How To Get 6 Pack Abs

Losing Weight and Building 6-Pack Abs  

Losing weight is a billion dollar industry in America, there are thousands of devices and programs you can buy that promise to get you "6-pack abs fast" but they don't work!  If it were as easy as buying a pill, shake, or ab machine then the shopping malls across America would be filled with men who have rippling washboard abs-of-death but what do we see instead?  Obesity everywhere!

 You can't buy 6-pack abs!

I'll let you in on the secret of getting 6-pack abs for free - are you ready?  Here it is, its a two step process: eat less and exercises more!  Lets clear up one huge misconception right now, ab machines will NOT get you 6-pack abs!  95% of the work in getting 6-pack abs is losing bodyfat and no ab machine will do that.  You can have rippling muscular abs but if they are covered with an inner tube of fat then nobody is going see 'em.

A common sense approach involving exercise and nutrition is all that is required to get ripped, washboard abs.  Just a warning though, there is nothing fast about losing weight and getting ripped, it's simple but takes time and dedication. Proper nutrition does not mean diet though! "Diets" lead to deprivation and hunger which eventually leads to binging - a lose-lose proposition. "Diets" offer only temporary weight loss, when you go off them, the weight comes right back. What we want is permanent weight loss! Yo-yo dieting is way too much work, just learn to make smart nutritional choices and the weight comes off and stays off for good!

Smart nutritional choices + exercise = ripped abs

You cant 'target' fat removal unless you are using a machete.  All you can do is lose weight and let the body decide where the fat is coming off.  When you have lost enough weight, the belly and love handles will disappear.  Lets talk about expectations, you cant get ripped in 10 days or even 30 days.  A good weight loss program will let you lose the weight gradually, a pound a week is a good rate - 2 pounds a week max.  If you are 50lbs overweight count on 6 months to a year to remove it.  Losing fat at this gradual rate means you will never be hungry or feel deprived. Another reason to lose the weight gradually is so that you don't burn off muscle - who wants to lose muscle? Nobody!

If you already have 4-pack abs or 6-pack abs (8-12% bodyfat) and want to remove the final bit of fat over your lower abs to get a true 8-pack washboard, then the advanced carb cycling
technique is for you.

Step 1 for fat loss: Exercise

Lets look at what its going to take to lose that bodyfat and get abs, remember I said "eat less and exercise more", lets start with the 'exercise more' part.  You lose fat by burning off more calories than you eat, pretty simple huh?. To burn off the calories you need to do at least 30 min of cardiovascular exercise EVERY day.  What constitutes cardiovascular exercise, good question. Good cardio is anything that elevates your heart rate to 70%-85% of your maximum for 30-60 minutes:

Age	75%	85%	Max Heart Rate
20	150 BPM	170 BPM	200 BPM
30	142 BPM	161 BPM	190 BPM
40	135 BPM	153 BPM	180 BPM
50	127 BPM	144 BPM	170 BPM
60	120 BPM	136 BPM	160 BPM
70	113 BPM	127 BPM	150 BPM

By the way, its a very good idea to consult your doctor before starting any exercise program, your target rates may differ from the chart above if you have medical conditions.  For a young person in good health, jogging or swimming is a great form of cardiovascular exercise.  Walking and cycling can be good cardio but you need to push yourself to walk really fast, no sauntering strolls - wearing a heart rate monitor while walking or cycling can help keep you from lollygagging.    At the gym, I shake my head every time I see people "exercising" on the stationary bikes using level 1 and reading the paper -what exactly do they think they are accomplishing? Their heart rate is about the same as if they were watching TV or sleeping! If you don't have a heart rate monitor, listening to high BPM music that you really like is a great way to keep your heart rate elevated too. If you find your iPhone/iPod cords too constraining during your cardio, get a iPhone remote or wireless headset.

Now lets talk about HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training), this is all the rage. There is research that its burns off more calories in a shorter time but I still don't like it, why? Because I have found that most people do interval training with running and that their incidence of injury skyrockets. When you are injured you cant do any cardio, so I don't recommend HIIT running workouts except for elite athletes. If you want to do interval training, I suggest you do it cycling or swimming rather than running. The other thing people fail to realize is although HIIT burns more calories per unit time, you still need to keep your heart rate elevated for 20-60 minutes a day. People often ask if they can do 10 minutes of intervals rather than 20 minutes of steady cardio - No! You must keep you heart rate elevated for 20-60min. If one woman can make a baby in nine months, does that mean that nine women can make a baby in 1 month? No! Good things just take time! Find a way to enjoy your cardio rather than looking for ways to get it over with!

Its not just cardiovascular exercise that is important, weight lifting is just as important in my opinion in the quest to lose bodyfat. Weight lifting burns off calories too but more importantly it helps increase your metabolic rate so you burn off more calories 24hrs a day. Muscle is very "expensive" for the body to maintain and the more muscle you have, the more calories that are burned off every hour maintaining it. The more muscular you become, the easier it is to stay ripped.

Remember 95% of getting 6-pack abs is losing the bodyfat, the rest is ab exercises to make the ab muscles bigger.  For that we will do crunches and you don't need anything except your carpeted floor. 

Caution: You can always out-eat your exercise!

A word of warning, don't fall into the trap of thinking that because you are exercising so much you can eat what you want - you cant.  No matter how much you exercise, you can eat more than you burn off and end up gaining fat rather than losing it unless you accompany your cardio program with good nutrition. 

Step 2 for fat loss: Good Nutrition

First of all, 'good nutrition' does not mean diet!  If you are ON a diet then you are admitting to yourself that it is a temporary thing and you will go OFF it later.  We want to change your eating habits permanently!  Good nutrition, no calorie counting, no hunger, and you will still lose weight - sound too good to be true?  Well, kinda. 
Lets start with the basics - many small meals.  You cant lose weight eating one or two meals a day, it puts your body in starvation mode and lowers your metabolism.  You need 6 meals a day. I know your are thinking already, "I CANT eat 6 time a day, I don't have time!"   Well, I cant cook and even I can eat 6 healthy meals a day.

The 6 small meals a day you are eating need to be well balanced - what does that mean?  The bulk of every meal will be veggies and whole grains, some form of lean protein (beans, dairy, meat), and a small amout of fruit.  Your body doesn't store protein, you cant just have a big steak at dinner and call that your daily protein.  This is especially important if you are doing a weightlifting program in conjunction with your weight loss program. Every one of you meals needs to have 1/6 of your daily protein! The below chart gives you the approximate amount of calories and protein you need in each of your six meals based on your current weight:

To lose 1 pound fat per week
Current Weight	Calories	Protein
280lbs (127kg)	610cals x 6 meals = 3700 cals	46g x 6 meals= 280g protein
260 lbs (118kg)	560 cals x 6 meals = 3400 cals	43g x 6 meals= 260g protein
240 lbs (109kg)	510 cals x 6 meals = 3100 cals	40g x 6 meals= 240g protein
220 lbs (100kg)	460 cals x 6 meals = 2800 cals	36g x 6 meals= 220g protein
200 lbs (91kg)	410 cals x 6 meals = 2500 cals	33g x 6 meals= 200g protein
180 lbs (81kg)	360 cals x 6 meals = 2200 cals	30g x 6 meals= 180g protein
160 lbs (72kg)	310 cals x 6 meals = 1900 cals	26g x 6 meals= 160g protein
140 lbs (63kg)	265 cals x 6 meals = 1600 cals	23g x 6 meals= 140g protein

If you want to calculate precisely your nutritional needs, use my new calorie calculator! Ok, now you know how much protein that each of your 6 meals must have and how many calories in can have. Now, what to eat? Can you eat whatever you want as long as it has the protein required and doesn't exceed the calories in the above chart? No! The quality of every calorie counts!!! Each meal must:

• must contain 1/6 of your daily protein requirement (calculated in the above paragraph)
• must contain lots of veggies without sauces (fresh or steamed), the more the better. Vegetables fill you up with just a few calories, this is the key to avoiding hunger!
• must have no more than 20% of the calories from fat (only good fats like flax, avocados, olives, nuts)
• must have whole grain carbs for energy like oats, brown rice, or quinoa. No simple carbs allowed like sugar or white flour products
• must have a small serving of fruit

By the way, I get asked this all the time - There is no such thing as a "snack" - strike that word from your vocabulary! Everything is a meal and must meet the above criteria, period.

Notice something really interesting in the above calorie chart, as you lose weight you need to eat less and less if you want to continue losing weight. If you plateau in your weight loss, its probably because you have not adjusted your caloric intake as the above table suggests.   If you weigh 300lbs and eat 410calories per meal, you will lose weight rapidly at first then your weight will stabilize at 200lbs and you wont lose any more unless you decrease your intake further.  Use this chart as a starting point to give you approximate portion sizes, stick with that a month and see what happens with your weight and adjust the portion size to help you zero in on 1lb/wk fat loss.  With the meals I show, the portion sizes are appropriate for someone around 180lbs.
Good nutrition also means eating the correct amount,portion control is very important! Oddly enough, the reason that most people fail to get as lean as they want is not becuase they eat too much but because they eat too little! Portion control doesnt mean diet and deprivation, it means eating enough so that you are not hungry but not so much that you gain fat.

People often ask if they can skip the cardio if they have really, really good nutrition - NO! You need to do your daily cardio!

Although I present most of the same concepts here, his book does a much, much better job. If you don't feel like the information I present here on losing fat makes sense to you, I highly recommend his book Burn the Fat.

Lets talk about protein powders and weight gain powders.  If you follow these nutritional suggestions, you don't need any supplements or protein powders - you will get plenty of protein and vitamins in the meals suggested here.  If you have trouble eating 6 real meals a day then protein powder can be a valuable dietary aid because it lets you get the protein you need without any calories from fat or carbs. In a pinch, mix the protein powder (or organic protein powder) with nonfat milk, soy milk, rice milk or orange juice for an inexpensive meal replacement. Remember though, real food with all its fiber, vitamins, and minerals is always best! "Weight Gain" powders never make good meal replacements, they would better be named "Fat Gain" powder and who wants to gain fat??? I am a pseudo-vegetarian -  I only eat meat/fish/chicken about once a week.  Because of my low meat consumption, protein powder in the form of dairy whey is my most important source of protein.  I like dairy whey without any artificial stuff in it, the product from optimum nutrition is the one I have been using for seven years.  

Gain muscle and lose fat at the same time!

Yes! You can simultaneously gain muscle and lose fat, especially if you are beginning or intermediate bodybuilder - its tougher for advanced bodybuilders. Don't believe those bulker/cutters who claim that you have to get fat to gain muscle, that's a myth! To gain muscle at the same time as you are losing fat follow exactly the same nutritional advice as above - no difference. To add muscle, all you need to do is add a good resistance training program.