Diet for Fab Abs

When you think of great abs and washboard stomachs, you might start thinking about thousands of crunches and hours of sit-ups. In reality, the secret to getting great abs is your diet, not endless ab work. There is a saying that six packs are made in the kitchen, not the gym.

Considerations

Studies by the Mayo Clinic and the University of Louisiana show that in terms of weight loss, nutrition is more of a factor than exercise. This is because weight loss depends on your calorific deficit, or the difference between the amount of calories you consume and the amount your body burns through exercise and daily activity, with all but the longest and most intense workouts paling in comparison to reducing your meal portions when it comes to altering your calorie balance.

Significance

Even without thousands of sit-ups, most people have sufficient abdominal muscle development for what is traditionally regarded as a six-pack, a common indicator of good abs. However, most people will have a relatively high body fat percentage that means their abs will be obscured. Personal trainer Charles Inniss states that your abs will become visible at between 5 percent and 10 percent for men and between 12 percent and 18 percent for women.

Types

Most diets are based around low calorie consumption or low carbohydrate consumption. Low calorie diets simply work by limiting the amount of calories you take in so that you begin to lose weight, as you burn more than you consume. Low carbohydrate diets remove most of the carbohydrates from your diets, which tends to have a similar effect as removing calories from your diet. These ketogenic, or fat burning diets also encourage your body to burn fat stores in the body, as it is deprived of the carbohydrates in food that it normally prefers to use.

Features

Whatever your diet plan, you should avoid food and drink with excess calories and low nutritional value. This includes processed food of all kind, especially processed sugar, white bread and pasta, fruit juice and especially alcohol. These are high in calories, meaning that your body will end up with an excess of calories for its requirements which it will then store as fat.

Exercise

Even though diet is the biggest factor, exercise can help you strip away fat faster. The best options are steady cardio for long periods, high intensity interval training, or weight lifting. Moderate intensity exercise of around 50 percent of your VO2 max burns the highest proportion of fat for energy. High intensity cardio burns less fat proportionately but more calories overall, as well as taking less time for a workout. Weight lifting adds muscle mass, which increases your metabolism, therefore increasing your ability to burn fat as your muscles require more energy.