If you’re looking to shrink and tone your belly, there’s a better way to do it than trying to do crunches. In fact, research has shown that doing abdominal exercises alone—even when performed five days a week for six weeks—has no effect at all on subcutaneous fat stores and abdominal circumference.
In an op-ed piece for Forbes Magazine, Jennifer Cohen suggests using strategies that burn up cortisol instead. Cortisol is a hormone in your body that depletes lean muscle and holds on to fat in the abdominal region.
One of the most important ways to help this process is to reduce stress in your life, because stress causes cortisol levels to spike. Cohen also delves into a number of other strategies that help reduce your cortisol levels, such as the following.
- Getting enough sleep
- Reducing or eliminating refined sugars from your diet
- Slowing down your breathing
- Doing short bursts of exercise (high-intensity interval training)
- Supplementing with vitamin C
- Eating fats―the good kinds such as the omega 3’s found in salmon, avocados and walnuts
The KEY Strategy for Reducing Belly Fat
