Sunday, December 21, 2008

Exercises for a Flat Stomach

By Jose Loni

Flat stomach exercises help to increase strength and overall fat burning, but there are two other factors that need to be considered as exercises for a flat stomach as well. Those are our diet, what we eat and how often we eat and the other is the management of our stress levels.

Nutrition: Cut down on the fat intake in your diet as well as intake of sodas. Also try to cut back on processed carbohydrates like: breads, pasta, rice and potatoes. Instead of eating 3 big meals per day, eat smaller sized portions and divide your meals into 6 meals per day. Your meals should be well balanced from each of the basic food groups and drink lots of water. Try to make healthier alternatives to the foods you regularly eat. For example: instead of eating chocolate bars, substitute it with fruits or carrot sticks.

Physical Activity: when you are first starting out, you can begin with walking for at least 20 minutes per, then progress up to 30 minutes, three times a week. Try to maintain a good elevated heart rate while walking so you are challenging your system.

By focusing on multi joint exercises, we can increase our metabolism and decrease our overall fat. By increasing our metabolism, we can tap into the body's fat burning capabilities to help flatten our stomach, where the fat is accumulated. When we increase our lean body mass from exercise, our bodies will search for the next available energy source, which will be fat from our stomach.

Stress reduction: Stress makes our bodies go into a panic mode. Our bodies react by sending hormones into our system that tell our bodies to store fat in our stomach to prepare for deprivation. So, the key is to reduce the stress or manage it in a way that will allow you to better cope with it. By reducing the stress in our lives, we control various physiological components in our bodies, which allow us to burn fat more efficiently, resulting in a flatter stomach.

One method of coping with stress is deep breathing. Take a deep breath through your nose, try to feel the breath go deeply into your lungs and into your diaphragm, then slowly breathe out and exhale through your mouth. This technique allows for more oxygen in your system as well as help remove carbon dioxide from our bodies.

Flat stomach exercises in addition to diet and stress management will definitely help you achieve a flat stomach and make permanent and long lasting results. All it takes is a commitment to make the necessary changes and step-by-step, a flat stomach will be the result. - 15683

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