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ILLUMINATION

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Stop Doing Crunches: The Real 5 Reasons Your Belly Fat Won’t Budge

4 min readJun 3, 2025

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Photo by Jonathanborba on Unsplash

Most people are fighting the wrong battle.

They believe belly fat is a matter of effort.

Restrict more. Push harder. Add more cardio. Suffer enough — and it’ll melt off.

It won’t.

Not if your metabolism is stuck.

Not if your hormones are working against you.

Not if your body is wired for survival, not fat loss.

I’ve coached over 200 men and women to lose it — and keep it off — without crash diets, calorie counting, or obsessive workouts.

And over and over again, I’ve seen the same five issues holding people back.

1. You can’t out-train high cortisol

It doesn’t matter how clean you eat or how many ab workouts you do — if your stress is chronically high, your body will store fat around your midsection.

Cortisol is a survival hormone. And belly fat is protective tissue.
When your body feels under threat — too little sleep, too much caffeine, long cardio sessions, poor recovery — it holds fat right where you don’t want it.

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ILLUMINATION
ILLUMINATION

Published in ILLUMINATION

We curate & disseminate outstanding stories from diverse domains to create synergy. Inquiries: https://digitalmehmet.com/ Subscribe to our content marketing strategy: https://drmehmetyildiz.substack.com/

Ashley Richmond
Ashley Richmond

Written by Ashley Richmond

I’ll show you how to leverage your daily habits to transform your health. Free weekly habit-building newsletter: https://www.ashleyrichmond.net/newsletter