I often get emails from people who subscribe to my free newsletter and the most common question I get, from men and women, is how to get a flat tummy or six pack abs.
In this post I want to share 10 tips that will help you get flatter abs in a matter of weeks.
How long it will take until you get a truly flat abdomen depends a lot on you, what you do, how seriously your follow these tips, and your current condition. However, even if you need to lose 100 pounds or more, these diet and exercise tips will help you get a flat tummy.
Here are the 10 tips to have a flatter tummy:
1. Drink With Caution
To get flat abs you need to restrict your calorie intake. One of the primary sources of calories are beverages. The drinks you consume may add hundreds of even thousands of calories to your weekly total, making it very hard to lose fat.
Often, these are calories which you hardly think about, as we all give more attention to solid food than to liquids. However, a calorie is a calorie no matter where it comes from.
To avoid ruining your diet routine with calorie-laden drinks, you need to stick to plain beverages. Water would be the best choice, of course, at zero calories, but green tea and plain coffee are also good choices. I would stay away from fancy coffee because it may be very rich in calories.
Alcoholic beverages deserve their own special warning. These can make it virtually impossible to lose body fat. Alcohol makes you fat not only for the calories in contains, but also because it delays the fat burning processes in your body.
So, you need to drink with caution and stick to plain beverages.
2. Do a Morning Workout
One of the best weight loss tips I can give you is to do an early morning workout. This is good for a number of reasons:
- You give yourself a metabolism boost.
- You will have more energy during your day.
- You start burning calories early on and you won’t want to “ruin” it by eating the wrong things later that day.
- Once that workout is done, you know that you’ve done something for your body that day. No matter what happens later on, this was not a wasted day.
3. Reduce Stress
Stress is bad for your health and it can also make it very difficult to get a flat tummy. The reason is that stress increases the production of the hormone cortisol. This hormone has a variety of effects on your body. One of these effects is to increase the storage of fat in the abdomen. This, of course, is the exact opposite of what you need in order to get flatter abs.
There are plenty of ways to reduce stress, such as Yoga, breathing exercises, meditation, and so on. The main thing, though, is to limit your exposure to stressful situations and people and to change the way you view the challenges and setbacks of life. Do not be so focused on the possibility of failure and create a more balanced way of thinking.
4. Do Intense Cardio Workouts
Cardio is an excellent way to burn more calories and lose weight. However, if you want to do efficient workouts, you need to do the right kind of cardio. The best way to burn calories and fat is to do HIIT cardio workouts. This works whether you’re running, cycling, swimming, or doing any other cardio routine.
To do HIIT (high intensity interval training) cardio, is simple: you need to break your workouts to intervals of varying difficulties and to alternate between high and low intensity intervals. This means that you can run at high speed for a minute, switch to fast walking for another, and proceed to run again.
This kind of training burns more fat than traditional cardio does. However, I am also in favor of doing slow-medium paced cardio following a strength workout. Every activity burns more calories and I know plenty of people who have lost a lot of weight with regular cardio. HIIT training is simply more time efficient.
5. Add Fat Burning Spices to Your Food
You want your metabolism to be as high as possible to burn fat. This depends on a number of factors including your workouts, sleep, and diet. One of the least known tricks to boost your metabolism is to add some fat burning spices to your food. Some spices such as cinnamon, pepper, and garlic give you a metabolism boost and help you burn more calories.
While this is not a major boost, every little thing that helps you to burn more calories is worth considering. In the case of these spices, they also make your food taste better, so there’s little reason not to use them. You can find plenty of spice-rich fat burning recipes in the Metabolic Cooking plan by Dave Ruel and Karine Losier.
6. Green Leafy Vegetables
Mike Geary, the author of the popular Truth About Abs program once wrote an interesting article on fat burning vegetables and how they help your body better deal with pollutants known as Xenoestrogens.
These chemicals, which are common in cleaning detergents, our food, and our environment in general, induce a greater fat storage around the abdomen. Substances in green, leafy vegetables such as kale and broccoli help to reduce the effect of xenoestrogens and so help you lose tummy fat faster. This is why you should eat more green, leafy vegetables. You can learn more about how this works in Mike’s article on the best fat burning veggies.
7. Do the Right Ab Exercises
A lot of people do abdominal exercises, but not too many people do the right ones. For instance, did you know that it takes 250,000 crunches to burn one pound of fat? Crazy, but true. Yet, a lot of people continue to waste their time on crunches even though they’re ineffective both in terms of fat burning and in terms of muscle strengthening.
You’d be better off spending your time doing more intense ab exercises such as plank, side plank, bicycle crunches, spider push-ups, stability ball pikes, etc. You’d be amazed by how short an effective tummy workout can be. As long as you choose the right exercises, you will see and feel fast results.
8. Train Your Entire Body With Powerful Strength Workouts
While your biggest goal is to get a flat tummy, you can’t disregard the rest of your body. If you do so, you will not get the results you’re after. Your body is a single fat burning unit. You can’t break it up to parts. So, if you want to burn belly fat, you need to get your entire body in shape. You need to burn fat from your entire body.
This is why you need to do total body workout routines and to include plenty of strength exercises in them. You may find it strange, but the best exercises to lose belly fat aren’t focused on your abs at all. These are exercises that burn the most calories and fat overall. Some of that fat will melt off your abs. In addition, strength training is one of the best ways to increase your metabolic rate, making it even easier to burn more calories.
The way you structure your strength workouts is very important. To make the most of them you need to do lots of strength circuits. This means that you do a series of exercises with no rest in between. This is also known as metabolic resistance training and is considered one of the most efficient ways to burn body fat.
So, do lots of strength workouts with full body exercises and circuits. You will not only get in total shape, but burn off lots of fat as well.
9. Get More Sleep
Sleep is very important for fat loss. Not only does adequate sleep help you combat stress, it is also connected to a reduced appetite. Lack of sleep also inhibits muscle recovery and reduces the energy you have. Without sleep you won’t be able to do powerful workouts. So, for a whole host of reasons, you have to get proper sleep to get a flat belly.
10. Follow a Program
This may not seem like a real tip, but it is one of the best pieces of advice I can give you.
There’s no easy way to lose belly fat and get a flat tummy. It takes hard work, dedication, and knowledge. A good abs program can give you the guidance and structure to do this right and fast. You don’t have to use a program, but having one can make things a lot simpler. There are a number of programs that you can use. I have personally used the Truth About Abs Program and I can vouch for its effectiveness. This is the program I recommend.
I hope that you found these 10 tips on how to get a flat tummy useful. Don’t settle for reading them only. Go ahead and take action. This is the only way to succeed.
