I knew you’d love Ross’s reply. He puts a lot of time and effort into his responses…

Thanks for your question and congratulations on your recent success. I completely understand your concern about gaining more thickness/muscle around your midsection, but cutting out your resistance training is one of the last things you should do. It is a common belief that resistance training causes bulkiness, but it doesn’t have to.

I assume you would continue resistance training for the rest of your body, because resistance training very important. Resistance training helps prevent muscle decreases that usually occur with dieting and maintaining or increasing muscle is one of the best ways to maximize the number of calories your metabolism burns every day.

Keeping your metabolism as high as possible is especially important as we get older, because your metabolism naturally slows down. Dieting and cardio are great for fat loss, but resistance training makes them more effective. You can include training for strength, muscular endurance, speed/power, hypertrophy (muscle gain), etc. and they can all work with a fat loss program.

As for abdominal/torso resistance training I do think you should avoid doing exercises with significant weight, but there are a ton of light weight or body weight abdominal exercises you can do that will keep your abs tight without adding thickness. Additionally, many of these exercises are great for your spine and low back health, so they should be included in everyone’s training program.

Try to focus on exercises that challenge your core stabilization instead of exercises that are designed to strengthen one specific movement (weighted crunches, machine seated oblique twisting, etc.). Better choices are exercises like the plank (side and prone, raises or isometric holds), leg scissors, ball cobras, etc. (Add link to ab videos)

It is also critical to perform these movements slowly and focus on form and control instead of strength, speed, or number of reps. Work the muscles until your control noticeably decreases or your muscles get tired, but do not do more than your abs are capable of. It is always possible to force yourself to do more reps, but these reps are almost always poor quality, involve incorrect muscles, and teach your body bad habits.

Finally, the only way to get your body to lose fat from your problem areas is to be consistent with your nutrition and training. You may continue losing most of the weight from other areas, but when those areas have slimmed enough, your body will be forced to lose fat from your midsection.

Just hang in there and keep up the good work. It may take longer than you want, but your good habits will eventually be rewarded. I hope this helps,

Ross

If you are worried about getting sick from having a little extra belly fat, that is really not something that is related to becoming ill. If you had a significant amount of belly fat that would be different, but if other people don’t think you look fat, it is probably not bad for your health. Many other things have more of an impact on health, such as nutrition, sleep, stress, strength, endurance, power, abdominal function, and balance/stability, just to name a few.

If the problem is that you want to get rid of more abdominal fat, there are some things you can do. From an exercise standpoint, the first thing I would suggest is mixing up your routine. It sounds like you do the same thing every day, but that is actually one of the least efficient ways to make progress. If you want your body to improve, you have to make it do things it is not used to.

For the treadmill you could change the walking speed, duration, incline, etc. Try to never repeat the same exact workout in a given week. You do not have to change everything each workout, but at least change one workout variable. For more information you can look at this article/video on walking for weight loss (http://virtualfitnesstrainer.com/weightloss/walking-for-weight-loss-use-these-tips-to-lose-fat-and-burn-calories/). The information also applies to running or other form of aerobic exercise.

The same is true for the resistance training exercises and there are many bodyweight exercises that can be useful if the gym does not have any other equipment. There are also many abdominal exercises that you can try. Check out VFT’s 6-pack abs section for a lot more information on this subject (http://virtualfitnesstrainer.com/six-pack-abs/).

Of course, in the end, losing fat around your tummy generally comes down to nutrition and your metabolism. Eating small meals throughout the day with quality protein, healthy carbs and good fats is one of the best ways to increase fat loss. There are also many things that inhibit fat loss, such as stress, lack of sleep, drinking alcohol, lack of water, etc.

The thing(s) you need to do all depend on your specific situation and hopefully something here is helpful, but there are many other things that can help as well,

Ross

My daily start at 4.45 AM with the treadmill, walking at speed 5.9 lossing 100 kilo calories. Then I do some workout in the mechine for shoulder and hands with 30 kgs wt for about 10 mts with sychronised breathing. My problem is my tummy.. which I want completly in. When I am dressed none can see my tummy but I can see it when I undress.

Give me a pattern for my age so that I don’t become sick.

Reducing the amount of oblique specific exercises will help and when you do perform them don’t include any extra resistance such as dumbbells, weight plates etc.

Also work on building your shoulders up a little more. I’m NOT talking about bulking up like a rugby player.

Example: you can have two sessions a week (at least 4 days apart) where you’re training your shoulders. One day using more mass building exercises using heavier weights and lower reps and the other day using exercises that work on defining your shoulders – using a much lighter resistance with more reps.

I’m not sure what exercises you’re currently performing for your legs but you might want to consider reducing the resistance (if you’re using dumbbells etc) and performing higher reps. Don’t forget to mix things up a bit too. If you want change you need to make sure you upgrade your workouts regularly – otherwise you’ll plateau. For example: if you’re doing nothing but squats, leg press and stationery lunges all the time then get cracking with some new exercises. There’s nothing wrong with these exercises, but you definitely have to include variety to stimulate new results.

Obviously your eating is going to make a HUGE difference to your overall regime as well. You’ll be surprised at exactly where you might be going wrong with your eating plan just by logging what you eat each day.

If you get bored easily with your eating then you might want to consider something like Cheat Your Way Thin (it sounds strange, but it’s great if you get sick of eating the same stuff day in and day out).

You might also find that by changing your eating plan (helping you reduce your body fat) that your midsection and areas like your legs where you want it to be more defined will start to improve.