ANSWERS: 6
  • Sorry but no. Doing the situps (and make sure that they are done right i.e. not just lifting your neck or using your hip flexors too much) will help to tone the superficial muscles of your abdomen, eventually giving you an awesome six pack. The only problem is it will still be hidden underneath layers of fat. The proven way to get rid of this fat (strange durgs and liposuction aside) is to do lots of aerobic exercise, such as running, cycling, rowing, brisk walking especially up hills. Firstly to lose weight the calories you use during the day must be more than the calories you intake. This all varies form person to person but the general rule of thumb is about 2000 calories for women and 2500 for men, assuming moderate exercise each day. This decreases with age as muscle mass is lost. If you buildup muscle mass (and I don't mean just situps, things like building your pecs, thighs and buttocks are better as the muscles are larger), because the muscle tissue is metabolically active, you use calories at rest. So the more muscle mass you have the more calories will be used over a period of time. This helps to keep fat increases at bay. However, in order to lose fat you need to do aerobic exercise for prolonged lengths of time. If we take runing for an example, for the first twenty mins you will use carbohydrates as the energy source to drive the muscles (which preferentially use glycogen derived from carbohydrates). So you are using calories but need getting rid of fat. After about 20 mins the body's metabolism switches from using carbs as it realises you could be doing this for longer and it doesn't have enough carbs. So it starts to burn the fats you have instead. Many people often find that exercise gets easier for them after 20 mins because of the sudden switch to a plentiful energy source. For this reason, brisk walking for 40 mins twice a week will burn more fat than brisk walking 5 times a week for 25 mins. Even better, after prolonged exercise your bodies metabolism is raised for a while afterwards, causing you to burn more caloires even after you have stopped. At first this can seem very daunting, and the effects will not be seen instantly. But stick with it and you will notice changes. Don't monitor progress by weighing yourself, because lean body tissue weighs more than fat so as you get fitter at first you may actualy weigh more. Instead go for smaller fittings in clothes, which gives you an idea of how much fat you are losing and also gives you a goal.
  • Not even close to enough! It's not going to tone the flab on the outside, or do much on the inside. I do 333 sit ups three or four times a week, and that is definitely not enough to get my abs. even close to where I would like them to be. If you were to tone them really well, but still have flab outside, you won't notice the improvement.
  • You gotta be consistent. ;-)
  • I started doing that, and there has definitely been a difference, though I did stop doing sit ups and started doing crunches, and I stepped it up to between 50 and 100 a day once I could handle that. I also do a lot of cycling, though. Similarly, I could barely do press-ups a few months ago, but my doing as many I could every evening (starting out with a couple of sets of four), I am now able to do a couple of sets of 20-25. It's definitely visually noticeable, too.
  • Cardio is really the only way to burn that fat off. You need to do about 30-60 minutes of moderate to intense cardio before your body fat starts burning. The number of times you do it per week depends on how well and much you eat. You can then do curl ups to make your abs look tone, but it's pointless if you have a thick layer of flab.
  • What we must remember is its not so much how many sit ups you do but the technique used..many don't actually do them right :D

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