walking, how to tone my abs!?

Question

Okay so I'm 16 years old, and I have tummy fat, im not large, but my stomache isnt toned, it is jiggly, im pretty sure if i ate whatever i wanted though and walked a good 1 or 2 hour walk i would tone my stomache, I just need to know how? I do know walking will tone your legs and arms and stuff, but how does this tone your stomache ? can anyone explain please?? thanks.

Answer 1

There is no site specific way of losing fat... the old myth about working your abs to burn belly fat isn't true. To get rid of love handles, you need to lose overall fat. That happens with exercise and watching your diet. More on that below.

The most effective way to lose fat is aerobic exercise in the "moderate" fat-burning range, ideally first thing in the morning before you eat. When you wake your body is ready to burn fat and your levels of growth hormone are highest at that time. Later in the day it can take up to 30 minutes just to put your body into a fat-burning mode.

Another overlooked way to burn fat is by lifting weights. Skeletal muscle has very high caloric needs... almost twice that of adipose (fat) tissue. Put on a little muscle and you will burn calories all day even at rest. Be aware that skeletal muscle weighs more, so with this approach you may see your weight increasing while your body fat is melting away. Not realizing this often stresses folks who think they should be losing weight as a measure of fitness. Forget the scale, look in the mirror and you will be happy.

To lose a pound of fat, you need to eliminate about 3500 calories. You can do this by burning more with exercise or by modifying your diet to reduce intake. You can easily find a list of calories for various exercises by doing a Google search on something like "swimming calories." You can the lists to estimate how many calories you are burning up with your routine.

For diet, keep a diary for a couple of weeks counting calories, grams of protein, and grams of fat intake. It is easy with online sources of nutritional information (type the name of the food and calories into the Google search engine) and packaging labels. That will let you quickly figure out where the fat is coming from in your diet.

Fat gives you 9 calories per gram. So take the number of grams of fat, multiply by 9, then calculate what percentage the fat calories are of your total daily calories. Restricting the calories from fat to about 20% of your total intake is ideal for a maintenance diet... that isn't overly restrictive. Of note, you need some fat in your diet. For instance, the body uses fat to produce hormones. Once you have a picture of how to modify your diet, you can drop the diary and just go back to it occasionally if you are wanting to tweek things further.

There is a subset of questions that goes further and asks about "How to get a six-pack?" The answer is the same. Six-packs are 20% abdominal exercise and 80% diet. There is one caveat... abdominal muscles will form in the position that you exercise them, so be certain to pull them tightly toward your spine while doing crunches, etc. Also, during most lifting, the "core is active" which means that you should be stabilizing with contracted abs then too. Fail to do this and the abs will form, but bulging outward and the result is not attractive.

If you are trying to build muscle as a way to lose fat, then you may need to increase total calories and specifically your protein intake. I target about 0.8 g of protein per pound of body weight each day when actively building. That is far more protein than most people need in their diets.


Aloha

Answer 2

My ideas? Try to do 200 minutes of cardio a week. Remember fat does not turn into muscle, so you need to lose your fat while putting on muscle. Work hard, but don't over 60 minutes at a time. Do planks and other abs exercises on alternate days.

On training days, do 5-10 minutes of cardio to warm up, then do your weight training. Do 30 to 60 minutes more of cardio, then go home.

The best time to eat is just after your workout within an hour when your metabolism is raging. For your muscles, incorporate some isolated soy protein or whey protein. Whey is more potent but the soy tastes better!

Don't look at your scale as the be all and end all, but get a measuring tape to check your progress, and that will show more tangible results.

Read magazines like Shape, Womens Fitness, Fitness, etc to get tips and to stay motivated.

Good luck and stick at it. This plan has lost me 20 lbs in 12 weeks so far, just go for it!

Answer 3

If you want toned abs, you need to do two things: (1) You need to exercise your abdominal muscles -- and the standard crunches only hit one muscle group, so you need to find other exercises to hit the obliques and lower abs. (2) You need to get your body fat below 14%, and that means a strict diet, counting calories, and exercise to burn the fat. You'd have to do an awful lot of walking to get toned abs, and if your diet isn't in order you'll never get the flab off your midsection. You may want to pick up a copy of The Abs Diet by Rodale Press (the publishers of Mens Health and Womens Health). It gives you a diet and exercise plan to melt the flab away and get that defined midsection you're after. You can get it at any major bookstore, and it's hard to miss -- the cover is bright orange.

Answer 4

It actually does take more than that to get toned abs. You need to get rid of the fat that lays on top of them (your belly) in order to see them. Walking and jogging will do that for you. Tightening your abs is good for toning, but you really need to be doing other ab work, such as the dreaded crunches, in order to get those nice abs. I suggest a workout dvd called The Abs Diet Workout. It has a lot of good ab exercises that aren't just crunches and sit-ups. Good luck!

Answer 5

You do know this won't happen in one walk right? No, you can't eat whatever you want. You are young enough though that you don't need to follow a super strict diet, but you should still be eating healthy. While walking you have to hold you abs in tight and contract them with your breath. In addition to walking you will need to do some floor exercises to tone your abs - walking won't do it alone. Do some basic crunches, side oblique crunches and reverse crunches.