Essay --

No matter how many situps you do, if you have excess belly fat, you'll never see results, because the fat will be covering up your muscle definition. This doesn't mean you should eliminate situps from your workout, because as part of your core, they can promote back health, and improve your posture, athletic performance, and balance and stability. (See References 1) You should, however, incorporate fat-burning exercises into your workout to get visible results. The Spot Reduction Fallacy To lose body fat, you must burn more calories than your body uses every day. It takes a deficit of 500 calories a day to lose 1 pound of fat in a week from all over your body including your belly. Situps alone don't burn enough calories to have a big enough impact and they won't magically spot reduce fat from your belly. To make matters worse, if you only do situps, hoping to combat belly fat, you're building the muscles under the fat. As they get stronger and bigger, they can push your belly out even further. (See References 2) Doing Situps to Shape Up Situps work your rectus abdominis at the fr...