Eights ‘N’ Weights with Suzanne: To Get Those Abs, You Need More than Just Crunches

We all know someone who does the crunch routine: Wake up in the morning, do 100 crunches or sit-ups, and go on with the day. Or they might do this at night before bed if they are being a little adventurous. One year later, the crunch routine is still happening with little or no results.
Why, you ask? Because many of us are a little misinformed about how weight loss works. The body works a little differently, and I’ll explain how. To get abs, we all really need to consider three factors: cardio exercise, strength training, and a healthy diet. All three are necessary.

Strength training exercises (like crunches) help the muscles get more toned because of the stress they put on the muscles. However, doing crunches usually only works one part of your abs. It is necessary to introduce other types of strength training exercises to work out the entire core region and build strong abs in the process. Some of these exercises are planks, hip lifts, kick-outs, v-sits, etc.

However, guess what? Building muscle tone is great, but that muscle would never show up if you have fat on top of it like most people do. This is where cardio exercise and a healthy diet come in.

Cardio exercise helps you lose fat all over, including losing fat in your abdominal region. Unfortunately, the body was not built in a way where we can choose what part of the body we want to lose fat. However, if you focus on losing fat all over, your abs would be part of that “all over”.

Now, even with cardio exercise and strength training, if you are eating more calories than you are burning, you will not lose weight. And that includes weight in your abs. The body works like a machine, you put in calories, you burn calories. If you put in more calories than you burn, it will be stored as fat. This is why usually, with a bad diet, exercise alone is not enough.

While that is great information to start helping you in your journey towards building better abs, I know it is just the beginning and you need more. Check me out on one of my social media outlets below for more details as I talk more about losing weight, getting stronger, and eating healthier.

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Suzanne Brume is a fitness blogger who strives to live a healthier lifestyle and help others do the same. She blogs consistently at Eights and Weights (www.eightsandweights.com), and gives tips and demonstrations on Twitter (@eightsnweights), Instagram (@eightsnweights), and Facebook (Eights and Weights). She is always open for fitness questions!