Getting lean, diet and exercise

RunJunke17

What foods and best exercise will help my middle lean up? I am 69, strength train 3 times a week, walk, run and some yoga most days. Have lost almost 20 pounds but my middle is the hardest area. Thanks.

AnnPT77

Fat tends to be first on, last off, which means that abdominal fat leaves last, for a lot of us.

For some of us (I'm one), losing enough overall body fat to have a completely flat stomach is not in the cards, especially given that uterus thing (which is not fat**). (I'm 66, female, for context - if that matters. Also, 5'5", mid-120s pounds, not completely devoid of muscle. To lose that last bit of fat on abdomen and inner thighs, where my personal body likes to keep the last bits, I'd end up looking like a skeleton in other areas, maybe; and for sure I'd be at too light a weight for good health, given my personal body composition. But that's me, not you.)

Weight loss helps the middle lean up, once one gets to the point of that area depleting. Anything that develops abdominal muscle helps firm up those muscles. If you're doing compound exercises at progressive heavy-to-you weights as part of your strength training, those are good, maybe key. There can be others, more localized, like maybe roll-outs, various kinds of planks (not just static front ones), hanging leg raises and variations, Pallof presses, stomach vacuums . . . blah blah blah, on and on.

There are some indications (in research I've seen, not definitive) that for women post-menopause, strength training can help reduce central fat, but you're already strength training.

Another big deal, if you haven't considered it, is posture. I think the thread linked below goes into that more.

Loosely, common posture issues like anterior pelvic tilt, and the chin-forward, rounded shoulders/upper back posture many of us have these days from hunching over electronic devices (sometimes unflatteringly called "nerd neck") . . . those can push any central fat or loose skin we have forward and downward, make it appear more prominent.

With better posture, that central extra tissue stretches out over more territory, recedes a bit into the body cavity, so looks less prominent. (If this could be an issue for you, Bob & Brad's channel on YouTube has useful diagnostics and exercises for that. They're professional physical therapists with long experience and good credentials. I think they say some dumb things about diet, but I also thing that's outside their scope of practice. Their PT advice seems good.)

If you still have weight to lose, to feel you're at your best weight in general, that's probably the main thing. If you're there, but only recently . . . well, my loose skin kept shrinking for months, I think even into year 2 at goal weight (I was 60-61 at the time, if that matters). At this stage, my personal solution is "don't worry about it", but I'm not very appearance conscious, so I know that's not a universal answer.

Best wishes for finding a solution!

** Explanation of the "uterus thing", in case you haven't seen it, and it's a useful thread in other ways for your question:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10689837/does-this-uterus-make-my-stomach-look-fat/p1