Dr. Manjunath G

Will doing crunches help lose belly fat?

Even if you did 1,000 crunches every day, you'd unlikely trim the fat around your belly. That's because crunches tone the muscles that lie underneath your fat, but they do very little to help you lose weight - which is the key to shrinking your belly.

Any exercise will burn calories but no exercise will burn fat unless your diet allows it. You can burn fat in your sleep or you can run all day and never burn any fat. It all depends on your diet.

Fat loss is determined by calorie control, not by exercise. Good exercises for burning calories are walking, running, biking, swimming, and ANY other physical activity which makes you move a lot of weight for a long time. But NO exercise is good for burning fat if you eat too many calories because you can always eat more calories than you can burn.

Too many people waste energy and time because they do not understand this one simple point. The result is too often giving up in frustration, disuse of gym memberships they continue to pay for, and many other unnecessary problems not the least of which is a lack of success.

Crunches will have almost no effect on fat loss. And you cannot spot reduce.

It is not possible to lose fat only from a specific part of your body of your choosing. Where your body stores and removes fat is determined by your genetics and there is nothing you can do to change that short of radical procedures such as liposuction. And, in general, where it stores fat first is where it will lose it last and visa verse. The world of health and fitness has an unfortunate abundance of myths and spot reduction is one of them. There is no exercise, no pill, no supplements, no spa treatment, and no natural way to spot reduce. Your only choice is to create a caloric deficit with a healthy and balanced diet (nutrient rich), burn fat, and wait for it to leave the desired body parts.