How many of you have seen an infomercial for an exercise machine that promises to get you 6-pack abs with just a 3-minute a day work out? I’m going to go out on a limb, and say that I bet almost all of you have. Hopefully though, you didn’t shell out a few hundred bucks for one of these machines, because, guess what? They don’t work! As humans, we tend to carry our weight in our midsection. This is a natural defense mechanism our bodies do to protect our internal organs. Ladies, you tend to hold most of your weight in your hips, which is your body’s way of protecting your childbearing organs. Men tend to carry their excess weight a little bit higher in their abdomen because their vital organs tend to sit higher up than women’s. This is a natural thing, but no matter where you carry it, you have to realize that there is no magical workout that is going to give you instantaneous results.  Exercise is a critical part of weight loss, but you cannot just work your fat off without also changing your eating habits.

One thing people don’t realize is that you can’t do 500 crunches a day and expect to have a 6 pack, all while still having fat situated on your arms, hips, legs, and butt.  It simply just does not work that way. Let’s say you start working out and there is about 3 inches of fat each on your arms, back, and legs, but roughly 6 inches on your stomach. Weight loss is an overall process, so, what is going to happen when you start working out is that you will lose 3 inches all over your body—your arms, your back your legs will look great, but you are still going to have another 3 inches of fat on your stomach. This fat is going to be harder to lose because your body naturally wants it to be there. At this point, we would have to start some carbohydrate manipulations and change your workout a bit to “trick” your body into losing this extra fat around your abdomen. Naturally, your body wants to add fat and eat muscle, so, in order to lose your belly fat, we will have to trick your body to do the opposite.

Bottom line is this: no abdominal machine is going to work if you still have surface fat. Everyone has abs, but the question is can you see them on the surface? By eating small frequent meals and creating a demand on your body through exercise to use it as fuel, rather than store it as fat, the weight in your abdomen will eventually come off. Only then can you start to really develop and tone those abdominal muscles of your dreams.

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