How to Get Abs Fast for Women

If your recent life changes have involved giving birth to a new baby, discovering the joys of late night fast food binges, or any number of lifestyle changes in between, you may be looking to shed some excess stomach fat. Well, you’ve come to the right place. I can’t promise it will be easy, but I can how you how to get results. The rest will be up to you.

First we’ve got to tackle a basic fact of human body composition; and that is that women naturally store more fat on their bodies than men. Now, granted, there are overweight men out there, just like there are overweight women. But body weight and composition guidelines based on what is necessary to function put essential male body fat at 2-4%, and essential female body fat at 10-13%.

These numbers—the essentials—are levels below which we could not live. Male athletes and other very fit males should fall somewhere in the 5-17% range, while their female counterparts are expected to have 14-24% body fat. These numbers should show you from the get go that getting abs, if you’re a woman, is not going to be easy. Just remember that there are places women naturally store fat where men do not. The key is eliminating excess fat from everywhere else to let strong, toned muscles (especially your abs) show through.

A combination of regular cardiovascular exercise and strength training is the best route you can take to prolonged, full body fitness. Lifting weights (or working with bands or machines: whatever type of resistance training you prefer, as long as you’re doing something!) burns calories while building up lean muscle mass. The more lean muscle mass you have, the lower your body fat percentage, and the higher your metabolism.

A higher metabolism means that your body burns a greater number of calories all the time: whether you’re working out, sitting on the couch, or even sleeping. You guessed it: combining weight lifting with high intensity cardio workouts lets you burn a ton more calories than cardio alone. And the more calories you burn, the less fat remains on your body, allowing your abs to show through.

To get abs fast, you’ll really have to work on your stomach. In addition to all of that cardio exercise and resistance training, you should be doing an abs routine at least 3 times a week. I don’t know if what I’m about to say will make you more or less excited to get to work, but as endurance muscles, the abs can actually be worked every day with very little risk for injury. (What you do with that knowledge is up to you.)

Instead of spending an hour on the floor doing mediocre crunches, kick up the intensity of your abs workout every other day by adding resistance. Use a medicine ball or dumbbell to make any variation on the standard crunch more difficult and more effective for building lean muscle.

The harder you work at getting abs, the faster you will start to see results. So quit playing on Google and go for a run or hit the gym. There’s no time like the present to get to work.