by xe

Created on: February 06, 2009   Last Updated: February 10, 2009

Waist size reduced from 42 inches down to 31 inches! And no ab exercises! Exercising your abdominal muscles makes those muscles bigger. The only way exercising your abdominal muscles can make your waist smaller is by burning overall calories, and since the abdominal muscles are relatively small this is not an efficient approach. Eliminating fat from your waste is a result of eliminating fat from throughout your body - there is no such thing as '"spot reduction" of fat.

Normally, a person needs to reduce their overall body fat percentage well into the single digit range to have visible six-pack ab muscles. Reducing your overall body fat percentage (BFP) requires proper nutrition combined with the proper amount of aerobic exercise as a function of your body type. The beautiful bodies in those commercials are most likely people with the optimum body type and a BFP around five or six percent. Hint - they probably do not consume massive quantities of burgers, french fries and chocolate cake.

When I lost forty pounds of fat to get my overall weight down to 165 pounds, my body fat stayed proportionally distributed over my body. Yours will do the same. You can not lose more fat from one leg just because you exercise that one more than the other one. You can make the muscles in one leg bigger than the other through asymmetrical exercise, but that is quite a different discussion. It is no more possible to lose fat from your waist more quickly that on your butt than it is to lose it from one leg and not the other - no matter what the ab gimmick sales people in the infomercials tell you.

You lose fat from all over your body by burning up more calories over a period of time through your basic metabolism plus exercise than you take in through your pie-hole. Nutritionists tell us that while carbohydrates and protein have four calories per gram, fat has nine calories per gram. Therefore, if you want to make your waist smaller and are eating 1700 calories a day, you can eat more grams of food if you lower the percentage of calories consumed as fat in comparison to those eaten as carbs or protein.

If you really want to take in a lot of calories with limited nutritional value, eat chips and fries and wash them down with alcohol or beer. You can get days ahead on calorie consumption really fast. If you want to reduce the size of your waist, do aerobics and consume fewer calories. If you want defined abs, reduce your BFP and do crunches and sit-ups.

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