Crunch Time?

Crunches\Sit-ups will not help you lose weight around your tummy...at least not any more than push-ups or many other exercises.

There is a long standing myth that if you want to lose that belly, you need to do more sit-ups. I can not tell you how happy I would be if that were true, but the reality is: targeted weight loss (weight loss that focuses on one specific "problem area") is a scam.

The reason for this is pretty simple actually. When your muscles burn fat (that's a big part of their fuel) they don't just burn it from the fat closest to them. Your body is a fully integrated system. When muscles burn fat, it comes from all over.

Crunches\Sit-ups ARE a great exercise. When you exercise you want to get as many muscles as possible involved and there are a lot of muscles in your mid-section. And...that washboard abs look is achieved (in part) by doing crunches. The problem is, you can actually have washboard abs but they can be covered by fat if you aren't living a healthy lifestyle.

The trick to losing belly fat is the exact same trick to losing ANY fat. Exercise (build muscle, keep your resting metabolism up) and eat a healthy diet (very little bad fats, sugars and enough protein, vitamins and fiber).

For many of us, when we start a weight loss program some of our belly goes first (probably sub-cutaneous belly fat), but that last bit (probably visceral fat) seems to be the hardest to get rid of. The trick is, just like before when you hit plateaus (I still can't believe that's the way to spell that), trust your system.

Also, now that you are in better shape, it might be time to step up the interval training a bit. So, try short bursts of whatever exercise you are doing followed by a recovery period of exercise. In other words, if you are jogging in place (a great weight loss exercise), try doing a 45 second burst of energy every 5 minutes and then resume your normal jogging pace. This has lots of health benefits, but the one I like best is that it is a very good way of encouraging your body to burn visceral fat.

So, it's not that crunches are bad – they are actually good! They just might not be doing what you think they are!

Keep at it – you can do this! And let me know what fitness tip you'd like to know about!