Many people are interested in losing fat around the abdominal area, both for aesthetic and for health reasons. An excess of abdominal fat has been linked to serious health issues, such as heart disease, stroke, hypertension and type 2 diabetes. Although you cannot target your stomach specifically for fat loss, you can take steps that will eventually reduce your excess abdominal fat. To lose fat, you must burn more calories than you consume over a certain time period. You can increase the amount of calories you burn daily with exercise. You control the amount of calories you consume by making healthy eating and drinking choices.
Step 1
Do cardiovascular activity four to six days per week for 30 to 60 minutes each session. Regular, vigorous cardiovascular exercise will significantly increase the amount of total calories you burn, directly affecting the amount of abdominal fat you lose.
Step 2
Burn a significant number of calories each workout. Different physical activities vary in the amount of calories they burn. Mayo Clinic states that running, rollerblading and jumping rope burn the most calories per unit of time of exercise.
Step 3
Limit your daily calorie intake. Create a caloric deficit with your eating habits alone by calculating how many calories you should eat and then monitoring your daily intake. Use an online calorie calculator to determine the number of calories that would keep you at your current weight. Subtract 500 from that number to find the number you should eat every day to lose fat.
Step 4
Do regular abdominal workouts. To increase muscle definition, do an abdominal workout three days per week with a day of rest between each session. Complete three sets of maximum repetitions each of the bicycle, vertical leg crunch and reverse crunch. The American Council on Exercise found that those three exercises are among the best that you can do at home to target your abdominals. Although abdominal exercises won't cut fat from your stomach area, it will help tone and create muscle definition.
Tips and Warnings
- Understand that you cannot spot reduce or choose where you want to lose fat from. When you create a caloric deficit and your body breaks down fat, your genetic makeup chooses where on your body that fat comes from. As you lose overall body fat, you will see improvements at your abdomen. Focus should be placed on creating a daily caloric deficit and improving muscle definition.
- If you're extremely overweight, visit your medical professional before starting an exercise program to ensure that it's safe for you to be physically active.
Member Comments