If you're looking to shrink and tone your belly, there's a better way to do it than trying to do crunches. In fact, research has shown that doing abdominal exercises alone—even when performed five days a week for six weeks—has no effect at all on subcutaneous fat stores and abdominal circumferencei.
In an op-ed piece for Forbes Magazine, Jennifer Cohen suggests using strategies that burn up cortisol insteadii. Cortisol is a hormone in your body that depletes lean muscle and holds on to fat in the abdominal region.
One of the most important ways to help this process is to reduce stress in your life, because stress causes cortisol levels to spike. Cohen also delves into a number of other strategies that help reduce your cortisol levels, such as the following. To learn more, please see the featured Forbes article: