Sit-ups

Sit-ups or crunches will flatten your stomach

Most of us have had that moment where we look down at our too soft belly and decide that something needs to change. When confronting our undesirable gut, many of us resolve to do more crunches. Sit-ups are considered the key to a flat, hard abdomen. Sadly, the truth is that you might do more sit-ups than you care to count and still have a flabby gut. Why is this?

When you do crunches or sit-ups regularly, you do strengthen and define your abdominal muscles. However, if you are not burning up more calories than you take in, you will not lose fat. And that means that those toned, defined abdominal muscles might still be well hidden underneath a layer of belly fat. Crunches may work the muscles of your abdomen, but they are probably not enough to make you lose the weight you need to in order to let you show them off.

Unfortunately, working the muscles in a particular spot does not mean that you will lose fat from that area. As you’ve probably heard over and over, spot reduction does not work. Reducing the amount of fat in your body usually requires cardiovascular exercise that increases your heart rate and gets your entire body moving, so that you burn enough calories to tip the balance toward weight loss. For example, a study of obese women found that high-intensity exercise training was the most effective way to eliminate the total fat around the abdomen, as well as the abdominal fat under the skin and the fat around the organs of the abdomen.

It is also difficult to predict or target where on the body a person will lose weight. When scientists study weight loss through restricting calories (dieting), dieting plus engaging in moderate exercise, and dieting plus engaging in vigorous exercise, there is no preferential loss of weight from the abdomen. Among people who lose the same amount of weight, different types or intensities of exercise did not make them any more likely to lose weight from their bellies. While losing weight from anywhere on the body is a good thing if you are overweight, we don’t get to pick and choose which areas get smaller.

Another important note related to sit-ups is that they are often not even the best exercise for strengthening your abs. Sit-ups actually engage the flexor muscles in the trunk, specifically the iliopsoas muscles, more than they do the abdominal muscles that would be part of that six-pack you’re striving for. The iliopsoas muscles are best thought of as the inner hip muscles, and they actually connect to your lower back. These muscles are important for walking, running, and standing, so it is worthwhile to keep them in good shape, but you may want to consider other muscles when working on toning your abs.