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" On a newborn, it&amp;#039;s cute. On a pregnant woman, it&amp;#039;s beautiful. On Buddha, it&amp;#039;s an esteemed symbol of contentment and inner peace.  On everyone else, big bellies are not appreciated.  This is not a stage we&amp;#039;re going through. This is not an aesthetic that, having started with Twiggy, will end as soon as Kate Moss goes into menopause or develops a taste for heavily buttered baked potatoes. If anything, the standards for women&amp;#039;s bodies have grown more exacting. It&amp;#039;s no longer enough to be so slim that you can slip through your vertical blinds; now, your stomach has to be sculpted. Ridged, no less. So hard that your kids could do jumping jacks on it and you wouldn&amp;#039;t feel a thing.  Except, perhaps, exhilaration.  The struggle for a flat abdomen has plagued the human race since around 200 B.C., when the Roman statesman Cato the Elder is said to have declared, &amp;quot;It is a hard matter, my fellow citizens, to argue with the belly, since it has no ears.&amp;quot;  You can argue with your scale when it says you&amp;#039;re five pounds up. You can argue with the fashion police when they say fitted tops are in. But if you want a flat stomach, don&amp;#039;t waste your breath. The hard truth is, having a small tummy takes work. But before you begin the quest to banish your belly, you need to understand why it&amp;#039;s such a stubborn adversary. The Belly  You can live on steamed vegetables and spring water, and burn up the stepper until it smokes, yet the pot hangs tough. How come? For starters, the belly is the Mecca of female fat. When a woman puts on a few pounds, this is a prime pilgrimage site. Men tend to gain weight in their upper abdomen, women in their lower abdomen, hips, thighs, and buttocks. Doctors are still trying to figure out why. So far, research shows that women&amp;#039;s southern regions have fewer of the nerve receptors that induce fat cells to empty faster, explains Marshall Goldberg, M.D., professor of medicine at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. Plus, stomach fat is especially likely to stick: Swedish researchers have found that post-pregnancy fat doesn&amp;#039;t burn up as quickly from your belly as it does from other body parts. Change with Age   Your abdominal muscles begin life taut. You take them for granted for years. But there comes a time in most women&amp;#039;s lives when they look in the mirror sideways and cringe. The change may come gradually. But for most women, it has a defining moment: pregnancy. During pregnancy, your body produces the aptly named hormone relaxin, which tells your muscles to -- what else? -- relax. Once the baby&amp;#039;s out, some of your stomach muscles and tendons decide they like hanging loose. &amp;quot;If you take a rubber band and you stretch it, relax it, stretch it, relax it, after awhile, it loses elasticity,&amp;quot; says Raul Artal, M.D., chairman of the department of ob/gyn at the State University of New York at Syracuse. &amp;quot;The same thing can happen to the abdominal muscles.&amp;quot; Pregnancy  Another side effect of pregnancy is that you get used to being weighed down. It&amp;#039;s hard to stand up straight when you&amp;#039;ve been carrying around a watermelon for months. And after your kids are born, you lift them, give piggybacks, lug Big Wheels, and before you know it, you&amp;#039;re permanently slumped. Even if you don&amp;#039;t have any children, time and gravity are working against you. As you age, your spine bends. &amp;quot;Many women think they have a big stomach, when their problem is really poor posture,&amp;quot; says Remi Falquet, a fitness trainer in New York City. &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re overarching their backs, or they&amp;#039;ve gotten into the habit of slouching, with their hips pushed forward. The result is that internal organs are shoved forward.&amp;quot; The look, he doesn&amp;#039;t need to say, is somewhat less than graceful. Use Your Muscles In the normal course of everyday activity, you rarely use your abdominal muscles. Consider your legs: You walk, climb stairs, kick toys out of your path. You do not, without planning it, lie down, suck in your navel, and repeatedly hoist your upper body off the floor. That brings us to the inevitable: If you want to flatten your abdominals, you&amp;#039;re going to have to work them. The task may seem daunting, but Reine Vilim, an exercise physiologist in New York, assures, &amp;quot;It doesn&amp;#039;t take that much work. About seven minutes, three times a week ought to do it.&amp;quot; The biggest obstacle may be that results will not be immediately apparent. &amp;quot;During the first few weeks, you see this stomach that isn&amp;#039;t Cindy Crawford&amp;#039;s and you get discouraged,&amp;quot; Vilim says. &amp;quot;But after two or three months, when you see your body changing, you&amp;#039;ll be motivated to keep going.&amp;quot;  Crunches \u2022 Crunches are to your stomach what fruits and vegetables are to the food pyramid. Do lots of them. Do yourself lots of good. First, get into the proper position: Lie down, knees bent, heels on the floor, the balls of your feet flexed. Place your hands behind your head, elbows out at the side, and gently lift your shoulder blades off the floor, hold for one count, and lower. Exhale as you lift, inhale as you come down, and do not allow your head to touch the floor between repetitions, no matter how tempting that may be. Remember to press your lower back into the floor and let your stomach, not your hands, do the work. Try to do three sets of ten, resting a few seconds in between and relaxing your feet, and work up to three sets of 30. If you have a bad back or want variety, crunch with your calves rested on the seat of a chair, hips directly under the knees, arms crossed across your chest.  \u2022 Curls work on the lower abdominals, the bigger challenge. One powerful prescription is the reverse curl. No, it&amp;#039;s not a modern version of the sixties pageboy. Lie flat on your back with your arms by your sides, hands relaxed, and raise your knees to your chest. Then slowly pull your knees toward your shoulders as you exhale, lifting your tailbone off the floor, for a count of two. Pause. Then lower for a count of two, without letting your feet touch the floor. Do three sets of ten to start, and build up to three sets of 30. One more belly-buster to do anytime: Suck in your gut. As often as you can remember to. Done repeatedly, this will strengthen your muscles and become a more permanent position. Posture To get that posture erect, Falquet recommends two techniques that straighten and elongate the spine and shift the abdomen into its proper, inconspicuous place.  \u2022 Angel Wings are slightly more choreographed versions of what children do when they fling themselves down in the snow and flap their limbs. Lie on your back, legs straight (if you have a bad back, bend your knees with feet flat on the floor). Starting with your arms at your side, slowly cross your arms in front of your body, then lift and raise them up over your head as if you were taking off a shirt. Then lower them down to your sides. Repeat this three times, then reverse the movement three times, starting and ending with your arms at your sides. \u2022 The Standing Release is another no-brainer: Stand up, legs shoulder-width apart. Slump over and let your head hang down, arms dangling in front of you and knees bent just over your toes, so that you look like an orangutan at rest. Hold for a few seconds. Then lift your torso, your head, and your knees all at once as you rise to a full standing position. Make sure you do not straighten your knees before the rest of your body. Breathe deeply for ten seconds, gently bobbing your head up and down to relax your neck, then walk around the room for 30 seconds. Repeat three times. Change Your Diet No amount of exercise will compensate for poor eating habits. As your mother and every other commonsense source of advice has ever told you, you need to trim down with a balanced, low-fat diet. Consume fewer calories than you burn, and remember that carbohydrates are metabolized more easily than fats, which tend to remain just that: fat. That standard line you hear about chocolate or butter going straight to your fat zone? It&amp;#039;s true. So if you&amp;#039;re going to indulge, you&amp;#039;re better off with an extra helping of plain spaghetti and a generous dish of lemon sorbet instead of a glop of Alfredo sauce and a slice of chocolate mousse cake. But you knew that. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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