Believe it or not the best exercise to lose belly fat has nothing to do with training the abdominal muscles (crunches, sit-ups, leg raises etc).  One of the biggest misunderstandings people have about losing that belly is also the main reason that most people fail at it miserably.  Working out the muscles underneath your belly does NOT cause you to lose fat in that area!

The reason crunches don’t work is because they work a relatively small muscle group – your abdominal muscles, which are tiny compared to your quads and back muscles for example.  Even if you really strain yourself with those crunches, you’ll still only be losing small amounts of fat from your buttocks or wherever else you are genetically determined to lose fat from first, NOT your belly.  So the idea behind the best exercise to lose belly fat is that it creates a sufficient metabolic demand to burn as much fat as possible.  It does this by engaging the larger muscle groups, or ideally all of the muscle groups in your body.