Toned Abs

Magazine covers are adorned with pictures of men and women with toned abs, and if you also desire to have sculpted abs you need to have an intelligent training plan. If you have flab around your belly it's obvious you need to get rid of it with some cardio exercises. Abs are a combination of muscles and to stimulate muscles you need to use weights, so inculcate weights in your abdominal exercises routine. However, all the weight training and cardio is not going to be enough if you don't have a diet plan to support your goal of toned abs.

Cardio Routine

Fitness experts say that cardio training should be at least for 40 minutes for it to prove effective, anything less than that will not give desired results. An important tip when it comes to cardiovascular exercises is to add variations to your routine to avoid boredom. Fitness experts believe that over 60 percent of people discontinue their training because they get bored with doing the same exercises again and again. The best way to get toned abs is to have a good fat burning cardio routine to get a flat belly and then with an abs workout tone the abdominal muscles.

So if you have a gym membership try to use fitness equipment, like the treadmill, exercise bike, cross trainer in your routine. You could spend 15 min on the bike, 15 min on the cross trainer and 10 min on the treadmill one day and on other days you could use the stair stepper and the rowing machine. If possible, include aerobics exercises and kickboxing routines in your cardio workout program to make it interesting.

Abs Training

Exercising your abdominal muscles will help you to get toned abs, so include the traditional crunches and leg raises in your program. Remember one thing when doing these stomach toning exercises, for working any muscle group you need to use weights to stimulate them. So when you are doing an abs workout, use weights. If you are a beginner start without weights but work your way up to using weights to stimulate your abdominal muscles.

Use a weight plate when doing crunches and ankle weight belts for leg raises and reverse crunches, these are the best exercises for abs. You can also increase the difficulty level by doing the crunches on a decline bench with the help of your trainer or gym partner. For reverse crunches use the incline bench also try out the stability ball for your plank routine. Some abs exercises to get toned abs are:

• Knee Crunches
• Bicycle Crunches
• Hip Lifts
• Oblique Crunches
• Heel Touches

Diet Plan

One of the most important things to support your workout is to have a great toned abs diet. Everyone knows that the secret behind losing fats is eating right and eating 5-6 small meals evenly spaced in a day. A diet plan can be divided in two halves, one with things to avoid and things you need to eat. In the first half, avoid eating fattening food like deep-fried chicken, fries, chocolate cookies, ice cream. But remember you can have a small portion of one of these once a week, otherwise you might fall off the diet wagon, your craving will overtake all your good intention's.

Include veggies and fruits in your diet, make it a habit to at least have one serving of fruits and vegetables in your meals during the day along with some fat burning exercises. Also add dairy products to your abs diet plan like skimmed milk and low-fat yogurt. Add almonds and other nuts to your diet - have beans, oatmeal, egg whites, eat fish, and other lean meats like turkey. Other things you could eat are whole grain breads and berries.

If you want toned abs, you need to have a combination of cardio, weight training, and diet. Otherwise, it's going to be difficult. Also, to keep your motivation levels up, have a few inspirational posters up in your room and watch workout videos. Keep a realistic time frame to get desired results and follow the workout regimen religiously.