Contrary to popular belief you can't "spot" reduce fat from a part of your body.
When you lose weight, you lose it from all over your body because you reduce the fat cells throughout your system.
Working out, with weights or against any kind of resistance will help you to tone up and firm certain areas, as will any aerobic based workout in conjunction with a specifically planned workout programme that works in tandem with a calorie worked out eating plan.
It's been a common myth for many years and has also been buoyed up by numerous articles in popular "glossies" and also on television that if you want to lose your "gut" or tone up your tummy you have to do countless amounts of crunches and waist exercises and that these in turn, if you are diligent, will give you "washboard abs".
All this kind of procedure will get you is a sore tailbone and create a "boredom" threshold so great that you will never want to work your abs again! It is only recently that the media has cottoned on to the fact that abs have to be worked in conjunction with a sensible eating plan.
It also totally unnecessary to be doing countless numbers of reps in the hope of shrinking down that waist, it will just never happen.
The abs and waist section are just like any other muscle group and to enable those abs to show up how you would like them to, you have to work them against resistance just like any other muscle group.
In other words, you have you have to build the muscle first in order to be able to show it.
Aaargh, I hear the cry", but I don't want to end up looking like one of those bodybuilders with all my veins sticking out"! Keep hallucinating, it will never happen, not unless you want to work out for 3 x hours a day, eat more protein than is really good for you and become chemically enhanced.
Working your abs in the 8 to 12 rep range and constantly squeezing the muscle, not going up and down like a piston will build and tone a set of quality abs you can be proud of.
An intrinsic part of any abs routine and oft overlooked is the fact that you need to work your core muscles as well.
These are invisible muscles, which are akin to your bodies "inner girdle" and are used in virtually every movement you do on a daily basis.
Once you have acquired your abs, the only way to show them off, is to remove the layer of fat that is covering them, and this done by adding a certain amount of "cardio" to your routine and adjusting your eating habits.
This will involve a reasonably high intensity 20 x minute session of "interval" training twice weekly, which is a very efficient way for your body to burn fat.
It even fires up your metabolism for up to a 12 x hour period afterwards, even when you're sat there watching TV! How good is that? It will also require 1 x session of a low intensity cardio session to increase endurance and to also burn fat.
Nobody ever said it was easy and would involve no effort on your part, and if anybody tells you differently, they're lying!