How To Start Flattening Your Stomach, And Why Ab Gizmos Dont Work
Why you can’t spot-tone.
The manufacturers who sell gadgets to tone your abs don’t want you to know about spot-toning. They want you to think that increasing your abdominal muscle tone will make your stomach appear flatter.
Increasing muscle tone with the goal of burning fat from an area is what we call spot-toning. Fitness trainers know that spot-toning does not work: it is one of the oldest fitness myths.
Building muscle mass is not the same as losing fat. Muscle and fat are two different kinds of tissue. Our body knows they are different.
Therefore, if your goal is to burn fat from an area (like the tummy), then you will need different practices than if your goal is to build muscle tone.
How do you burn fat from the belly area?
To flatten your stomach, you probably want to burn fat off your mid-section area. To understand how to do this, you’ll want to understand how your body stores and loses fat.
Your body might store fat in certain areas more than others. Some people store fat around their mid-sections: the “spare tire”. Others store fat on their outer thighs and hips. Others gain weight and distribute excess fat evenly around their whole bodies.
When you gain weight that is just added fat, your new activities will not remove it from some areas but leave it on other areas. Hence, you can’t spot-tone or spot-reduce.
Instead, you need new habits that will help you to burn overall fat. In other words, make fat reduction your greater goal, instead of tummy reduction.
As you lose fat from your whole body, your belly will gradually lose its excess belly fat, too.
Nina Schnipper offers personal fitness training and massage therapy in Basalt, Colorado at Higher Spa & Studio. On the Internet, she is the Support & Coaching team director for Higher Spa.
Nina is busy getting fit for summer hikes and backpacking, including the Teton Crest Trail with friends from Estes Park, and hiking from Crested Butte to Aspen with her massage therapist buddy, Kathy. (To prepare, she spends more time lifting weights for her shoulders and back, weighted walking, and trail-running.)
For more info about weight loss and tummy-toning, visit the Higher Lifestyle blog at http://www.higher-lifestyle.blogspot.com
Tags: firm abs, firm tummy, flat stomach, lose belly, lose fat, lose my gut, shape up, tone stomach, weight loss