6 Ways to Tighten and Tone the Tummy

People always ask me what to do to tighten the stomach, expecting me to list off some of my favorite exercises. The truth is, there is a lot more that goes into flatting a tummy. It’s not just about what you do in the gym. It’s about what you do all day, and especially what you do in the kitchen. Tight abs means a tight diet.

This is a selfie of me I privately text Steve on my final weigh-in for the Daytona competition. That is why I am ridiculously dark. I had my competition tan kicking.

I’ll be honest. When I was training to compete, I really didn’t change my workout that much. The biggest change was my diet and my cardio. I actually felt a little guilty because I saw other people killing themselves in the gym, training longer, working out harder, doing more workouts and training more abs than me. However, my diet was spot on and I was consistently losing 2lbs of fat a week like clockwork. With every pound I lost, I saw more and more abs.

We all have abs, we just can’t always see them because they are covered up with body fat.

6-Pack Vs Tight Tone Tummy

You may not be striving for a six-pack. Many people just want a flat stomach. Some people want to have a flat stomach, but they wouldn’t mind to see a few lines of muscle tone. Whatever your goal is, the answer is the same. What you get just determines on what you do and when you stop.

For instance, if you don’t want to be super 6-pack lean, you would slow your dieting down when you start seeing the physique you are shooting for. Super ripped women are normally not doing much different than women who are trying to lose 20lbs to get to 20% body fat – they just don’t stop at the 20lb mark and the keep dieting until they reach the body fat they want. For me, that is normally 16-18% (where I like to stay), 13-15% for photos and 10-12% for competition.

Here is a really cool graphic I found that shows various body fat percentages. Realize, body fat is relative. It’s a percentage. Your body fat percentage can drop even if you don’t lose one pound of fat if you simply gain more muscle. This is why people can look so different even at the same body fat percentage. We tend to focus more on tracking hard facts, like pounds of fat and pounds of muscle using the inbody machine instead of solely focusing on body fat percentage. With that said, this is a pretty cool visual on what body fat percentages can look like.

6-Pack Tips: 6 Ways to Get a Tight and Tone Tummy

1.) Straighten up.

One reason we battle the bulge is because we are lazy. We don’t maintain good posture and hold our stomach in like we should. Laziness causes us to lose our resting tone in our abdominal muscles, allowing our gut to stretch out the abdominal wall. We can increase muscle tone simply by keeping our tummy tight and standing up tall.

2.) Don’t overeat.

I’m not just saying that because overeating makes you fat. When we eat large meals our stomach increases in size, pushing out against our abdominal muscles. It’s a lot easier to maintain a smaller, tighter waistline by simply eating smaller portions.

3.) Do the work.

If you think it’s too late to get a six-pack, think again. Look at all the women who retrain their ab muscles after pregnancy. The same can happen to a beer belly too. Crunches, sit-ups and plank exercises get great results and don’t require a gym membership or equipment. However, there’s a lot of really great ab equipment that can help you get that 6-pack a little faster like ab benches, weights, ab machines, cable machines, various balls, bars (for toes to bar), an ab wheel, bands and even group exercise classes.

4.) Sweat it off.

Cardio not only reduces body fat that covers your abs, but some cardio actually works your midsection more than others. Trade the bike for exercises that allow the arms to swing and the upper body to rotate, like running or the elliptical. Aerobics classes, like kickboxing, are also excellent because they incorporate a lot of rotation through the mid-section. Concentrate on the ab area while exercising, maintaining good posture and tight abs throughout the exercise.

5.) Reduce your calories.

We can do abdominal exercises until we’re blue in the face, but it won’t do a thing about the fat that’s covering our muscles. The only way to trim off the fat is to take in fewer calories than we burn. Otherwise, we will just have a six-pack under the keg.

6.) Don’t fall for the gimmicks.

If something looks too good to be true, it probably is. Let’s face it; we can’t get a six-pack in six minutes without changing what we do in the other 1,434 minutes that fill our day.

8 Ab-Toning Exercises

SPOILER ALERT: More exercises and workouts on Day 24!

30 Minute Ab & Cardio Workout

More Ab Workouts & Tips on PfitBlog.com

Scripture of the Day:

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. – 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

Mantra of the Day:

Diets make abs, not crunches. – Bonnie Pfiester

6 Ways to Tighten and Tone the Tummy

6-Pack Vs Tight Tone Tummy