If you want to get rid of excess fat around your lower belly, you can banish the bulge with exercise. Cardio exercise is vital to burning calories and losing weight, and strengthening exercises can help tone your tummy. Though you can't target weight loss just at your midsection, there are a variety of exercises you can do to get flat abs and lose extra weight without doing crunches.
Step 1
Avoid high-fat and high-calorie foods with little to no nutrients. Consuming beer, liquor, fried foods, processed snack foods and desserts can pack on the pounds, so replace these foods with healthy options from the foods groups. Eat a variety of foods from all of the food groups, especially whole grains, vegetables, fruit, lean protein and low-fat dairy.
Step 2
Do cardiovascular exercise for 60 minutes five times a week. One pound is equal to about 3,500 calories, so if you burn an extra 500 calories a day, for instance, you will lose 2 lbs. in a week.
Step 3
Add intensity or duration to your cardio workouts to burn more calories. For example, if you normally walk, add a few minutes of jogging to your workouts. A 150-lb. person who runs at 6 mph for 30 minutes can burn 342 calories. The same person can burn 513 calories running at the same speed for 45 minutes and can burn 458 calories by increasing her speed to 8 mph for 30 minutes.
Step 4
Do plank exercises to strengthen your lower ab muscles and help you maintain better posture, making you look slimmer. Muscle mass also burns more calories than fat tissue, so strong abs will help keep you trim.
Tips and Warnings
- Measure your waist each week to help you track your weight-loss progress. To do a plank exercise, lie on a yoga mat on your stomach. Keeping your body straight from your feet up to your head, push yourself up to rest on your forearms and toes. Breathe and hold for a count of 15 seconds. Repeat two times, and gradually work up to doing 30 seconds to one minute for each plank. Do planks once a day.
- Consult your doctor before beginning a weight-loss program.
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