How to have a beautiful flat tummy

1) Cut the fat. There's no getting around it - if you want a flatter tummy, you have to eat less fat. This means cutting out junk foods like potato chips, fast foods, creamy sauces and sweet desserts. Instead, fill up on low-fat, high in vitamins foods like whole grain breads and cereals, vegetables, and low-fat proteins (meat and chicken with the fat cut off, turkey, all fish and shellfish, eggs, kidney beans, chickpeas, nuts and seeds). These foods all contain fibre, which combines with water to make you feel full and cut your cravings for junky foods. Drink eight glasses of water a day to keep things moving through your system.

2) Increase your aerobic activity. While eating healthfully and avoiding fat is essential to prepping your soon-to-be-flat tummy, regular aerobic exercise will get you there even faster by burning excess fat. You could have the flattest, most ripped stomach muscles - but if there’s a layer of fat sitting on top of them, no one will see them. Exercise can help banish belly fat so your abdominal muscles can be seen and admired. Aim to do at least 20 to 30 minutes of continuous exercise, four times per week. Good choices for fat-burning workouts include brisk walking, jogging, bicycling, stair climbing (Stairmaster or step class), Tae Bo and aerobic dance classes. If you get bored with one routine, switch to another type of exercise - it’s actually good for you! Professional athletes get the best results from their workouts when they vary their routine, because it keeps their body challenged.

3) Start weight training. A comprehensive weight-training routine not only makes your entire body stronger and more firm, it also increases your metabolism. This steps up the number of calories your body burns, even when you’re lying around at rest. So you can eat more and still stay tight and trim. Plus, most weight training exercises get your abdominal muscles in gear too, so it’s a great workout for your waist. Learn more about starting a weight training program by grabbing a book on the subject from your local library or bookstore, or visit a local gym or community centre to talk to the trainers.

4) Practice good posture. Stand sideways beside a mirror. Now take a look - how are you standing? If your shoulders are drooping and your head is poking forward, your posture needs improving. Bad posture makes your pelvis tilt forward, causing your belly to sag, and that makes your stomach look bigger. It’s also lazy and does nothing to keep your abdominal muscles disciplined. You make your tummy look thinner instantly just by fixing the way you carry yourself. Lift your shoulders up and back. Hold your head so that it's aligned with your spine - imagine a thread from the middle of the top of your head, pulling your entire body up so you’re standing perfectly straight. Tuck in your butt. Concentrate on tightening your abdominal muscles so you can feel the strength and flex of your whole torso. When you’re sitting, sit up straight with your shoulders back and down. Don’t let the small of your back slump away from the chair.

5) Do abdominal exercises. You may have heard that you can’t "spot reduce" - meaning you can’t burn fat off one specific area of your body by working it out. That is true, but you CAN "spot tone" - meaning you can tighten the muscles of a specific body area (like your abdominals) by working them through exercise. Fitness experts, athletes and gym trainers all know that the abdominal crunch, and its partner the pedaling exercise, are the safest and most effective moves for training and toning the tummy muscles. Instructions for doing these exercises properly are included below. To make these exercises effective, you have to do them right. There is no point in doing 50 sloppy crunches - you might as well do none. It’s much better to do 10 to 15 repetitions of an exercise, then rest, then do 10 to 15 more. Thirty proper crunches and 40 pedaling moves (in total), done three to five days per week - combined with the other tips on this page - are all you need to have a rippling tummy within a month or two.