If you build muscle running up and down your sides – which you'll do by training your obliques too much – you destroy your curves and that hourglass shape. When your obliques are well developed it gives you a straight up and down appearance in your midsection – you'll look boxy rather than curvy.

Do ab workouts make you look fatter?

When you exercise, your heart rapidly pumps blood to your muscles and organs, and this can cause your stomach muscles to temporarily puff up and look larger. Exercise also causes microscopic tears in your muscles. ... If you're not burning fat, the temporary swelling in your ab muscles can make you look heavier.

Do ab workouts make your stomach wider?

Doing abdominal exercises does nothing to reduce your fat layer, but it also does NOT make your belly bigger. For the average person, the fat layer is so much bigger than the muscle layer that adding a little muscle has no appreciable effect on the size of your stomach.