Exercise To Lose Belly Fat
Diet alone isn’t usually enough to get rid of stubborn fat that settles around the midsection and abdomen. You have to exercise to lose belly fat, and some exercises are definitely more effective than others.

Click here to check out Turbulence Training the best exercise program to lose belly fat

Before diving into a regimen of a hundred crunches morning and night, ask yourself a couple of pertinent questions about your body and your goals. Are you at your ideal weight? Belly fat tends to be the last fat to disappear and the first fat to reappear on any given body, so even a few pounds of extra weight will show up there.

The body stores extra fat around the midsection because the belly is the most vulnerable part of the body. Extra weight around the belly serves as both a protection and as a caloric reserve in case food becomes scarce.

To achieve a perfectly flat belly, most people have to be at their leanest weight. Just losing an extra five or ten pounds might get you where you want to be all by itself, but if you are 20 pounds or more overweight, no amount of exercise is going to flatten your belly unless some of those of those excess pounds come off too.

Another question to ask yourself is how badly do you want a flat belly? Some people have a habit of obsessing about parts of their bodies for reasons that have little to do with health or wellness. If you are at a lean weight and you still are unhappy, is your belly really the problem?

If you’ve ruled out unhealthy obsessions and you are at or below your normal weight and still feel you are carrying too much belly fat, you can help to change that by doing daily exercises designed to strengthen your core. Crunches, leg lifts, and various yoga postures can make a big difference if done on a daily basis.

Crunches are the first exercise most people think of when they think about belly fat, but crunches are done incorrectly more often than they are done right. When you perform a crunch, you should feel the tightening in your abdomen only and your back should stay flat against the floor. If your neck or back or shoulders hurt afterward, you are doing the crunches incorrectly.

Leg lifts can be helpful and are harder to get wrong. You can lie out flat and lift one leg at a time very slowly until it is perpendicular to the rest of your body, then slowly lower it. Do three repetitions of twenty on each side, then three repetitions of twenty using both legs at once.

An extremely effective exercise to lose belly fat is a yoga pose called the Dog and Cat posture. In this posture, you get down on all fours like a dog would and look upward, relaxing your body all over. This is the ‘Dog’ portion of the posture. Next, you lower your head, arch your back, and suck your abdomen in as hard as you can and hold that. This is the ‘Cat’ portion of the posture.

Other great yoga poses for losing belly fat include the Bridge, the Cobra, and the Half Shoulder Stand. All strengthen and stretch the belly muscles and all teach you how to breathe from your belly while exercising.

Learning to breathe from the belly can help dislodge belly fat all on its own. Yoga poses also help to get rid of belly fat by raising your awareness of your belly and your body, improving your posture, and reducing stress.

Last but not least, even cardio workouts can become a good exercise to lose belly fat if they are done consciously with good posture, holding your belly in all the while. Even walking every day while holding in your stomach and maintaining an awareness of your posture can burn through belly fat amazingly fast.

The key to success for any exercise to lose belly fat is keeping at it. Make it a part of your daily routine and don’t give up. Before you know it you will have the flat belly you’ve always dreamed about, and you’ll feel great too!

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • LinkedIn
  • Live
  • MySpace
  • RSS
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati
  • Tumblr
  • Twitter
  • Yahoo! Bookmarks
  • Diigo
  • MisterWong
  • Mixx
  • Ping.fm
  • Propeller
  • Reddit
  • Sphinn
  • Wikio
  • Wikio IT
  • Yahoo! Buzz