toning and loosing the fat of the tummy

There is no such thing as spot reducing exercises. You need to burn fat overall. I would suggest any exercise that burns calories such as various cardio exercises. To tone things like planks are great. The more I read, the more I am convinced that things like leg lifts, crunches, situps and the like are not very effective and can be damaging to you.

What kind of work out would you like to do?

The Elliptical works great for loosing your sides!

There is no such thing as spot reducing exercises. You need to burn fat overall. I would suggest any exercise that burns calories such as various cardio exercises. To tone things like planks are great. The more I read, the more I am convinced that things like leg lifts, crunches, situps and the like are not very effective and can be damaging to you.

We must be reading the same things. Something interesting; if on was to stand up and mimic the movement of a simple sit-up, they would see how incredibly unnatural the movment is. I have reduced my abdominal exercises to weighted hyper extensions on an excersize ball not raising above 20(ish) degrees, and vertical legg lifts. It is much more gentle on my neck and back... and I am seeing quick results in areas I have never been able to develop.

What kind of abb work have you been up too?

My ab work is squats with weight (it is amazing how that works the whole core) push-up (also amazing how it works the whole core when you hold the plank position tightly while doing them) and straight forward planks. I want to start using side planks and get a stability ball so I can do planks on it and do rollouts and jackknives. This is part of my resistance training.

Cardio, I do Insanity (not the program just various workouts) Tae-bo, and interval training on my recumbent stationary bike. As it is winter I also do as much cross-country skiing as I can.

To the original poster you might want to check out Interval Training. A good site to look at is http://www.intervaltraining.net/ where you can find out about Interval Training and he has workouts available. I am doing the "Lose Belly Fat" workout right now, which is basically a cardio program with resistance stuff added later. It is quite good, although I use it as part of my workout routine, if you just started working out you may want to make it the majority of your workout. I have been working out steadily now for more than a year 4-5 times a week. I am still no more than at intermediate level, but it is a far cry from where I was even 6 months again not to mention a year ago.

YOU ARE SO RIGHT ON THAT!