining any weight simply by the redistribution of body fat from other parts of the body to the stomach region.  This is why managing the excess fat in this area is critically important to one’s health and longevity.

There is also research that shows supports fat cells stored in the abdominal region are active cells, not just dormant cells waiting to be burned off. They can produce hormones that can lead to diabetes and they can also produce estrogen which leads to a higher risk of breast cancer. Excess estrogen leads to many other medical conditions like thyroid issues and uterine fibroids.

Fat storage in the abdominal area can also cause particular chemical changes throughout the body that lowers metabolism and increases craving for sweets.

What this ultimately means is that having excess fat in your stomach region can actually make you gain even more stomach fat by slowing down the process to burn it off and attracting foods that keep it on. This process becomes a vicious cycle.

Hopefully this is enough motivation for you to start working out so you can avoid the dangers of excess belly fat.

In order to maintain a trim waistline, you’ll need to participate in consistent full body workout program that includes many multi-joint exercises. Some of the best workouts for abs are ones that include exercises like squats, deadlifts, pull-ups and lunges.  These are exercises require you to use all the muscles of your body include your core.

You’ll also need to follow a healthy, nutrient dense diet that consists of plenty of good fats, fruits and vegetables, and lean proteins. Make sure you stay away from the worst fatty foods like hydrogenated oils, saturated fats, and deep fried foods.

My managing the excess fat in your stomach region, not only will you look better and feel more sexy, but you will be taking care of yourself to live a long, healthy life.

To start, eating an adequate supply of healthy dietary fats is vitally important to your overall health. Fats are one of the main components in all of the cells throughout your entire body.

If you eat enough healthy natural fats, your cellular processes will function properly. On the other hand, if you eat heavily processed fats that are found in most of today’s processed foods, your cellular function will be damaged as these bad fats become part of your body. And as a result, your body will have to work harder to operate normally, and diseases can develop.

On top of this, healthy dietary fats are necessary for optimal hormone production and balance within the body. Therefore, healthy fats are essential for the muscle building and fat burning processes. Other important functions that dietary fats play in a healthy body are aiding vitamin and mineral utilization, and enzyme regulation. All three basic macronutrients serve important functions for a lean, healthy, and disease-free body.

Knowing this, there are good fats, and there are bad fats. In my other article titled “All Fat is Not Bad – Top 5 Healthy Fatty Foods to Include in Your Diet” I cover the good fats. But here, I want to point the bad fats that you should avoid at all costs!

The Deadly Fatty Foods:

1. Hydrogenated oils (trans fats): These are industrially produced chemically altered oils subjected to extremely high pressure and temperature, with added industrial solvents such as hexane for extraction, and have a metal catalyst added to promote the artificial hydrogenation, followed by bleaching and deodorizing agents…..and somehow the FDA still allows this stuff to pass as food.

These oils aren’t even worthy of your car, much less your body! They’ve been linked to obesity, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and more. Even small quantities have been shown in studies to be dangerous. If you care about your health, check the ingredients of everything you buy, and if you see partially hydrogenated oils of any kind, margarine, or shortening, protect yourself and your family by choosing something else. The FDA has mandated that all food manufacturers are required to show the quantity of trans fat on all labels by January 2006.

2. Refined oils: Even if the oils are not hydrogenated, most oils on your supermarket shelves are refined, even most of the so called “healthy” canola oils. Most refined oils still undergo the high temperature, high pressure, solvent extraction, bleaching, and deodorizing processes.

Anything labeled vegetable oil, soybean oil, corn oil, cottonseed oil, safflower oil, and even many canola oils have been damaged by this refining process (unless they say “virgin” or “cold expeller pressed”). This damages the natural structure of the fats, destroys natural antioxidants, creates free radicals, and produces a generally unhealthy product.

Take note that the explosion of heart disease in the middle of the 20th century coincides quite nicely with the rapid increase in the use of hydrogenated and refined oils in the food supply.

3. Anything deep fried: including tortilla chips, potato chips, French fries, donuts, fried chicken, chicken nuggets, etc. Sorry, these all probably taste good, but all of this junk shouldn’t even pass as real food in my opinion!

4. Homogenized milk fat – Milk fat is a very healthy fat in its natural raw state. Milk and beef from grass fed organically raised cows is known to have higher quantities of healthy fats like conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) and omega-3 fatty acids compared with grain fed cows. Traditional populations around the world have thrived in perfect health while consuming huge quantities of raw, non-pasteurized, non-homogenized, full fat dairy products.

Once again, food processing ruins a good thing by pasteurizing and homogenizing milk fat, rendering it potentially dangerous inside the human body. Unfortunately, you will find it almost impossible to find raw milk in the US unless you personally know a farmer.

Check out http://www.realmilk.com for more info on the benefits of raw milk and to find out if it’s available near you. As an alternative, cultured dairy products like yogurt have at least had beneficial microorganisms added back to them making them better for you. Realistically, since you probably won’t find raw milk, sticking to skim milk is the best option to avoid the homogenized milk fat. If you use butter for cooking, your best option is grass-fed butter.

If you want to know what the best workout for abs are, you may be surprised to find they are not ab exercises at all.  Contrary to popular belief, situps and crunches alone don’t work and wont get you a six pack!

Why is this?  Crunches and sit ups isolate the ab muscles.  This tones them, but doesn’t burn fat above them.  You can’t “spot treat” a particular flabby area on your body that you want to zap.  Unfortunately, this doesn’t work.

The problem most people have about seeing their abs, is burning the layer of fat above them.  This is usually the most difficult part of the process.

In order to burn fat, you must do workouts that consist of multi-joint exercises.  These types of exercises require you to use multiple muscle groups through your body in order to perform them correctly.

Multi-joint exercises also require you to use your core and have proper from which indirectly tones your ab muscles.  Because these type of exercises require you to engage your entire body instead of just one muscle group, they burn fat, calories, and boost metabolism.

In order to get started, I’ve listed some of the 5 of the best workout moves for abs:

1) Lunges - Lunges are great for working your glutes and thighs.  Stand up tall with your feet together. Take a big step (lunge) forward so that your knee is above your ankle at a 90 degree angle.  Pause for moment and push yourself up back to standing.  Repeat on the other side.

2) Deadlifts – Deadlifts work the hamstrings, back and glutes. Bend over with your back flat and legs slightly bent.  You must keep your back flat when doing deadlifts to prevent injury.  Release your upper body forward from your hips, while keeping your back straight and legs slightly bent.  Pause when for a moment when you get to the bottom of the movement and then use your hamstrings and back to pull you back up to the original flat back position.

3) Squats – Stand up tall with your feet hips width apart, toes pointing slightly angled outward.  Slowly bend the knees and lower the hips towards the floor.  Do not bend more than 90 degrees and make sure to keep your torso up straight during the entire movement. Push yourself back up using your glutes and leg muscles.

4) Pull Ups – In order to do a pull up, you will need a pull up bar.  This exercise is great for the back.  Grab the pull up bar with an overhand grip where you hands are positioned slightly wider than your shoulders.  Release your feet from the ground into hanging position and pull yourself up until your chin is above the bar.  Lower yourself down slowly while continuing to engage your back and arm muscles.  This exercise may require you to build up strength before being able to complete.

5) Push Ups – Get down on all fours and place your hands on the floor so they align slighty wider than your shoulders. Lower your body until your chest almost touches the floor.  Pause for a brief moment and then push yourself back up.  Do not drop your hips.

Just remember to squeeze your core muscles when performing any of these exercises.  Squeezing your core will help you achieve proper form and prevent injury.  It will also help you build core strength and help tone your midsection.

Are you addicted to cardio? Most people I talk to seem to be brainwashed that they must do endless hours of cardio to burn fat and get nice, 6 pack abs. They couldn’t be any more wrong.

Maybe because everyone in the mass media, from fitness pros to your doctor, is telling you that you must do at least 45-60 minutes of steady cardio 3 times/week to prevent heart disease and stay in shape.

But before you get brainwashed to turn into a ‘hamster on the wheel’ doing hours of mindless cardio exercise, I’d like to introduce some recent scientific studies that suggest there may be a better cardio workout for 6 pack abs. Yes, you heard right, doing the cardio routine that your fitness professional instructed you to do may actually not be the best thing for you.

Here are the top 3 reasons that you should do shorter, high intensity cardio workouts to get 6 pack abs:

1. Humans are naturally wired for stop-and-go movements

First thing you must realize, is that our bodies are wired to perform physical activity in bursts of exertion followed by recovery, or stop-and-go movement instead of steady state movement. Recent research is suggesting that physical cardio variability is one of the most important aspects to consider in your training.

This can be seen throughout nature as all animals demonstrate stop-and-go motion instead of steady state motion. In fact, humans are the only creatures that employ “endurance” type physical activities. Think about it. Do you see a cheetah running a marathon? Nope.

2. High variable training improves your immune system, among other things

Highly variable cyclic training has been linked to increased antioxidant production in the body, among other benefits. On top of producing more antioxidants, short high intensity cardio increases your metabolic rate, which makes you lose weight.

Variable cardio training also teaches the heart to respond to and recover from a sudden spurts, making it less likely to fail when you need it. Think about it this way. Exercise that trains your heart to deal with the ups-and-downs that stress causes will strengthen your heart so that it can better handle stress.

On the other hand, studies have proven that ultra-long cardio sessions (usually greater than 60 minutes per session) increases free radical production in the body and can degenerate joints. On top of that, it can also reduce the immune function in your body. Not good consequences for something that is supposed to be healthy, huh?

3. It’s all about the recovery period

One of the most important aspects of variable cyclic training is the recovery period in between bursts of exertion. This one characteristic makes high intensity variable cardio so much better than steady state cardio training. That recovery period is vitally important because it forces the body to respond and deal with stress, making it stronger.

To summarize, some of the potential benefits of variable cyclic cardio training compared to steady state endurance training are as follows: improved cardiovascular health, increased anti-oxidant protection, improved immune function, reduced risk for joint wear and tear, increased muscularity (versus decreased muscularity with endurance training), increased residual metabolic rate following exercise, and an increased capacity for the heart to handle life’s every day stressors. All of these can also help you achieve that nice set of 6 pack abs you’ve been wanting.

So what does a high intensity training session look like? You can the following on a treadmill:

Warm-up for 3-4 minutes by briskly walking

1. Interval 1 – run at 8.0 mi / hr for 1 minute
2. Interval 2 – walk at 4.0 mi / hr for 1 1/2 minutes
3. Interval 3 – run at 10.0 mi / hr for 1 minute
4. Interval 4 – walk at 4.0 mi / hr for 1 1/2 minutes

Repeat those 4 intervals 4 times for a very intense 20-minute workout.

The message I wanted to get across to you is that in high intensity cardio is a great cardio workout for 6 pack abs because it keeps your body guessing and can reap you body many health benefits. These benefits include fat loss, muscle strength, and can increase the health of your heart.