About 6 years ago I had to have an ankle operation and put on quite a bit of flab while I had half my leg plastered up in a cast.
It most visibly went on right on the belly. I’m small-boned and looked ridiculous with a protruding belly.
Through a combo of reducing carbs and going to gym (running; v-situps; crunches; oblique-twists; bench press; shoulder press; curls; forearm curls; leg press), I’ve toned up and gotten rid of a substantial portion of the bulge.
The remaining blobbiness is mostly very high on the abdomen: I protrude directly under the sternum, in between the upside-down V of my lower ribs. From there it angles back in to where it oughta be for middle and lower abdomen.
Is there any routine that is effective for focusing on this area of the belly?
You have no control over where your body loses fat. Toning is one thing, but actual fat loss–not at all. Men store fat in their abdomen first so you simply need to lose more fat.
My god man, you’re all bones !!! Stop dieting and start carbo-loading !!! ( great drawings )
Our guest is right- when I was muuuuch slimmer and was doing hard working out 3-4 times a week and doing Atkins to boot, I was left with a curve there, and smaller love handles. I suspect that like a lot of us, you will lose that fat last- even though it is most vexing to you.
My favorite part is that I can go through all the effort and lose 15-20 pounds and finally get my love handles a tiny bit smaller… and if I put two pounds back on, that’s exactly where it goes.
At this point I’m just resigned to the fact that I could be in the shape of an Olympic athlete from the waist down and the pectorals up, and I’d still have love handles and a little bit of a belly. So I quite happily just sit 5-10 pounds over my “ideal” weight for my build and eat whatever the hell I want and don’t worry about it
Yep, sorry about that, but you can’t spot-reduce. Usually you have to get down to around 10% body fat to get that six-pack effect. Normal semi-in-shape guys are around 15%. You’ll have that slight bulge unless you’re really in good shape with low body fat.
