If You Hate Your Belly Fat, Try This Instead of Crunches and Dieting

When you look in the mirror, is your tummy the first place your eyes zero in on? If your belly fat gets squeezed, pushed down, and frowned at, you're not alone. Lucy Yates posted this photo to her Instagram page with the caption, "Like many women, my tummy has always been my struggle area & my biggest insecurity. It is the first place I notice that I store fat when my body fat increases & it's the most stubborn area to lose fat too." She says, "my tummy was always the area I disliked, the first thing I looked at in the mirror/pictures."

Even though Lucy has worked hard transforming her body, she admits, "I have to work really bloody hard & have my diet and training completely on point to get my tummy to lean down."

If you want to lose belly fat, Lucy says, "Well firstly, endless sit-ups and crunches isn't the answer. In short, it's all about being in a calorie deficit so your [body-fat percentage] drops."

Lucy shares, "even when I was a lean bean, I still had rolls when I sat down, I still got bloated after a three course meal *shocker*, I still got that bit of belly hanging over my jeans, which were realistically probs two sizes too small but I was determined to squeeze in." She says this is normal, and this is OK.

You have to work damn hard to get rid of body fat and get your six-pack popping. And for some women, this may be an unrealistic goal, or impossible to maintain, especially for those of us who hold our fat in our bellies (raising my hand on this one).

So here's an idea from Lucy. How about we stop making abs the be-all and end-all and "putting ourselves under so much pressure to have a perfectly flat tum & focus more on embracing our normal shapely womanly wobbly bodies." She adds, "*this is a note to self too* 💛"

We can't click the heart fast enough on this Instagram post! We don't want to constantly obsess over carbs, calories burned, and our body-fat percentage. A six-pack doesn't need to be our lifetime goal. How about we take the time we spend nitpicking our bodies and spend that time loving them instead? How much happier would we feel?