tbh for most people, getting out and walking daily is enough

planks like OP will help a lot with core strength and toning, so combining the two is great general fitness advice

The first thing to say is that spot targeting fat is a myth. Your body will burn the excess calories stored in fat cells in whatever pattern it wants. You can’t force it to target your stomach by doing sit ups or working your abs.

With that said, the way to shrink fat cells is to burn through the energy stored within them by massively increasing your caloric usage. Think of fat cells like a gas tank, if you want to empty them you just have to use up that stored fuel. A great example of this are those people who swim the english channel and drop 20 pounds in the process. The effort of doing that is just so strenuous on the body it eats through all that stored energy. There are two ways to increase your caloric usage: the first is to increase muscle mass as muscles use a lot of energy to maintain themselves and output force, the second is to do high intensity exercises that use a lot of calories just by themselves (i.e. strength training and cardio). Muscle building is a slower, long term investment into building your calorie burn rate but to do it efficiently I’d recommend having access to good equipment. You can build mass with just body weight routines, but it’s going to go significantly slower and require a more specialized workout plan and diet. Cardio is going to be your best bet for improving general fitness and shedding the pounds quickly.

Getting 30 minutes to an hour of sweat breaking exercise per day will do wonders for helping you hit your fitness goals. I’d tell you to start with a distance jog before each workout. I aim for a mile before I hit the gym, but any distance and any speed works. The real thing you’re aiming for is to work you cardiovascular system enough that you break a sweat. This will warm your muscles up and get your body essentially prepped for heightened calorie burning. A lot of modern cardio workouts stress High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) as the best way ti do things but imo that’s equally valid to the standard way to do things and is just a fad/great way to burn yourself out. We’re gonna focus on distance and extended use of your cardiovascular system at an easier pace. In my experience it’s the best way to achieve long term goals because it’s the system people will actually stick to long term.

So back at it we’re warming up with a distance jog. Aim for a good sweat, if you find yourself struggling scale it back and work towards where you want to be. People always want to push it upfront but those are the people who can’t stick with it long term. After your jog go into a bodyweight exercise circuit of something like jumping jacks, bodyweight squats, push ups, and any ab routine (burpees for full body, crunches for targeted abs, etc.) Do some research to find bodyweight workouts that hit your joints the right way, but the overall goal here is 5ish exercises that work the majority of your body’s muscles. I’m a fan of paratrooper squats as a former wrestler, but those are kind of a bitch and highly dependent on your overall fitness level. Again and again, we’re here to improve not to burn out. Kill the personal trainer in your head.

We’re gonna do them in the 8-12 rep range until they feel easy and then up the amount. Because we’re not targeting specific muscles with huge amounts of weight, we’re going to want to work everything a moderate amount. This will boost your calories burned but also increase overall fitness levels. It’s called cardio because it flexes your cardiovascular system, this is the most important thing to exercise for long term health. Heart disease is the number one killer in the states so every day you do this routine know that you are literally adding years to your life. As always it’s persistence that shapes your body, far more than effort

Edit: oh and I feel the need to add diet in here as v. important in the effort of losing weight. You can only eat in calorie excess or deficit for what your body burns in a given day. What that does w/o exercise is imo very apparent, but when exercising your body it can change the results. Heavy lifting + calorie excess can speed up the muscle building process while strenuous exercise in deficit will quickly shed fat and tighten muscle groups. You’ll hear gymheads talk about bulk and cut seasons, this is what they’re referring to. Traditionally you lift heavy and eat in excess in the winter to quickly add mass and then switch to lower weight, higher rep exercises in the spring while eating in deficit to shed mass and tighten the muscles for peak aesthetics. We’re going to ignore this traditional bodybuilding formula (because let’s be real it’s hyper specific to the look and really doesn’t equate to better health outcomes) and instead focus on eating in deficit while hitting that low weight, high rep exercise regimen. This will be the best way to shed weight and develop your muscles for practical, healthy usage. Think about what your average track athlete or swimmer looks like compared to the gym rat (tm). I’m not a fan of calorie counting so my advice is always to trust your body. It has a highly evolved sense of homeostasis. Eat when you’re hungry, don’t when you’re not. As you increase your caloric intake your body will respond with greater hunger pangs, it knows what you need. The most important diet tips are to not trick it with highly addictive substances like sugar and to not override it with rapid binge eating because hunger signals take 15-30 minutes to update to the brain. Eat clean and eat slowly. Trust your body. Don’t push when it hurts. We’re all gonna make it comrade :arm-L: :sicko-hexbear: :arm-R:

r bodyweightfitness Recommended Routine

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Start with distance cardio until you’re breaking a sweat and breathing heavy. Something good to heighten your heart rate and prep you for a workout. Cardio bikes are fine but I find they’re a lot slower of a warm up than just hitting the treadmill. YMMV tho and always pick the thing that works for you and keeps you at it long term. After your cardio warm up go into a bodyweight routine of 3-5 sets of 12-20 reps for about 5 different exercises. Try to hit every muscle group. Compound exercises like burpees that work your whole body are great but also difficult and it’s better to go light and stick with it long term than try to do something too strenuous and burn out. You’re aiming for 30 minutes to an hour of good exercise per day. This will rapidly improve overall health, burn off excess fat, and tighten the existing musculature you have.

Building muscle and strength is a different beast, but this will still put you on the path to overall fitness and health. And honestly if you do this for a few months and want an increased challenge just buy a gym membership and get back to me for weight lifting tips