4-3-10 Fitness #3

Hopefully whether you're heavy or thin you've been walking for weeks now as your primary exercise. If you've heeded my advice, you've also eliminated one bad food from your diet forever. By now walking briskly for 20 minutes should be relatively easy. Now let's increase the walking time to 25 minutes and eliminate another unhealthy food from your diet. If it's a food that has to be replaced, like cereal for example, pick one of the healthy cereals we recommend.

Here is a simple ab routine:

1)  Leg Raise— Lie on the floor, on your back, hands palms down under the small of your back, legs stretched out in front, knees slightly bent. Raise feet off floor 6 inches to begin then raise to 18 inches and lower back down to 6 inches slowly (don't touch floor). This is 1 repetition. Try for 1 set of 12 repetitions. Go into exercise #2 within 30 seconds.

2) Crunch— Lie on the floor, on your back, knees bent, forearms across your chest. Using your abdominal muscles only slowly raise your head, shoulders and shoulder blades off floor and crunch the abs for a 2 count, then lower your shoulder blades and shoulders back to the floor. This is 1 repetition. Try for 1 set of 15 repetitions. Go into exercise #3 within 30 seconds.

3) Torso Rotation— Get a stick, like a broom stick or if none is available place your hands on your hips while standing with your feet shoulder width apart. Using only your obliques (side ab muscles), not momentum, slowly rotate your torso to the left then to the right as far as possible while holding in your gut. Left and then right is 1 repetition. Try for 20 repetitions of left/right.