Do Abdominal Crunches Slim Down Your Waist?

When you're determined to build a healthy, fit body, one of your first steps is to create realistic fitness goals. The next order of business is to match a workout regimen with those goals. The fitness industry has enough misconceptions that it's easy to fall into the trap of performing an exercise for the wrong reasons. While abdominal crunches can strengthen your muscles, they play a very minor role in burning fat around your waist.

  1. Spot Reduction is Impossible

    • When you're new to the world of exercise, learning about the theory of spot reduction helps you get a partial understanding about fat loss. It's impossible, notes the American Council on Exercise, to specifically burn fat in a chosen area. If you work a particular group of muscles, such as the abs, you're not solely burning fat around the muscles in question. Rather, every form of exercise burns fat in several spots at once.

    Crunches Aren't the Answer

    • Not only do ab crunches not exclusively burn the fat around your waist, but they play only a minor role in fat loss. Losing fat occurs when you burn more calories than you consume, which is a process known as creating a calorie deficit. Crunches burn calories at a very low rate and are difficult to perform long enough to get even a moderate calorie burn. For example, HealthStatus reports that a 135-pound person burns about 45 calories in 10 minutes of moderate crunches.

    Get Moving Aerobically

    • Aerobic exercises are an effective way to burn calories to help slim your waist. This type of workout burns calories rapidly and is possible to perform for extended periods, making it a vital tool in your fat-loss mission. Aerobic exercises include running, step aerobics, jumping rope and bicycling. A 135-pound person burns 308 calories in 30 minutes of jumping rope or running at 6 mph, which is significantly more than the calorie burn from crunches. Performing aerobic exercise around 300 minutes per week and reducing your calorie intake can contribute to fat loss.

    Crunches Aren't the Best

    • Many people use ab crunches as a muscle-strengthening exercise, but this exercise isn't even the best way to strengthen your abs. ACE notes that among ab exercises, traditional crunches are ranked 11th in terms of their percentage of activity in the abdominal muscles. The top three ab exercises are the bicycle maneuver, leg lifts in a captain's chair and crunches on an exercise ball. Building your muscles also plays a part in fat loss; as you strengthen your body, you boost your metabolism.