If I had tummy issues I'd be sportin the bikini! I have belly issues and the tummy is something I strive for!

To LauraW the best advise I can give at the moment is to increase the cardio - really get your heart rate going and then there's the crunches. The old faithful god awful crunches - I'll post some crunch exercises to help everyone out.

They really do work - I'm starting to see a difference but it did take almost 6 months to see it. The common mistake is to do 10,000 crunches/sit ups and no cardio work. (I almost sound like a professional - and just think it only cost me thousands of dollars for a personal trainer to say the same things) We tend to do the crunches looking for flat ripped up abs and maybe we have them, but its still under the 5,10 20+ pounds of fat that we hold on top of them. Burn the fat and the abs will come.

Hey KarenB

Tankini - you are so cute - I'm starting to believe that I must have looked like a sausage in my last 3 suits. At my heaviest 202 I wore a size 16 bathing suit and it had cut outs in the stomach, chest and was backless. I sound like an over confident freak, I gotta go back and re-examine my last vacation photos. Really I thought I was lookin pretty sexy in my caramel colored suit. Maybe I should send apology notes to the hotel for putting up with me.

To all of my other soon to be bikini wearing friends Welcome to my world of Oh yeah I look good! There will be no selling yourself short or I think I can's - you will be the best looking woman walkin just because we all know what you went through to get where you are. Whomever gets into their suit first we must read about how it felt and how you feel, because good feelings are contagious.

TTFN
Shannon