Bri­an Chin Le­ung

Even though scents of black fruit cake, ponche de cr�me and pastelles are still per­me­at­ing the air, you have got to be dis­ci­plined in your eat­ing and ex­er­cise habits � or you may end up look­ing like San­ta at Car­ni­val time. The body part that caus­es the great­est con­cern for men and women at Car­ni­val is un­doubt­ed­ly the ab­dom­i­nal area. You don't want to be mov­ing to the right with the rhythm of the mu­sic, while your bel­ly adopts a mind of its own and starts mov­ing to the left.

Di­et and Abs

Ex­er­cise alone can't cut it for you at Car­ni­val time; you must watch your di­et. It is a fact that in­dulging in the wrong types of foods, par­tic­u­lar­ly "bad" car­bo­hy­drates, can spread your waist­line, much faster than new ru­mours of Tiger Woods' in­fi­deli­ty spread in those week­ly mag­a­zines. You have got to be­come se­lec­tive in your car­bo­hy­drate in­take, and avoid carbs that car­ry a high Glycemic In­dex rat­ing. Re­mem­ber, foods that car­ry a high Glycemic In­dex rat­ing will spike your blood sug­ar fast. If this hap­pens, it could trig­ger an in­sulin rush, and when a lot of in­sulin is cir­cu­lat­ing, you are more prone to store body fat.

On the Glycemic In­dex, white flour and white sug­ar are both giv­en high rat­ings of 100. As a re­sult, it would make good sense for you to stay away from foods such as bread, pas­ta, etc. Good carbs, such as sweet pota­to or brown rice, car­ry low glycemic rat­ings and are best eat­en at lunch time. How­ev­er, they should still be avoid­ed at night time. Al­so, try to avoid eat­ing fruit at night. In ad­di­tion, no good-health awards are go­ing to be giv­en to you, if you con­tin­u­ous­ly in­dulge in artery-clog­ging fried foods.

Ex­er­cise and Abs

Spot re­duc­ing is a myth; if you want your six-pack to show, you must en­gage in some form of car­dio (run­ning, Tae-Bo etc) to help re­duce your over­all body fat. You will al­so have to per­form a va­ri­ety of ab­dom­i­nal ex­er­cis­es that will stim­u­late your ab mus­cles from dif­fer­ent an­gles. Not all ab­dom­i­nal ex­er­cis­es are equal; there are def­i­nite­ly some ab ex­er­cis­es that are vast­ly su­pe­ri­or to oth­ers. Quite frankly, I per­son­al­ly be­lieve that floor crunch­es are over­rat­ed, and that there are many oth­er ab­dom­i­nal move­ments that would put crunch­es to shame.

Here are a few:

Hang­ing leg and knee rais­es -

This re­al­ly hits the spot and is ide­al for peo­ple with low­er back prob­lems.

Swiss ball sit-ups �

The swiss ball con­tours to your low­er back to give you added pro­tec­tion, while your ab­dom­i­nal area goes through a full range of mo­tion.

In­vert­ed sit-ups �

This is a very chal­leng­ing ex­er­cise per­formed with in­vert­ed grav­i­ty boots and is con­sid­ered an ad­vanced move­ment for peo­ple that have been train­ing for some time.

Work your abs hard and you may just have to fight off the many hands grab­bing your waist­line at Car­ni­val time.

Keep train­ing.