It is a common misconception that the more sit-ups you do, the more crunches you do, the more you stress your abdominal muscles, the faster your stomach will become flat.
It may show some short-term, measurable results, but flattening your belly is all about reducing your overall body fat. It’s common knowledge that you can be a skinny, skinny person, and still be awesome.
Why? Because your gut is the last place that will lose fat, other parts of your body will lose fat first. That’s just how the human body works.
You can exercise to make the stomach flat forever. By doing this, what you are doing is developing your abdominal muscles and creating definition, that nice ripped look we all want. However, guess what? Those beautiful abs are covered by a layer of fat on your stomach, so you can workout all you want — but you’ll never see definition in your midsection until you lose that fat.
In fact, by working out consistently, you are adding lean muscle to your abs, which is good. The dilemma is that if you don’t do proper cardio exercises and follow a proper diet plan, you may end up making your middle bigger because you’ve developed all the best defined muscles down there, and You have a layer of fat covering it at the same time.
Body fat levels are everything when it comes to flattening your stomach and building fabulous, toned, well-toned abs.
Men can usually start showing their abs when they reach the 10-13% body fat level. However, if you want to have ripped abs like those in fitness magazines, you should try to get at least the high single digits in body fat levels.
Women can expect their abs to start showing when their body fat levels reach around 15%. Go just a few points below that and you can start to see that amazing ripped look in your stomach.
Achieving and maintaining the ripped look is a bit more difficult for women than men. It is not as easy for a woman’s body to maintain low fat levels as it is for a man’s body. Always consult with your doctor and professional fitness trainer before attempting to reduce your body fat levels.
So, should we completely ditch sit-ups and crunches when it comes to exercising to flatten our stomach? Absolutely not. These exercises can certainly contribute to building a flatter stomach and the overall appearance of your torso, but they won’t achieve that goal on their own.
Doing more sit-ups and crunches is not necessarily better than doing less to achieve a flat stomach. It’s more about technique and how you exercise your abdominal muscles when you do these exercises.
It’s not just about the amount of sit-ups you do. It’s all about striking a balance between exercising to flatten your belly and following a smart diet plan to help you get the most out of those workouts.
Source by Nasma Tariq
