The truth about crunches! We all seek answers to achieving ripped abs. The truth about crunches is that they are good for our abdominal muscles, but they will not give you the ripped abs that you want. To get ripped abs, you need to work on fat burning exercises that will burn overall fat, watching what we eat and eliminating stress from our lives.

Crunches are not necessarily bad for six pack abs. In fact, crunches are good exercises to strengthen, stabilize and develop our abdominal muscles. But to achieve six pack abs, we need to focus on overall fat burning activities.

Overall fat burning exercises are activities that allow us to train our whole body to increase our metabolism. By increasing our metabolism, we are better able to burn fat and utilize the excess belly fat, which results in more visibility of the abdominal muscles.

Lean body mass is increased as a result of resistance training. The increased muscle mass increases metabolic activity and helps the body burn more fat, which is required to fuel increased activity.

Watching what we eat is important as well. By eating quality foods, which are rich in protein, fat, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals, we fuel our body to function better. Instead of eating 3 big meals per day, we can increase our meals to 5-6 and decrease the meal portions. This will allow us to maintain our energy and blood sugar levels throughout the day.

Stress affects our bodies in a way that makes our bodies react in an emergency mode. When our bodies are in a stressful situation, Cortisol is released and causes fat to be stored in the abdominal area.

There are activities that are effective in reducing our stress. Activities like yoga, tai chi and deep breathing have all been shown to decrease stress in people.

Six pack abs are not a direct result of doing crunches. In fact, it may be stopping you from getting six pack abs. We should focus on overall fat burning activities like resistance training, watching our diet, and reducing the stress in our lives. Understanding these facts and being disciplined to change can achieve your goal of getting six pack abs.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 3rd, 2009 at 6:54 pm and is filed under fat loss. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.