Okay, so sit-ups cannot make you fatter but they can make you look fatter. omigosh…. who knew? (smiling smugly, giggling behind my hand, raising my hand, ooh, ooh, pick me: ‘I Did! I Knew!”‘)

So, I thought I’d share my non-rocket science info with you so you can do your sit-ups and NOT have to buy a larger pant size as you get stronger. It’s the little things in life that make us happy, right? Next week, I’ll share the secret of life but for this week: plain old flat-tummy creating sit-ups.

Here’s the deal. Your muscles will form in the shape you put them. If you pooch your tummy while doing a sit-up then you are forming a permanent poochy tummy. If you flatten your tummy while doing a sit-up you create a flat tummy. See? Not rocket science. Just a well-kept secret. It makes me, as a Pilates Instructor, feel important and needed.

Here’s how you do it. Engage your transversus abdominus muscle. (Yup, that muscle you were just talking about with your girlfriends at lunch today.)The transversus works like your mother’s girdle. It sucks everything in and streamlines and makes everything flat and sexy. How do you engage it? That’s a little trickier. First you have to find it. Cough. Laugh. Feel your stomach engage? That’s your transversus. To engage it without hacking or guffawing then you can imagine that a 2-year-old is getting ready to punch you in the gut. So you tighten. Like a girdle. Remember this is a 2-year-old we are talking about so just a little tightening. You aren’t practicing to be the new circus act where they shoot cannon balls at your gut so don’t overdo it.

Now add this to your ‘girdle tightening’: Pull your abs away from your panty line at your hip-line. We are talking about the new ‘lower’ panty line here; not the panty line when you were pregnant or six-years-old. This isn’t something you do just when you do sit-ups. You can do this all the time and then never do a sit-up and still have flatter abs. cool, huh? But it is very important to do this when you are doing sit-ups or you are going to create poochy, bunchy ab muscles. I don’t want to hear it when you have to wear sweats everywhere because you have GINORMOUS ab muscles. Do ‘em right. Flatten your tummy. Look great.

Teaser: secret to life in the next post…