Getting a flat stomach takes hard work. Unless you’re born with the genetics, it will take some effort to have a flat stomach, and even more work to get abs.
Here are three things that will help you get a flat stomach.
1. Lower your sodium intake
A lot of the time, we don’t realize that the foods we are eating contain high levels of sodium. Many packaged foods, especially things like bottled sauces, packet mixes, etc have a high salt content.
Eating a lot of salt will cause your body to retain water in the abdominal region, making you look bloated. To notice a different, reduce your salt intake by reducing the amount of high sodium, packaged foods you are eating. And minimise the amount of salt you put on the food yourself.
2. Reduce your carbohydrate (and alcohol) intake
Cut out all carbs that come from “bad” sources such as potato chips, sugary foods, desserts and things like white bread / pasta. While I’m at it, I’m going to add alcohol to this list.
When you reduce your carb intake, your body will start losing water weight (similar to sodium). It may take a while for your body to adjust to a lower carbohydrate diet, so just be aware that you may feel a bit different.
Nothing about alcohol is good for your stomach. There are so many reasons, but one of the main things is that it stimulates your appetite and when you’ve had a few too many, you don’t really care about eating that Maccas burger and chips.
3. Add instability exercises to your workout
By this, I mean using equipment such as the swiss ball, bosu ball, medicine ball and TRX bands just to name a few. When your body is unstable, your abdominal muscles will need to contract harder to maintain balance. You can use this equipment for your core workouts, but also for other exercises as well. For example, instead of doing dumbbell chest press on a bench, do it on the swiss ball, or try doing push ups on the bosu ball. It’s a great way to increase the intensity and difficult of your workout!
It’s FREE
Could you give any tips on healthy foods to eat when living on campus at college? I live in the dorms so I go to the cafeteria twice a day, and usually make a smoothie for breakfast. Thank you!
Hi Rachel,
I’ll do a blog post on this for you :) But just to give you some ideas, when I was living at College, this was what I used to eat:
Breakfast – muesli and yoghurt with fruit
Lunch – cold meat salad or wrap with boiled eggs (if they had them)
Dinner – dinner options weren’t really the best so I used to try to eat some form of meat and veg
Snacks – muesli bars (not that great for you, but they’re not too bad!) and fruit
I hope that helps! xx
Thanks so much for these cool tips! My biggest problem are definitely eating fewer carbs, especially since I don’t eat meat. Do you think it is okay to eat “good carbs” for breakfast and lunch and veggies for dinner?
Other than that, I have found that a great instability excercise is planking fit feet ona swissball and hands on a bosu ball (flat side up). It looks a bit stupid because I keep falling off (I’m a beginner :p) , but it seems to work.