Flat stomach exercises - cutting through the falsehoods

To understand why it is not possible, it would be an advantage to understand the true relationship between fat and muscles.

WARNING! This may appear a bit long-winded but stick with me … and may you never look the same again!

Making clear some physiological facts

The simplest explanation regarding love handles and stomach fat is: fat is an accumulation of unburnt stored fuel. Rather like the gas tank of your car and just like any form of storage, if you overfill it, then it will spill out all over the place.

Do you get the picture?

Body processes need fuel to operate;
consequently they burn fat. This
burning is called your metabolism
and it's by no strange surprise
that the biggest fat burners are
the biggest muscles in the
body … and where are the biggest muscle in the body? Well,
take a look. You'll see it is not your abs, it's your glutes (butt),
thighs, shoulders and chest, then the upper back. These large muscles are your major fat burners … and of course oxygen-burners. More about that oxygen-burning later. (Meanwhile, if you already know about your metabolism, you might want to speed it up.)

But first a quick wake-up call and a cold-blooded warning: If you are doing tons and tons of sit-ups and crunches to get a flat stomach, it isn't going to work out - but it is my guess that if you HAVE been trying to lose lose love handles for any length of time, you have already noticed it's not working. If you are trying to swap a pair of love-handles for a set of great abs then there is a danger of doing too many abdominal exercises and MAKING IT WORSE.

Remember I told you, "It's impossible to spot-exercise fat away"?

Well, here is the SHOCKER! The reverse is TRUE for muscles. It's not only possible, but completely natural to spot-increase muscle mass.

Er ... what does that mean? Well, developing too much muscle underneath too much fat means that as the muscles grow they have to grow somewhere and that "somewhere" is always outward.

With the fat still on top.

Yep! You've got it. Too many "flat-stomach" exercises done without due care and attention to the rest of your body will run the risk of turning that little spare auto-tyre around your waist into a freakin' great truck tyre - well it may not be quite as bad as that but I hope you get my point?

So what are the most effective whole-body
exercises for getting not just that flat
stomach but a svelte silhouette overall?

One could write a whole website about this subject alone, but the truth is: any kind of exercise will generally help, providing that you don't remain concentrated in any one area of your body. Nevertheless, the best exercises are those which work the largest muscle groups and encourage you to take in a lot of oxygen (oxygen is the ingredient which "burns up" the calories during metabolism) ... such as aerobics or circuit training. There are several good online resources kicking around and naturally some are better than others - but without a doubt, the best site I have come across is

But here's a word of warning. In the world of pure theory, it is possible to replace your love-handles with a lovely flat stomach through exercise alone, but in the real world it can almost be impossible. It means you are going to have to vastly increase the amount of physical activities you do, so you are likely to end up buzzing around like a demented wasp all day long … yes, very impractical.