In this video Eric Roberts explains why the common belief that doing hundreds of crunches or other abdominal exercises will specifically melt lower‑belly fat is false. He uses a bathtub analogy to illustrate that fat loss occurs uniformly across the body and can only be achieved by maintaining a sustained calorie deficit—"draining the whole tub". Once the deficit is in place, visible abs require building the abdominal muscles with the correct movements. Roberts introduces a "scrunch‑your‑shirt" cue to ensure proper form and lists effective exercises such as cable crunches, reverse crunches, and decline sit‑ups that compress the torso. He then points out that even with low body fat and developed abs, a protruding stomach can persist because the deep core (transverse abdominis) is weak. He teaches the stomach‑vacuum exercise to train this internal “belt” and keep the belly flat. The video concludes with a three‑step plan—maintain a calorie deficit, perform targeted ab‑building exercises with proper form, and train the deep core with vacuums—and a call‑to‑action for his online coaching program and a related meal‑planning video.
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Doing 100 crunches per day or just eating in a calorie deficit won't make you lose that lower belly fat. I know because I've lost mine, plus helped thousands of clients lose theirs. So here's the brutally honest advice on how to lose that stubborn lower belly fat. The first tip I see so many people get wrong is thinking there are belly fat burning exercises. Doing crunches, leg raises, Planks, thinking that's going to burn away that lower belly fat. It makes sense in theory, but here's how this actually works. Think of your body fat like a bathtub full of water. Your lower belly fat is the front of the bathtub. If you take a glass of water out of the bathtub, you can't just expect— take it from the front of the tub and expect a hole to stay there. The water level drops uniformly Across the entire bathtub. Doing endless crunches is like getting handfuls of water from the front of the tub. You're working really hard, but the water level never actually changes. To be able to get to the floor of the bathtub, you have to drain the entire tub. So the brutally honest solution? You have to be consistently eating in a calorie deficit long enough for your body to finally reach the bottom of the bathtub of its fat stores. And for most people, lower belly fat is the first to arrive and the absolute last to leave. I'm sorry, it just is what it is. But if you relate to this, it doesn't mean you're failing. You're actually normal. You just need to keep going and stay consistent long enough to get that lower belly fat away. It's not about working harder, it's about sticking with it longer. That being said, here's where the diet-only gurus go wrong. You can drain the bathtub All you want. But if there's nothing on the floor of the bathtub to look at, you won't be able to see your stomach look any different. You have to build your ab muscles to be visible once the fat is gone. So you should be doing ab exercises, but you need to do the right ones to build muscle. And that leads me to point number 2. The best ab exercises to build muscle. The 2 mistakes most people make when they're doing exercises to lose their lower belly fat is either A, you're doing exercises like crunches, leg raises, sit-ups with zero control, terrible form, and you just end up working your legs and your hip flexors. Or B, you're doing exercises like a plank or a side plank, and these aren't bad for your abs, but they just won't build ab muscles you can actually see. And these reasons are why you can do all the ab exercises you want but still not see your belly fat change. And so for you to work your ab muscles to see the most change, I want you to think of the front of your t-shirt. If you want to make the words on your shirt disappear, you have to scrunch the shirt down. You have to bring the top of the shirt down to the bottom of the shirt together until the words disappear. So to build your ab muscles, you need to do exercises that scrunch your shirt. Let's take a cable crunch. You're trying to bring your chest and your belly button closer together. Scrunch the shirt and actually round your back like you see me doing here. Or a reverse crunch. You're trying to bring your belly button as close to your chest as possible, scrunching the shirt and rounding your back. Or a decline sit-up. Again, rounding the shirt, scrunching your core together. Hopefully you see the point. If you start doing these exercises, this form, you will build your ab muscles that you will actually see them when you start losing the fat. It's just like building your bicep muscle, and when you lose the fat, you can see your bicep muscle more. But here's the thing, what if you have a low body fat and you've built your ab muscles, but your stomach still sticks out like you've just ate a giant Thanksgiving dinner? Well, this is because your muscles are acting like a loose belt, and in the next step, I'm I'm going to show you how to tighten that belt so your stomach stays pulled in and flat all the time. Point number 3, the hidden muscle for a flat stomach. You can have a low body fat percentage and big ab muscles, but your stomach can still stick out like a balloon. This happens because you're only training the outside muscles that you can see, and you're forgetting inside muscle that holds everything together. If the inside is weak, your gut is going to push forward and your lower belly is going to look No matter how low of a body fat you are and how many crunches you do. Think of this muscle like a belt that lives inside of your body. If you put on a belt and leave it completely loose, it's not gonna do anything to keep pants upright or keep your stomach flat. So to keep your stomach flat, you need to tighten the belt. And so the solution is to train your deep core muscles. This muscle doesn't move your bones, it just pulls your belly button in. in towards your spine. And the exercise is called a stomach vacuum. I like to do this laying on my back. You want to blow all the air out of your lungs and then try to pull your belly button back to your spine. Hold that tight belt for 10 to 20 seconds for 2 to 4 sets. And you can do this before every workout or as a first thing when you wake up in the morning. This will train your stomach to stay pulled in and flat automatically without you having to think about it. So to lose that lower belly fat, number 1, stay in a deficit long enough, empty the bathtub. Number 2, scrunch your shirt doing ab exercises. And number 3, tighten your belt with vacuums, keep it flat. If you want help putting all this together in a personalized plan and having all the guesswork taken out for you so you can just look at it and know exactly what to do, you can click the link in the description below of this video to learn more about my online coaching program. After that, if you want to know exactly what to eat to reach that calorie deficit without feeling hungry, click this video right here where I show you how to set up a full example meal
