Even if you're slightly overweight, 16 weeks is an adequate period of time in which to develop visible abdominals. However, you won't be able to remove the remaining fat from your stomach just by training your abdominals directly; spot reduction of fat through resistance training is a myth. Rather, you'll have to stick to a 16-week program of diet, cardiovascular exercise and direct abdominal training for best results.
Step 1
Decrease your daily food intake. As you know, you'll have to decrease your overall body fat, and diet is one of the best ways to do so. Without changing your habits, keep a record of the foods and drinks that you consume over the first few days. Using your calculator and the relevant nutritional information, determine your average daily caloric intake. Depending on the extent of your excess body fat, aim to decrease your intake by between 500 and 1,000 calories per day; this will ensure that you'll burn between 1 and 2 lb. of fat per week based on diet alone. In order to achieve this deficit, start by removing junk food from your diet. If this isn't sufficient, trim the sizes of your actual meals as needed.
Step 2
Increase your protein intake. Protein will serve two purposes during your program: first, it will provide the building blocks for the growth of new muscle tissue in your abdominals, and second, it will act as a natural appetite suppressant, and thus aid you in sticking to your restrictive diet. Aim to ingest between 1 and 1.6 g of protein per kilogram of body weight. In order to reach this figure, make liberal use of protein-rich staples such as eggs, meats, fish, beans and tofu.
Step 3
Perform cardiovascular exercise between 3 and 7 days per week. Select any activity that will reliably raise your heart rate---including, but not limited to, jogging, biking, swimming and organized sports---and perform it continuously throughout the duration of your session. At first, you may only be able to handle 15 to 30 minutes at a time, but aim to increase the frequency and duration of your sessions each week.
Step 4
Train your abdominals directly between two and three times each week. At each session, perform the following exercises, each of which is superior to the standard crunch in terms of elicited intramuscular activity: bicycle crunch, exercise ball crunch, reverse crunch, vertical leg crunch and long arm crunch. For each exercise, perform 2 sets of as many repetitions as possible prior to failure, resting 2 minutes between sets.
Things You'll Need
- Calculator
- Cardiovascular exercise facilities
- Padded exercise mat
- Exercise ball
References
- ExRx.net: Fat Loss & Weight Training Myths
- MayoClinic.com: Counting calories: Get back to weight-loss basics
- "International Journal of Obesity"; High protein intake sustains weight maintenance after body weight loss in humans; M.S. Westerterp-Plantenga, et al.; 2004.
- "Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition"; International Society of Sports Nutrition Position Stand: Protein and Exercise; B. Campbell at al.; 2007.
- American College of Sports Medicine's Health & Fitness Journal: An Electromyographic Approach to the Evaluation of Abdominal Exercises
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