How do you get abs if you’re overweight? It’s a fair question!
There are no quick fixes, but the right diet and exercise will help you.
Having a flat stomach is perhaps the most common quest of every fitness enthusiast on the planet.
This is a long and challenging process. It often leads to failure and discouragement because of inadequate knowledge.
To succeed and reap the benefits, you must act on several fronts simultaneously.
After reading this, you’re gonna love us: we’re giving you some of the world’s most sought-after advice!
How do you get abs if you are overweight: Introduction
The quest for a six-pack and flat stomach is widespread. Sporting a vertical line between the navel and the pubic area has become extremely desirable.
That line is a symbol of beauty, health, well-being and is also sexually attractive. Today, women are usually more aware than men about the importance of beauty and fitness.
Women are expected to have a flat stomach, even after one or more pregnancies, or lose all their sex appeal.
On the other hand, more is tolerated for a man, even a slight belly (under a nice shirt, of course). It might even be synonymous with refinement, appreciation of good things, and social success.
Women may feel more pressure, even if unfairly so.
However all strata of society, ages and sexes combined, are affected by this aesthetic fantasy of wanting a flat stomach!
How to get a flat stomach and get abs if you are overweight
Is it really possible, or is it just a fantasy? Is it just a marketing ploy meant to dupe us into buying magical cures?
Actually, it is pretty feasible. So how to go about it?
Don’t worry; your frustration and questions will be addressed by reading this article.
As promised, we’re going to guide you to the flat stomach of your dreams. We aren’t selling you a dream.
Instead, we will simply shoot down the myths that drown out the actual knowledge and show you the truth.
To get a flat stomach, you need to act simultaneously on 4 main fronts, and we’ll go through them together.
What is a belly? Can you really get abs if you are overweight?
In order to get abs if you are overweight it is essential to understand which tissues and organs we will tackle.
The belly is a very complex body area and comprises many elements.
The organs of the digestive system
The belly comprises several organs, especially those related to the human digestive function.
You’ll know them. They’re the stomach, the gallbladder, the small and large intestine.
Fat storage
The belly is a fat-storage area with its own fat reserves, especially for men.
Women tend to store more fat in the hips and buttocks.
Abdominal muscles
The abdominal muscles ensure the maintenance and the movements of the bust (flexions, inclinations, rotations). They also help with breathing and coughing, vomiting and sneezing.
Here are some of them:
- The transverse: the deepest of the 6 abdomens.
- The obliques (small and large): run from the ribs and pelvis to the middle of the abdomen.
- The rectus abdominis: starting from the sternum and the last ribs, it goes to the pubis with a vertical trajectory.It’s the so-called six-pack that people with low body fat show off.
To have a flat stomach, you will have to act on these three muscles.
Most people think that burning fat or toning their abs is enough to get a flat stomach, but it’s not.
The role and importance of the digestive organs in this problem are often ignored.
We will have to act simultaneously on all levels to achieve our goals.
To make it easier, we’ve explained the 4 main principles.
They aren’t listed in order of implementation; they are all fundamental and can be implemented simultaneously.
Get a flat stomach with these 4 principles
Principle 1: Burn belly fat
Burning fat is the first thing that springs to mind when looking at your belly.
A bloated and protruding belly is not necessarily due to belly fat.
To reduce your belly fat rolls, you need to do the following regularly.
Action 1: Follow a diet
This diet for abs will improve the quality of your nutrition and reduce your caloric intake.
Reduce significantly your consumption of fatty and eliminate sweet foods.
Think of chocolate, jam, Nutella, pastries, cheese, deli meats, fried foods, cookies and sweets. Same goes for prepacked meals and industrial products.
Don’t eat carbohydrates in the evening (bread, pasta, rice, potatoes) and limit your intake throughout the day.
Avoid eating carbohydrates with a high glycemic index (white bread, sweets, donuts, cakes…).
Make sure you eat three meals a day, with two possible snacks (mid-morning and at snack time). And you should also avoid binge-snacking late at night!
Don’t skip meals! Unless you know what you’re doing and understand the consequences and benefits of fasting.
Increase your intake of fruits and vegetables at every meal. The main goal of this diet is to improve the quality of your diet and its nutritional density.
Be careful not to go on a low-calorie diet, you must eat well! A sudden drop in your food intake will negatively influence your metabolism.
It will prevent you from burning your belly fat in the long run.
Action 2: Make endurance efforts
To lose that horrible belly, you must do some physical exercise.
Aim to increase endurance with continuous efforts lasting from 30 to 75 minutes.
This will make your body use fat reserves as fuel and make you lose weight. Just look at the physique of marathon runners.
Unfortunately, there is no way to specifically target an area. In fact, you could lose fat from everywhere but your stomach!
But rest assured that by persevering, your body will draw on its reserves, and that’s how endurance running works. ????
Action 3: Make intense efforts
Endurance work is not enough to maximize fat loss. In fact, many studies have shown that long sessions are not necessarily the most appropriate.
Doing shorter, split efforts at high intensity shakes up your metabolism. The best thing is that you continue burning fat for up to 2 days after the session.
Ideally you should burn fat and increase intensity simultaneously to boost metabolism.
Two or three sessions per week might be appropriate as a minimum (one or two long sessions and one intense session).
Four sessions would provide faster results.
Tip: Read our other post for more information related to burning belly fat.
Principle 2: Work on your posture
Posture is related to a flat stomach hidden by an incorrect posture.
Do you sit down often for work and therefore lead a sedentary lifestyle?
If you’re sitting on a chair, we can do a test right now:
- Lean heavily on the backrest and move your buttocks forward. Now you’re slouching and your belly seems much bigger!
- Now, stand up, move your bottom to the back of the chair. Stretch your spine to the max, pull back your shoulders, and take a look at your belly. It’s gone!
This is not a magic trick; all we’ve done is correct your posture.
A good posture will pull in our stomach, and a bad one makes it pop out.
You may have super-toned abs, but with poor posture, your belly will look soft and bloated.
The golden rule is to always stretch your spine and hold yourself straight, as you just did in your chair.
All slouching positions should be avoided. If you focus, you’ll notice that you often have poor posture. To have a flat stomach, you need good posture at all times.
Whether you’re behind a PC, eating, watching TV while relaxing in a sturdy recliner suitable for heavier individuals, reading, standing, or walking, always remember to maintain good sitting posture.
A good posture will work wonders for your back by limiting wear and tear on the intervertebral discs and reducing muscle tension.
Principle 3: Tone your stomach
The muscular aspect should not be neglected in the quest for a flat stomach.
Believe it or not, it isn’t the most critical point that determines the appearance of our belly.
Doing thousands of crunches every day will certainly not bring you a flat stomach. And it won’t help you burn belly fat rolls either. You need to do more than and also focus on fat-burning exercises.
However, toning up the abdominal muscles is a great plus and tones the belly.
Be careful, it is important to clarify things to avoid confusion and disappointment. Having a flat stomach and having prominent abdominals are two distinct goals and require different training and techniques.
To tone your stomach, you will need to do abdominal strengthening exercises at least three times a week.
Flat stomach abdominal exercises must go with the rule of constant spine stretching.
All exercises that shorten the torso should be avoided. They make the belly stand out and develop the rectus excessively and don’t promote a flat stomach.
We will stress the deep work of the transverse muscle.
The muscular work (isometry) or stretching (eccentric) of the obliques and how to tone the belly.
Additionally, wearing a waist trainer can be a helpful tool to keep you motivated and prevent you from straying from your journey towards a healthier and happier you. Check out these top waist trainers for plus-size women.
Principle 4: Take care of your digestive system
To increase your chances of having a flat stomach, it is essential to take care of the digestive system.
These organs are inside your stomach area and play a significant role to get abs if you are overweight.
Any inflammatory state in the intestines leads to swelling of the abdomen (and potentially also a chronic inflammation of the intestinal mucosa). Forget a flat tummy.
You may have little or no belly fat, as well as toned abs, but if your intestines suffer, you will have a bloated belly.
So you can get abs if you are overweight, but not with a bloated tummy. Bummer, huh?
To avoid this, adopt a diet that suits you perfectly and helps you digest without discomfort.
If you suffer any of the following ailments, then find the cause and eliminate it (it’s not an exhaustive list):
- heartburn
- digestive discomfort
- abundant and/or foul-smelling gas
- pain in the lower abdomen
- constipation
- bad breath
- presence of undigested food in the stool
- hard, dry or small stools
- bloating
- nausea
- light beige stool color
- unexplained itching or redness of the skin
- diarrhea
These digestive system problems can result from issues in the stomach, gallbladder, small intestine or large intestine.
If we look closely at the list, we accept many of these ailments as normal. But good health is not on a par with digestive problems. To get abs if you’re overweight, digestion is key.
To see which foods are problematic, simply test your digestive reactions after meals. You could try removing a food from your diet for a week and see what happens.
Ideally, you should have a food intolerance test. One of my colleagues did a test two years ago, and it revealed an intolerance to gluten, some nuts, and quinoa.
He avoids these foods and swears that his digestion has never been better. This test may be expensive, but he believes it was well worth it.
Steer away from so-called professionals that point fingers at certain foods just through ideology.
Only a proper food test, using a blood sample and analyzed by a doctor or a naturopath, should be the reason for a change in your diet.
How do you get abs if you are overweight? Conclusion
As we have seen in this article, getting a flat stomach is much more complex than one might imagine.
Wanting a flat stomach leads us to address many aspects of our body. In addition to being an aesthetic fantasy, it becomes a genuine quest for health.
We also realize how far from reality quick internet or TV solutions are. Getting a flat tummy is born from an ever-increasing social pressure. It fills our minds with concepts and attacks our wallets more than our waistline.
Getting a flat stomach means taking total charge of your health, diet and fitness. In other words, your life. It’s not a short-term goal.
We’ve opened the door, and now, all that remains is to wish you courage and perseverance.
Remember us when you slip into your bathing costume and feel confident enough to strut along the shoreline.
It’s no longer a dream, you can turn it into reality!