Are you discouraged because your belly just doesn’t seem to budge no matter how many ab crunches you do? You aren’t alone.

Abdominal exercise is just part of the recipe for a flatter stomach. The best way to achieve flat abs is to lower body fat through aerobic exercise and dietary modification.

Doing the right exercises, such as crunches, will tone the underlying muscles, but to see results, you need to reduce the layer of body fat covering them.

Balanced nutrition is essential. For most of us, this means burning more calories than we consume by managing portion sizes and making smarter food choices.

Aerobic exercise is one of the best ways to manage weight and burn calories and fat. I recommend 30 to 45 minutes of challenging cardiovascular exercise three to four days per week.  
A combination of aerobic and strength training is certainly your best bet. Aerobic exercise burns more calories while you are exercising, while strength training continues the burn longer and develops muscle, which burns more calories
than fat.

Abdominal exercises are more effective when they meet the needs of the individual based on their specific goals, not on trends or the latest infomercial ab machine. Individual goals may range from therapeutic, rehabilitation, and general health and fitness to improved athletic performance.

Working with a trainer may be helpful in selecting not only the appropriate exercises, but a wider variety as well.

Strong Muscles, Strong Bones
Exercise in any form - mild, moderate
or intense - is good for you and can help
reduce the risk of disease and keep the
heart healthy.

But when it comes to strengthening bones,
milder forms of activity may not be enough.

Thirty-eight men and 46 women, ages 55 to
75 years, all of whom were generally healthy
but didn’t exercise regularly, were recruited
to help determine the link between physical
activity and bone strength.

Researchers concluded that neither overall aerobic fitness nor mild
physical activity had a significant effect on bone density. Greater
muscle strength, however, was associated with stronger bones.

''Although some activity may be better than none at all for certain
aspects of health, like heart health, milder forms of activity may not
be sufficient to hold off or attenuate the age-related decline in bone,
'' says lead researcher Dr. Kerry J. Stewart of Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland.