Contrary to popular belief, you won't lose your gut quickly--or at all--simply by training your abdominal muscles directly. Spot reduction, or the reduction of fat on a specific part of the body through direct exercise, is physiologically impossible. To lose your gut as fast as possible, you'll have to commit to a complete program of diet, cardiovascular exercise and direct abdominal work. Follow the steps below for best results.
Step 1
Reduce your daily intake of food. Even if you have the best abdominal workout in the world, your muscles won't show through a thick gut, and diet is one of the premier means of reducing body fat. Keep a journal of the types and quantities of food and drinks that you consume over the course of several average days, then cross-reference this data with the relevant nutritional information to come up with an estimate of your average daily caloric intake. Depending on the size of your gut, aim to reduce this figure by somewhere between 500 and 1,000 calories daily. Because a pound of fat is equal to 3,500 calories, this will allow you to lose at least one pound of fat per week through diet. Start by eliminating all simple sugars from your diet--sweets, desserts and soft drinks will all have to go. If this doesn't fill your calorie deficit quota, carefully reduce your portion sizes as needed.
Step 2
Engage in cardiovascular exercise at least three times per week. This will serve both to burn any excess calories that your diet misses, and raise your metabolism so that your body will burn more fat on its own. At each session, choose between 20 to 30 minutes of high intensity activity or at least 45 minutes of low intensity activity. Acceptable choices include anything that consistently raises your heart rate, including swimming, running, biking and even organized sports.
Step 3
On days when you aren't scheduled for cardiovascular exercise, perform direct abdominal work. While this won't remove the fat on top of your abs, it will develop the muscles themselves so that they begin to show through sooner. For each session, select five abdominal exercises of your choice, and perform each exercise for two sets of as many repetitions as you can manage prior to failure. The best abdominal exercises for this purpose, in order of muscular activity elicited in the abdominals, are the bicycle crunch, the captain's chair, the exercise ball crunch, the reverse crunch and the vertical leg crunch.
Things You'll Need
- Calculator
- Cardiovascular exercise facilities
- Padded exercise mat
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