I feeling pretty blue today. Not because it’s Monday. Not because I have a mountain of repetitive, irksome and monotonous work to plough through. No, I’m blue because I’m feeling particularly fat and ugly today…
My belly seems to have expanded without asking my permission. Thanks to my lack of exercise, I now have the lung capacity of an asthmatic gerbil. And to top it all off, the girls in my office are drooling over a picture of Justin Timberlake right now…
What the hell happened to my washboard abs? I seem to remember having them… What happened to my pecs? How the hell did I get to a size 36 -inch waist?
All I can say is that I’m loooooong overdue for some exercise. It’s a healthy lifestyle from here on in, yessiree. Fruit and cereal for breakfast instead of donuts and coffee, and regular bike-rides instead of driving to the corner store.
Damn you, Timberlake! Damn you and all the other chiselled six-pack pin-up poster boys just like you. Thanks for making me feel like such a useless, unnattractive lump!
I am 33 years old, have a 36 inch waist and proud of it. Though I an 6’1" and work out regularly, I do not know what your reference of 36 inch waist was for?
They are useless only in regards to spot-reducing the waist line.
Otherwise, properly performed sit-ups make a great supplement to any cardio routine one might do.
Sit-ups … cardio? Yup. Perform half-crunches with your feet and calves propped up on a bench, bench or wall; back flat upon the floor or mat. Cross your arms in front of your chest (don’t put those hands behind the head!), and raise your head & shoulders off of the floor. Don’t have to raise super high – halfway up will do.
The trick is not to lower all the way back down each rep. Always keep the shoulders off the floor – even if it’s only an inch. Do you reps between barely off the floor to about halfway up. Do your reps quickly.
Repeat briskly 300 times. Rest 30 seconds after a set of 300, then repeat. Complete three sets.
Your abs, chest, and upper thighs will burn like hell and will develop a lot of stamina. This exercise considerablt raises the heart rate, and will help burn fat all over the body (like any good cardio should).
You are right on about weight-lifting, however. The more muscle you can build, the more calories your body consumes at rest.
Give up drinking for a few weeks and see what happens. I haven’t drank in 3 weeks and my stomach is as flat as it’s ever been. It’s amazing. I had been trying to lose the little stubborn fat on my belly for a long time, and not drinking did it.
The belly doesn’t own the fat. You have to cut your overall fat content down to the point that the body makes that fat go away before the belly will get thin again.
The nasty surprise comes when you get to the age at which your muscles no longer respond to exercise the way they used to. I’m 50, fairly trim (177 lbs at 6’1"), I walk 5-8 miles a day, and hit the gym about 4 times a week for a variety of cardio and weight exercises.
However, I could do abdominal crunches 8 hours a day, yet never recover the flat stomach I had at 25. Ditto for the pectorals. I’m lifting half again as much weight as the buff twenty-somethings at the gym, but the results I achieve fall far short of what they get.
Also, one thing that a lot of people don’t know is that weightlifting won’t make you lean unless your diet is geared that way. Being cut is a matter of what you eat, not what you lift.
FWIW, you might consider finding a gym on the way to your job, or if you’re lucky enough to have an onsite gym where you work, consider joining that. Then–and this is the clever bit–plan to work out in the morning before going into the office. You will be FAR more likely to stick to your workouts with this scheduling, then if you kid yourself into thinking you’ll do it at lunch or on the way home.
This has worked very well for me though of course YMMV.
Sorry to interrupt, but do you happen to have any site showing some visual of this routine you have just explained? I couldn’t, er, visualise very well.
Sure, the first couple you could get in, but now you are required to have cut abs before you starve yourself. Only 2 token “fattys” (i.e. not fat at all, but not cut) this round? Next round’ll require some sort of implants as well.
