Six-Pack Abs Program Step 1: Diet
One of the most common mistakes people tend to make when trying to get lean and have their abs show is dropping their carbohydrate and fat intake. Surviving on protein alone is not going to get you the body you want. Your body needs carbohydrates for energy and without them it will rob your muscle stores. So you will end up losing weight, but not get the buff body you want. Carbohydrates are necessary to power your training and cardio sessions as well as assisting in the recovery of your muscles, so taking them away completely is not a good idea. Also, having the right fats such as Omega 3 in your diet will actually help you get leaner quicker by helping stabilise blood sugar levels and allowing your body to use fat for energy more efficiently.
I recommend you start out with the calorie intake I suggested earlier in this book or by using the nutritional calculator. Do you really need to count the exact calories? I am a firm believer that if you watch what you are putting in your mouth, there is no need to. I personally don’t, but I do have a rough ball park figure of how much I am approximately eating. So don’t stress yourself too much with the exact numbers – you are not going to get fat indulging in veggies and lean proteins. Just try and get a rough idea of how many calories you are taking in. The main reason for this is to make sure you are getting enough protein in your diet and not too much unnecessary fat.
Once you have a basic idea of how much food you are eating we can then slowly start to make adjustments on a week-by-week basis. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, to have your abdominals appear you need to drop your body fat levels. The easiest way to do this is to create a calorie deficit, by either reducing the amount of calories you eat, or doing more cardio training.
To get ripped I don’t recommend you rush into cutting the number of calories you take in daily straight away, particularly carbohydrates: instead, change them. Building a lean body requires a sensible nutritional plan – and one super-food category that can make a massive difference in getting ultra-lean are unprocessed plant foods. Plant foods include all things that come from the ground including vegetables, fruits, grains and legumes. These low-energy carbohydrate sources promote steady bloody sugar and insulin levels. This means no energy slumps during the day, more efficient metabolism of fat, and effective nutrient transport into your muscles. By including more plant foods into your diet they add up to a stronger, leaner and healthier body.
A high intake of vegetables which are high in naturally-occurring fibre is one of the real secrets to a lean physique. The reason why vegetables are so effective for fat loss is that they provide you with a large quantity of food to eat but add very few calories. This helps trick your metabolism into staying elevated during calorie restriction because of the large amount of food your body has to process.
If you want really low body fat percentages then an increased intake of vegetables is essential. All veggies are nutritionally dense, yet low in calorie content, so choose from a wide variety. Vegetables help keep you full and keep blood sugar concentrations steady so that the muscle-building and fat-burning processes are not interrupted.
In the next section is some sample diets incorporating more plant foods. You do not have to copy them exactly. You can use them to get an idea on how to structure your diet. Note that we will still keep our pre- and post-workout meals intact. During this time all the nutrients are directed towards muscle building [5] and will not impede the fat loss process, so it’s important to not change the carbs in these meals.
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Free Six Pack Abs Diet
