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your fat loss tip:

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Now back to your fat loss tip:

My patients come to me with these magazines with headlines claiming to give six-pack abs asking, “Which abs exercises should I be doing for that flat belly like in this picture? Sit ups… crunches… How many should I be doing?”

Answer: None of the above! Ab crunches and the like have their place – but they will NEVER help you lose the fat around your belly. These exercises simply build your abdominal muscles. But you won’t see toned abs if they’re hidden behind pounds of sagging flab?

To burn that flab you need to trigger a fat-burning response inside your body. The greater the mass of muscle used for exertion the greater the magnitude of the fat-burning response. No matter how hard you try, sit ups and crunches will never burn much fat – they’re simply incapable because the muscles are too small.

You can roughly tell how much muscle mass you’re using by how much oxygen you’re using. To trigger a fat burning response, create an oxygen-using challenge that puts you into your supra-aerobic zone. Your supra-aerobic zone exists beyond the exertion level you can sustain with oxygen alone.

This is why a standard aerobics or “cardio” workout is not the most efficient way to lose that gut either. When you’re exercising aerobically, you do it at an intensity level you can sustain with oxygen alone. Let me explain…

Say your routine is 45 minutes long. During that workout, you’ll breathe hard, but you keep it at a level that you can sustain for 45 minutes. For your body to trigger the highest fat burning response, you need to get to the place where you have to stop and pant. Now you’ve crossed your aerobic threshold and entered your supra-aerobic zone. Once you’ve entered that zone, your body will begin to change.

There are several reasons why this happens. Here’s one: Your body is 99.99 percent identical to your ancient ancestors who lived beyond ten thousand years ago. The way they lived and moved – and stayed slim – laid down the programming of your metabolism and your body still reacts in the same way.

As hunters, they moved in quick bursts. When they were pursuing their prey – or being chased by it – they had to use supra-aerobic exertion to survive. But these sprints were brief and followed by recovery when they caught their breath. After the hunt, they returned to their home base with their fresh kills. And it was after this “workout” that their bodies started burning fat – to replace the carbs they burned in their supra-aerobic zones.

If one of them didn’t have the ability to hit their supra-aerobic zone, he didn’t survive. Since they all had to use supra-aerobics, they were all thin. Back then, it was a matter of life or death. Today, wild animals aren’t trying to eat you every day. And you don’t have to hunt for your food.

But you still need to hit your supra-aerobic zone to stay slim and fat free.

Here’s an example you can try yourself, choose an instrument like a stationary bike, a regular bike or an elliptical machine. Start easy but do three exertion periods of one minute each – each one followed by a recovery period of two minutes.

Now, gradually conditioning yourself in these short bursts – to the point that when you stop to rest you have to pant. This will trigger your fat-burning response and burn fat for the next 24 to 48 hours - your best bet for the flat belly we all want.