I know what IGLTA is and look for their members when I travel?

Two things about the stomach:

1) You need to build up your stomach muscles by doing a variety of crunches. The abdominals have three parts - lower, middle and upper. The problem child is the lower section. When I used to do stomach work (long time ago...) I would always do 75% of exercises for the lower abs - because the others would automatically become involved. If you were to focus on the upper abs however, the lower ones remain fairly idle. You would have also heard of the obliques. This is the just the side of the abs and you work these with any twisting motion as you crunch.

The stomach muscle is slightly different to that of say your chest or back. You need to work your stomach more frequently with higher reps - say every second day, and any one exercise should go for about 30 repetitions. (You have to do 3 or 4 reps) You wouldn't do this for any other muscle group.

Once you've built up your abs a bit, it’s a bit of a useless exercise unless you reduce the layer of fat that sits on top of them. You will never see them otherwise.

2) You need to have the right diet that promotes fat burning.

We all have an overall body fat percent. If you look on charts etc, it will say that average for a man is around 14%-22% and higher for ladies. That's fine for general health, but not if you want to see lines in your abs. You generally will have to get down to 8-10% before you’ll see this. And this takes consistency in diet and exercise.

To burn fat you need to exercise at about 65-75% of your maximum heart rate for say 30-40 minutes at a time. If you go harder you get more of a cardio workout than a fat burning one. You need to do this as often as possible - at least every second night. You also should try to increase incidental exercise like walking to the shops/work rather than taking public transport - doing something active instead of laying in front of the TV. You need to slowly change your lifestyle habits.

But it can be done. Just think, if you always do what you have always done - you'll always get what you've always got. So if you think your belly is big now, imagine if you don’t take steps now to change things? It will keep getting bigger and ultimately be even harder to change. But it is hard to do, so you need to make adjustments slowly so they become part of your routine. Otherwise you’ll hate it and stop.

Think of your overall diet like a set of scales. On the left you have Input and on the right you have Output. Everything you put in your mouth (the type & amount of food, etc…) affects input. Everything you do by way of cleaning, walking, exercising, anything... affects output. To lose body fat you need to be putting about 10-15% less than you are out putting. That way your body goes to your fat reserves and breaks them down for additional energy to make up the difference.

If you just starve yourself and put the scales right off balance by putting hardly anything but outputting heaps - your body will go into a self-protection mode and will actually hold onto all your fat reserves and slow down your metabolism and break down non-essential muscle. This is the opposite of what you want to achieve.

The reason going to the gym (and doing some weights) is so good for fat burning is because the more muscle you have, the harder your body has to work to service it (provide blood flow, nutrients, etc) So even when you are resting, your body is using energy to maintain it. Therefore you are burning up calories that would otherwise be converting to fat and going onto your tum tum.

So there you go, the basics as I know them. So tonight, when you serve up the pasta or rice, just have 1/3 less. Instead of the full cream milk, buy light start of physical or something. Instead of using heaps of margarine on your toast, use ½. Walk the long way home from work, offer to vacuum the whole house (drastic I know!).

© Nathan Grieve 2002