I's have always favoured diet and exercises that focus on core strength in order to train and tame my's abdominals.

Dieting always go first because, in my's experience, if you do certain training and exercise reigimes before you diet and lose a certain ammount of weight, your abdominals tend to fill the area of the fat and still retain the same basic shape of the stomach fat whilst becoming stronger. This can be seen in many Western Martial artists and strongmen.

Core Strength training means exercises that focus on strengthing your chest, back and stomach through non-weight lifting methods. The basics of these can be found in many high energy martial arts -especially compedative Wu-shu and Capoeira- and dance were fast paced and acrobatic movement is essential.

My's favourite exercises including the "hang-lift" -where you strap some light weights to your ankles and suspend yourself from a bar via your hands, the crooks of your elbows or from artpits (with your arms going back over the bar) and hold yourself in a completely vertical postion for as long as you can. As you progress, you begin to lift your legs (using your abdominals and lower back only) or pull your arms up so your abdominals and back and tensed and hold yourself again. And "upside down press-up" -were you simply go into a hand stand and hold yourself for a minute. After a minuet has passed, you press yourself down like a push-up and then hold yourself again. The challange is to see how many you can do, going as slowly as possible.

Those exercises may not work for you or you may be, for whatever reason, unable to do them, but you have be supplied with many others that are bound to work. All you need to do is experiement with what works best for you and stick with it.
All the best to you, dear Rastra, in your endeavour.
Peace
The Pimp NeonBlack

This is ESPECIALLY true if you "lock in" your feet under a bed frame or other solid object.

Another great exercise is hanging leg lifts.  Hang off of a chin up bar and do leg lifts.  If you think that is too easy, try bringing your knees up to your nose! [this will also engage your arms, shoulders, and back]