No More Diets

Why is it so hard to lose weight in the abdomen?

We all have a tendency to put on fat more readily in particular areas of our body. For many women the stomach is the first place to show weight gain and the last place to shed fat. It’s just the way many of us are made and no matter what we do it will always be that way. This is often emphasized by the natural tendency for women’s stomachs to be slightly rounded anyway - concave was just not the way we are meant to be - unless literally starving.

If you tend to lay down fat on your stomach, you have to tackle your stomach area on two fronts if you want to flatten your stomach.

The first way to tackle a fat stomach is by losing weight. You can do this in any way you like - you’ll find lots of ideas on this site or you can use any method that works for you. But you will need to get down to your ideal weight and not leave an extra 10 or 15lbs hanging around. That’s because those last few pounds will always hang around your stubborn areas and if your stubborn area is your stomach that is where it will remain.

While you are losing weight you also need to tackle the underlying muscles in the stomach. While the fat is there you can’t really see that your muscles are not firm and taut but this becomes very obvious once the fat disappears. As muscles can’t be trained overnight start sooner rather than later with a program of stomach firming exercises.

Unfortunately there is no exercise which will target your stomach and remove the fat - only losing overall weight from your body will do that. And there is no diet which will tighten up flabby stomach muscles. Only exercise will do that.

An additional problem affecting your stomach may be bloating - this is often caused by particular foods - and will disappear once the food is properly digested. For example, if you eat a plateful of pasta your stomach will often look bigger than ever. You may like to take note of the foods which affect you in this way and eat less of those foods especially on those days where you want to look your best.