Are you the individual who has gotten out of shape and is looking to shed weight? You are looking to get in some daily exercise but are unsure what would be beneficial in toning your body. In particular you are looking to reduce that waist line that has expanded in recent years. Fact or fiction: Will performing sit-ups daily help you lose weight, burn fat and enable you to fit into smaller sized jeans?
I remember when I was a kid in elementary and then middle school when we had physical education classes. The phys. Ed teacher had the entire class on our backs, (partnered by twos so that a classmate could hold your feet in place) and made us to sit-ups as part of the exercise program. The teacher stated that he wanted to have the "out of shape kids" in the class lose any bulge around their stomachs by doing a bunch of sit-ups. In reality the 20 or so sit-ups performed by the kids in the class did absolutely nothing for those individuals who were a little "hefty" around the middle.
So you are now an adult. At work you either sit in front of a computer typing on your keyboard or operate a machine at a factory for 8 hours daily. During your 40+ hours at work weekly you do very little physical activity. Following your work day you then come home and zap a frozen entree in the microwave to eat for dinner. Because you haven't been involved in a dedicated multi-performance daily workout regimen for several years now you have put on weight recently, especially around that waistline.
You then decide to become pro-active, so you think. You make the decision to start out each day by doing some light exercises to get the body rolling. You convince yourself that by doing 35-50 sit-ups it should greatly help to tone that expanding middle section in your body. Hey, it's more than the 25 sit-ups that you did back as a 12 year old in your physical education classes. Sorry but it's all fiction. You will not burn the amount of fat, strengthen all of the core muscles in the abdominal region and lose weight by performing your basic, traditional sit-ups. Let me explain in the paragraph below.
When an individual performs your simple basic sit-up, he/she does not work the entire set of muscles in both the upper and lower abdominal regions. As it is, most people do not even do sit ups using the correct form. In addition to the sit-ups, unless you also would be willing to perform other exercises to strengthen and shape the lateral muscles around both sides of the abdominal area for extended periods daily, (sorry much more than 10 minutes per day), the result would be that sit-ups alone simply would not reduce that waist line. Besides that, people that I know simply do not have the motivation, strength or stamina to participate in these type of callisthenics for hours per day.
Instead you need to not only change that diet of yours, (cutting down on frozen microwavable dinners) but it also would be required that you begin a work-out regimen that targets the entire set of core muscles in your body. This fitness program would also include the practice of repetitive, light weight lifting as well.
The facts are that you can burn fat and increase your metabolism towards your goal of losing weight and becoming a leaner, healthier individual. Doing sit-ups alone however is nothing but a myth as the answer for achieving weight loss. For much more information please visit the site at
