Whether you want to look positively sexy in a tight-fitting evening gown, be the belle of the beach in your bikini or impress everyone with your body’s sleek lines when you dress for success, you need a trim, svelte body and that means a flat tummy.
While you might think increasing leg lifts and sit-ups may solve the problem, James Duigan, body sculptor to the stars says differently. Read the description to find where your problem starts and you, too can have a custom plan created by the personal trainer, James Duigan.
Type 1
Spare Tire Tummy – Donut or Muffin Top
Sometimes this type of abdominal problem is called a spare tire. It’s that roll of fat that laps over your belt or the waist of your skirt. According to Duigan, this comes from dietary indiscretion and lack of exercise, but a change of diet and regular exercise can eliminate it.
What Types of People Suffer from This Tummy Problem?
If you’re thinking on your seat more than running on your feet, you may suffer from a donut waist. People with desk jobs often have rolls around their waist. Not only is their job sedentary, but you’ll also find that foods with high sugar content are part of their daily diet.
What Habits Cause This?
It doesn’t take many biscuits, white bread sandwiches or other types of refined carbohydrates, such as cupcakes or cookies, to create this problem. Eating it on a regular basis contributes to the dimpling excess weight on the hips and thighs, but also create a nice little roll around the middle.
Reversing the Problem for Tummy Perfection
① Sugar and Carbs. One of the biggest problems is sugar and other simple carbohydrates that add fat fast. Alcohol, while not a food, puts weight on faster than most foods because the body burns the calories in alcohol first, allowing the other foods you eat go straight to fat.
According to Duigan one or two glasses of wine, several times throughout the week can cause you to end up with “wine waist,” where your midriff thickens, creating the muffin top and your tummy puts on pounds. Cut back on the alcohol you drink if you ever expect to have a flat stomach and a curvy waist.
② If you don’t drink, you can start on the second step, but if you do, stay on the first, cutting out alcohol, for a few weeks.
The second step is to move more and eat whole foods rather than pre-packaged ones, even if they’re pre-packaged diet snacks. They won’t help you lose weight and have tons of chemicals, salt and sugar content for flavor.
③ Make Healthier Choices. Once you’ve given up high calorie or even pre-packaged snack foods, it’s time for the big guns. Don’t worry about a specific diet, counting carbs or counting calories.
Instead, learn to make healthier choices when it comes to eating. Eat as many whole foods as possible. These are foods that are as close to fresh and unprocessed as you can get. You can grill meat, eat vegetables raw or steamed and even snack on leftover mean you sliced thin.
Don’t forget to include healthy fats in your diets, such as avocado, oily fish and even nuts. Healthy fat helps you burn abdominal fat, which in turn aids in achieving a flat stomach.
④ Exercise regularly. Try burst training if you have little time or talk a walk at lunch. You don’t need a gym membership to do calisthenics at home. You can even turn the radio up full blast and sweat to the oldies.
The Best Tips to Flatten This Type of Stomach
Learn to face problems with a new attitude. Don’t substitute food for loving yourself. The way you feel about you can be the key to eliminating a spare tire.
Type 2
Stress Tummy
You may be a perfectionist, in which case that extra weight right in the middle of your stomach is probably driving you crazy, creating even more abdominal fat.
What Types of People Suffer from This Tummy Problem?
If you see a well-groomed person working late, chances are he or she probably has this type of stomach weight problem, where all the weight forms around the umbilical area. It comes to form the body’s production of cortisol that remains in the system.
Regular exercise can burn it off, but most of these people simply don’t have time. The cortisol encourages the body to retain abdominal fat that’s firmer than other types of abdominal fat.
The personality type is easy to spot. He or she is an overachiever that worries about ensuring everything is done right and on time. That’s one of the reasons employers value this personality’s service. Many times this personality type also has IBS, which can cause bloating, magnifying the problem.
What Habits Cause This?
Junk food, skipping meals, over consumption of caffeine and lack of exercise can cause the problem.
Reversing the Problem for Tummy Perfection
① Start by Re-evaluating your Schedule. Do you get a good night’s sleep? Too often stress can interrupt or prevent sleeping soundly. It also prevents the body from producing leptin, an appetite and metabolism regulator.
The more tired you are, the more prone you are to eating snack foods with a high sugar content for a boost in energy.
② Eliminate Stress and re-energize yourself with meditation, deep-breathing exercises or even a half hour in a soothing warm bath before bed. Cut out most of your coffee consumption. Put an upper limit on it at two cups a day.
③ Get Exercise without Raising Stress Level. While cardio exercises are excellent, they are counterproductive for this abdominal type, since it can increase cortisol levels.
Get your exercise without raising your stress level by walking, bike riding, taking yoga classes or doing resistance training. These types of exercise help burn calories, tone and sculpt the body, but don’t stress it.
④ Check your Nutrients. If you aren’t getting enough magnesium, you could be adding to the stress. Dark leafy veggies are a great source of magnesium, just as seeds and Brazil nuts are. Increase your intake of foods high in this nutrient.
The Best Tips to Flatten This Type of Stomach
Take a bit of time for yourself. You do count! Use that time to do stretches or yoga that can help lower your cortisol level. Consider chamomile tea at the end of the day to replace coffee and help you relax.
Type 3
A Pouchy Tummy
If your tummy looks a bit like you’re wearing fanny pack in front under your shirt, you’re probably a busy mother who tries to do it all, including working out regularly at a gym.
What Types of People Suffer from This Tummy Problem?
You’ll usually see this person dropping off the kids at school, with a homemade lunch in each of their hands and then driving on to work or the gym before work.
They have a routine and have it down pat, which is part of the problem. They’re stuck in a routine, even in the gym, and it’s not helping them eliminate the pouch they developed.
What Habits Cause This?
Believe it or not, the problem may be from over-exercising and doing way too many ab-rollers or other exercises that put stress on the hip flexors, as well as the lower back.
That can make the stomach muscles protrude, giving you a rounded pouch in front.
Reversing the Problem for Tummy Perfection
① Adequate Nutrition with plenty of fiber can help improve elimination and aid with constipation, bloating or other problems in the colon that make your pouch even larger.
Focus on green leafy veggies and whole grain too. They’re also good sources of fiber.
② Check your form with a personal trainer. Doing abdominal exercises improperly can actually cause a pouchy effect.
Do planks instead of sit-ups. You do this by laying face down, resting on the forearms.
Use your arms to push off the floor, with your body now resting on your toes and elbows. You’ll be parallel to the floor the entire length of the body. Hold this position starting with a minimum of ten seconds and work up to one minute.
③ Try your hands at weights or kettlebells. Weights don’t build bulk in women and can burn fat fast. Consider using exercises like squats or other ones like lunges that focus on specific muscle groups.
The Best Tips to Flatten This Type of Stomach
Help your stomach and your digestion by drinking plenty of water and switching to lighter proteins, such as fish or chicken. Green vegetables should be at each meal.
Type 4
The Mummy Belly
Regaining your muscle tissue after giving birth and doing it right can be a problem. You’ll see women this type of tummy on women who had children in the last few years.
Types of People Suffer from This Tummy Problem
You’ll often find this type of tummy on relatively new mothers, but it can also be on mothers with slightly older children whose schedule never allowed them to take time for themselves.
The abdominal muscles are loose and need to be retrained so the blood flow increases to help build muscles back to their original strength. While this is important, don’t try exercising before the uterus returns to its normal size, which takes about six weeks. Don’t try it before then.
What Habits Cause This?
One reason for this type of tummy is attempting to get right back into exercising before the body’s ready. James Duigan recommends that you wait for two months minimum to a maximum of three months before you start exercising after the baby’s born.
Stressing over the weight you gained during pregnancy won’t help either since it stresses your body and that can cause weight to be even harder to lose.
Reversing the Problem for Tummy Perfection
① Consider Taking Fish Oil Supplement. This type of supplement can help stimulate the production of hormones that help you burn fat, plus it also can aid in lowering the production hormones that cause the body to store fat
Don’t start with too much at first. Initially, you should take three 1,000 mg capsules each day when you eat a meal. Eventually, you can build that amount to five a day. Duigan said that when he coached Elle McPherson through both her pregnancies, she took them.
② Remember that Not all Fat is Bad. In fact, you should eat foods such as nuts, olives and flax that contain the good oil each day.
This type of fat aids in the fat burning process and also in the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins such as D and A. Those vitamins can also aid in combating exhaustion, whichever new mother knows comes as part of the package when you have a new baby..
③ Kegel Exercise. You can help get your body back into shape with Kegel exercises that can help build the pelvic muscle tissue at an internal level.
In order to do this, you simply need to squeeze and hold the pelvic floor muscles tight, hold it and release. Do this fifteen to twenty times five times a day.
④ No Sit Ups. Even though you’ll start on Kegel exercises, you shouldn’t be doing sit-ups. Sit-ups work out the linea alba muscles, those muscles running vertically on the mid-line of the abdomen.
Pregnancy separated these muscles and they require some healing time. When you do sit-ups or crunches, it forces them further apart. A better exercise is to get on all fours and breathe deeply into your stomach, exhaling slowly.
The Best Tips to Flatten This Type of Stomach
Learn from cats, stretch before you go to bed to help stimulate the brain to produce not only fat-burning hormones but also ones that aid in getting a good night’s sleep.
While you’re at it, take time to snooze midday. A quick nap can refresh and rejuvenate you.
Type 5
Bloated Belly
Your day doesn’t start out with a big ball of gas making your abdomen swell, but it sure ends up that way.
While bloating and distension are not related to belly fat, they are indications of digestive disorders which may eventually lead to belly fat.
What Types of People Suffer from This Tummy Problem?
If you have this problem, you probably would prefer going on a date in the morning, rather than at night, since your body looks so much better then.
This type of tummy problem can affect women of all sizes, thin or heavy. Most of the time, your body has an intolerance for specific foods, has food allergies or slow moving colon that comes from a bad diet.
What Habits Cause This?
This type of problem comes directly from the foods you eat. You may have a problem with milk products but eat cheese every day or drink milk without realizing it’s what causes your problem.
Reversing the Problem:
① Processed Foods. Processed dairy products, gluten or wheat itself, yeast and alcohol are often the culprits that can cause this tummy problem. While dairy products can cause gas, gluten inflames the bowl, which also makes the stomach look larger.
② Eliminate Some Food. Use the process of elimination to find out what is causing your problem. Eliminate the various foods for two weeks to see if you see if it’s the culprit.
If the bloating disappears but starts again when you reintroduce the food, it’s the problem food or one of the problem foods. Keep your foods as simple as possible, with fresh vegetables, fish, chicken or meat.
③ Slow Digestion. Some of the problem may come from a slow moving colon. Often this occurs because you eat foods that aren’t good for you or eat at the wrong time. Breakfast should be your biggest meal, while your digestion is working its hardest.
Don’t eat late at night and chew food well. Drinking water frequently throughout the day can also help to keep things moving in your digestive system.
④ Check out your Friendly Bacteria. If you don’t have an adequate number of these little guys, you won’t digest food properly and end up bloated.
You can use yogurt, miso soup, and even some vegetables to help or even simpler, take prebiotic or probiotic supplements.
The Best Tips to Flatten This Type of Stomach
Breathing exercises help this type of stomach. A simple one can be done in the morning in bed. As you lay on your back, relax and breathe deeply, drawing the revitalizing air into your stomach a minimum of ten times. Another tip is to walk after meals to aid digestion.
” Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe.
Adapted from Clean and Lean Flat Tummy Fast! by James Duigan. For more information, go to bodyism.com.