Why we need to keep our stomachs flat?

The obvious reason – is to look “good”, the less obvious one is to be healthy. Having a flat stomach helps prevent injuries and various diseases that can otherwise develop.

Goal Setting

Before you even start the process on getting your stomach flat, it’s very important to set the intention and visualise your stomach flat. Your sub-consciousness will play a big part in this process and it’ll do everything to bring you to the image you’ve created. So every time you start exercises, see yourself the way you want to look.

These exercises don’t take a lot of time – only 5 to 10 minutes daily. But you need to do those regularly, so that they become a second nature to you.

Most likely the transformation will not happen overnight, so get ready to persevere and get where you want to be. It’ll be a long journey, and every step brings you closer to the goal. Self determination is a key here.

Nutrition

You can exercise forever, but if won’t do you any good if your eating habits are bad. This is because any weight you lose exercising, you can quickly re-gain because you don’t eat properly. So it’s important that as you set off on this journey you review your dietary habits and make some adjustments.

Avoid eating too much fat foods. Eat more healthy foods like vegetables, fruit, whole wheat bread, low fat cheese, yogurts and foods containing complete proteins, vegetable fats. Drink natural fruit juices and a lot of water.

Exercise

There are two approaches to choose from:

1. – To train all three groups of stomach muscles daily
2. – To train only one group of muscles per day. For example:

1. first day – the abdominal exercises
2. second day – oblique
3. third day – muscles of the bottom part of stomach
4. the fourth day – rest.

When you do your exercises do them very slowly, keep your eyes close and imagine the muscles you’re exercising at that moment.

Don’t forget to breath.

Don’t forget to suck in your stomach all the time: while walking, standing and sitting, both at work and outside of it.

Example of exercises for stomach muscles.

In a prone position on the back make 30 straight sit ups, then 30 sit ups to the right knee and another 30 to the left. Carry out these exercises slowly, then repeat them in the same order. Next do the same exercises with a faster rate.

Next time try to freeze at the top of the sit up, hold the breath and execute 15 short and fast micro-sit ups.

With time gradually increase the number of sit ups.

Before and after the exercises it’s very helpful to do stretching.

I wish you good luck on your journey to flat stomach and trim waistline.

There are hundreds of various diets available. You can try one after another and get no long term results. The problem is not which diet to choose, but how to stick to it for long periods of time. The hardest part is doing it for a long period of time, and the main obstacle is the appetite.

You may have not known this, but having extra pounds requires more calories and therefore increased appetite. So it’s a chicken and egg problem. You want to lose those extra pounds, but those pounds make you eat even more.

So the key to a successful diet is in reducing the appetite. And the rest will follow.

Following are a few steps you can do to decrease your appetite and keep your weight under control. The techniques I’m about to describe come from Su Jok.

Step 1

Look at figure 1.

You can see projections of a stomach and a mouth on the palm according to Su Jok.

Massage the line connecting the stomach and the mouth only in direction from the stomach to the mouth. For this purpose put any finger of the right hand (if you massage the left one) in the center of a stomach area, then slightly press and move a finger in a direction to the thumb up to a mouth according to figure 1.

Step 2

Take a green felt-tip pen and draw a line between the stomach and the mouth in a direction of the mouth. This technique does a similar thing to the massage, but enhances it. In order to emphasize the direction of energy movement you could draw an arrow in the direction of the mouth as seen on figure 2.

Perform this quick procedure before each meal. If the painted line gets erased after a while, make a new one.

Step 3

Take black felt tip pen and mark 4 points according to figure 3.

Using this color we reduce emotion of desire to eat.

Do this procedure in along with the diet you take (if any).

If you liked this self-healing technique, Self Healing Series has more self-empowering materials.

There are diets out there that help lose weight, but the problem is that one gets the lost weight back and even more of it as soon as the diet is over. Quiet often diets have side effects that cause various illnesses which contribute to various disorder that cause excessive weight.

Before attempting to slim quickly, it’s important to know that unless you are very young it’ll lead to an awful look, as skin isn’t capable to shrink as it can in youth. If you are ready to pursue this idea, get ready to spend tons of money for special massages, cosmetic procedures, and maybe even plastic surgeries.

Some diets suggest to eat only one kind of food. For example: meat, cheese or vegetables. There are apple or sour milk-based diets. There are those based on blood type, etc. But think about it, if those diets were really successful would there be so many fat people out there?

The best way to approach the problem is to start early, in a childhood.

• Don’t overfeed children from the very early age
• Don’t feed them too much of fat and rich foods
• Don’t get them used to sweets, chocolate and pop drinks

Ideally, child’s meal should consist of groat meals, dietary dairy products, meats and lots of vegetables.

Nowadays the majority of children and adults haven’t heard of porridge meals, but from early age they eat cheeseburgers with fries, and drink pop drinks. Modern children spend most of their time at school and at home in front of the TV and computer. Not many choose to spend much time outside, doing sports, dancing, etc. Fat children grow into fat adults, mainly because they can’t refuse the fat foods they got used to in their childhood.

Let’s start with breakfast. Now it is very fashionable not to have breakfast. Many of my acquaintances proudly inform me that they do not eat a breakfast. But it’s very important to eat a big breakfast in the morning, because from 7.00am till 9.00am the greatest activity occurs in our stomachs. Therefore at this time it’s possible to eat high-calorie meal which will digest well and provide a so need energy charge to use through the day, and it will reduce food-desire during the lunch time and for the evening meal. If hungry between the breakfast and lunch it is good to eat yogurt and fruit. During the lunch time it is necessary to eat a big vegetable salad, soup and a meat or a fish dish.

After a hearty breakfast and good (but not too big) lunch by the time evening arrives you wouldn’t be very hungry. Unlike the case where you haven’t had a breakfast or had a “bite” instead, and when the evening arrives you feel like you could eat a cow…

Be aware that when you exercise in the evening on an empty stomach, you might get quite hungry afterwards, as you burn a lot of calories and your body wants to replenish those making you hungry. Especially swimming, as water water burns a lot of calories. Eat something light, but nourishing some time before exercise. Personally I eat an egg, slice of bread with some low-fat cheese.

Here are some additional tips on the science of eating:

If you are going to a party, don’t go there hungry, as parties typically have foods that aren’t good for you in big quantities.

Avoid buffets, and if you eat in one, try to put everything you want to try at once on one plate, so that you could see the amount of food you are about to it.

Do not use spicy and fat sauces, since not only they are rich on calories, but they also raise appetite.

Now let’s return to the talk of how to structure the meals that are under your control. As mentioned earlier, a hearty breakfast followed by a medium-size lunch will ensure that you aren’t hungry in the evening. All is left to discuss is what’s best to be eaten during supper.

The ideal last meal should be light, which could be some fruit, low-fat cheese. It’s important to be aware that our stomachs stop processing food at around 4pm, and that’s why it’s the best to have most of the calories intake by that time. If you eat after that time, food will sit in the stomach till the next day…

A good suggestion here is to brush your teeth at around 7pm, which to some of us could help avoid the urge to snack.

Some of you may find it useful to weigh yourself every day. This allows you to detect any trends of gaining weight early, and deal with it by changing your eating patterns. Remember that people aren’t born fat, but become such, mostly through ignorance.

Sports were mentioned earlier. Sports are essential for staying slim, having good looks and good health. And while during 30s and 40s it’s still possible to stay thin without doing sports, it’s almost impossible once you hit age of 50, in my opinion.

I’ve been using the discussed strategies through most of my adult life and managed to keep my weight under control.

Indeed, it takes a lot of effort to change one’s habits, but the payoff is so big – now you can wear an elegant miniskirt and high heel shoes, and look and feel great.

(this article was written by my wife)