Why Fad Diets Don’t Work Part Two
As though that wasn’t enough, starving your body will put it into a ‘famine mode’ as it will believe there is a food shortage (why else wouldn’t you be feeding it?). This will then cause it to store food as fat far more readily meaning the minute you resume your ordinary diet your weight will ‘bounce’ back up to what it was before, and possibly even go heavier. Not only does this defeat the object of going on that diet in the first place, but it also places stress on the heart as it has to deal with a constantly changing system.
This also leaves the body constantly craving sweet foods, and means that it will want to seek out things such as chocolate and cake to comfort it. As cravings are one of the biggest problems when losing weight, exacerbating them is obviously not desirable. Even without the cravings, sticking to such a diet would simply be unpleasant and unsociable. When you go to a restaurant for a family meal are you really going to take a bottle of a baby food with you? Fad diets like these also don’t work because they’re simply impractical.
The solution then is to yes cut down fat and carbs, but not entirely. At the same time make sure you seek out good fats (essential fatty acids such as omega 3) and complex carbs rather than simple ones (pasta and bread rather than sweets). Then just eat less of everything incrementally, but keeping the ratios the same as those your body is used to. At the same time supplement this new diet with a training routine.
This may be far slower than a fad diet to yield visible results, but in the long run it will leave you with more lasting results and better overall health.
Why Fad Diets Don’t Work Part One
To have visible abs you simply need to have 7% or lower body fat. This is then involves exercise to burn fat, and a good diet that will help the body to keep that fat off. As losing weight and toning abs is such a popular objective, this has lead to the creation of a whole industry of ‘fad diets’ and special programmes developed to help lose fat quickly and to recreate celebrity physiques. But unfortunately they aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
The first thing to realise when picking a diet for fat loss however is that fad diets will not work. The central concept behind most fad diets is to entirely cut out one element of your diet, or even all of the diets. The victims here often being carbohydrates and fats. Some diets even recommend surviving on just baby food while others go even further suggesting just syrup!
These diets are doomed to failure from the start. We are designed as omnivores due to the environment we developed in. That’s the way our bodies are wired and to go against that will not help us to lose weight – in fact it will have quite the opposite effect and cause us serious problems for our health. For example, eliminating fat from our diet will cause our skin and scalp to become flaky, our hair to become thin and our nails to break. At the same time fat is crucial in helping us to utilise the protein in our body to heal wounds and build muscle. In this way then, eliminating even fat will cause more health problems than weight loss.
At the same time, eliminating carbohydrates will cause problems with energy, leaving our bodies with no glycogen to burn during the day. This will leave us feeling lethargic and possibly even depressed, and will severely damage our workouts in the gym (which would be a far more useful way to burn fat).
The Secret to a Good Mid-Section
Ripped abs are a great achievement, but on their own they can look fairly unimpressive as they’ll be isolated – a six pack floating in a sea of flab or flesh and bones. At the same time training just the stomach can put a strain on the body if the other muscles aren’t trained to a relative degree as it will pull against the bones and ligaments with no support or counter-force.
To have abs that will both look good and prove effective then, it’s important to train the rest of the body and not neglect the pecs, biceps, triceps and arms; most importantly though you need to train the supporting muscles around the rest of the mid section and those around the abs and abdomen.
The first of these to train are the obliques. The obliques are the muscles that reside on either side of the abs and look like diagonal lines bellow the ribs. With ripped obliques on either side of the abs the whole mid section then becomes a lot more interesting to look at and a lot more detailed which actually highlights the work you’ve put into the abs. To train these add twists to the end of sit ups.
The next are the serratus muscles. These reside just above the obliques and on the outside of the ribs. Otherwise they are similar to the obliques and so continue the ‘pattern’ up the body. At the same time you should train your pecs to protrude over your stomach to make the abs look flatter in comparison. If your abs protrude, even from muscle, and your pecs look flat it can create the appearance of a ‘gut’, especially over a t-shirt.
Finally you should train the back to provide that counter force and to help stabilise your core. This will prevent difficulties occurring the in the future and will also give you more power when twisting or bending.
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The Science of Working Out Part Two
Once the ATP and creatine has run out however the body will have to look elsewhere for energy and the next port of call is glycogen stored in the muscles. This glycogen is then split into glucose and then again to yield four ATP molecules. This system is known as the glycogen lactic acid system and can provide an additional 1.5 minutes of energy. It is however much slower than the phosphogen system and also results in the unwanted by-product ‘lactic acid’ which collects in the muscles and creates that ‘soreness’ that you feel in your abs after a minute or so of sit ups.
If exertion continues further however the body will move on to its third system of extracting energy – the ‘aerobic system’ (which is where the term aerobic exercise comes from). Here the body ‘burns’ fat and carbohyrdrates stored in the cells around the body and transports them around the blood to the muscles for energy. This can sustain and athlete for two hours or more. Any exercise that lasts longer than 1 minute and 43 seconds then becomes aerobic exercise and will cause the individual to begin burning calories and losing weight. Unfortunately the order in which the body burns fat for energy can not be dictated making targeted fat loss impossible. However over time extended aerobic activity will begin to remove fat cells in the flesh covering the abs and so expose them.
This explains how the body uses energy to continue exertion. The other piece of the puzzle however is understanding how it uses exertion to build muscle. Here, by using resistance against the muscles, the gym goer purposefully causes tiny tears in the muscle fibres called ‘microtears’. While recovering the body then repairs these tears using the protein (amino acids) from other plant and animal sources consumed in the diet to repair these tears using satellite cells (cells that wait around the area). When the tears are repaired however, they are repaired to be thicker than they originally were leading to ‘hypertrophy’ – the technical term for muscles increasing in size. Protein and rest then are just as important for building muscle as exercising, and combining this with aerobic training to burn the fat will result in large, strong and visible abs.
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The Science of Working Out Part One
When you work out or train you are working with your biology to encourage your body to adapt and grow. For this reason a good understanding of that biology can help to make the whole process much easier, and the most successful bodybuilders and fitness trainers will be the ones who understand how their body utilises energy and builds their muscles.
The first part of that equation is the energy, and understanding how your body gets and uses energy can help you to keep your workouts at a high intensity without ‘burning out’.
All living beings use a substance called ‘ATP’ to get their energy. This stands for ‘Andenosine Triphosphate’, which relates to the fact that it is made up of three separate phosphates powerfully bonded together. To utilise ATP for its energy, the body then breaks these bonds which releases the energy holding them together and results in the by-products ADP and AMP (andenosine diphosphate and andeonsine monophosphate, made up of two and one phosphate(s) respectively). The body stores a certain amount of this ATP in the muscles ready for easy access, and this is its first port of call for quick explosive movements.
The muscles however only contain enough ATP for about 3 seconds of use. Once the body has used up this supply of ATP then it will then begin to ‘recycle’ the ADP and AMP to recombine them using the supply of creatine phosphate produced in the kidneys (this is why bodybuilders take creatine for extra energy). This again however will only supply an additional ten seconds of energy meaning that the system of localised ATP, known as the ‘phosphogen’ system can only be used for 13 seconds. This system then can only be used alone for short sets and is the method of energy used by powerlifters.
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The Basics of Getting Good Abs
Getting good abs is a fairly straightforward business that nevertheless stumps a lot of people. In many ways it is less easy to train the abs than the other muscles, simply because those muscles control appendages, whereas your abs are in the centre of your body. What can you lift with the centre of your body? At the same time if you’re overweight it will only make your biceps look bigger, your abs on the other hand will be smothered.
The first and most important way to get good abs then is to lose weight and maintain a low bodyfat. If your bodyfat is bellow 7% then you will have visible abs, even if they aren’t particularly strong. To achieve a low body fat you will have to use a lot of cardiovascular (aerobic) exercise to force your body to burn your fat reserves, while using a low calorie diet to capitalise on that hard work.
In addition to lowering your bodyfat you will also need to strengthen the abs themselves. This will create abs that bulge and can be seen poking through your stomach as opposed to ones that appear as flat lines; which is the difference between someone who works out and someone who just has a fast metabolism.
To train the abs you will have to use mostly calisthenics (to get around that problem of no hands attached to the stomach). This will involve exercises such as sit ups and crunches. Making life easier though, the abs are used in every other exercise you do in the gym, from pull ups to the bench press. Just working out then will improve your abs, even if you don’t specifically focus on that area.
To have good looking abs and a powerful mid section though you also need to focus on the muscles that surround the abs such as the obliques that are situated either side of the abs under the ribs, and the serratus muscles which are just above.
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Supplements for Building Good Abs Part Two
Guarana Continued: As Guarana is a stimulant this gives it two properties useful for getting ripped and toned abs. The first of these is that it speeds up the body’s metabolism – its ability to burn fat for energy – which makes Guarana an effective fat burner on its own (that’s nevertheless safer than most). At the same time Guarana can boost energy, increasing the intensity and duration of a workout. It is found in most energy drinks.
Caffeine: Believe it or not, drinking lots of coffee and tea can actually be a good way to burn weight. Caffeine is a stimulant that works in a manner similar to Guarana, speeding up the metabolism and so burning fat. At the same time it can also increase energy to allow for workouts at times that the user would otherwise be tired. However it shouldn’t be directly before a workout as it can place stress on the heart by exciting the circulatory system.
Creatine: Creatine supplies the body with the ability to recycle discarded ADP and AMP to create ATP – the ‘energy currency’ of all life that the muscles use to exert themselves. This then helps the user to get more out of a workout and can increase their ability to use the phosphogen system – providing more explosive energy with less build up of lactic acid.
NO2: NO2 or nitric oxide is a fairly new supplement that many bodybuilders use to increase the flow of blood through the veins. This then provides the muscles with more oxidative energy allowing them to go for longer and exert more power. Additionally this effect creates the feeling of ‘pump’ which many bodybuilders find inspiring.
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Supplements for Building Good Abs Part One
Supplements are a fairly controversial topic, and many who don’t understand how they work find themselves alarmed that their family or friends would consider ‘putting such things into [their] system’. This is a fairly knee jerk reaction however that fails to look at the facts, and many supplements are no different to a lot of the things we eat. That said however, one or two of the more intense supplements may put a slight strain on the system while others might be a complete waste of time and money – especially if the focus is on building abs specifically. Bellow then are a list of supplements with a brief description of how they work and whether they can prove useful for improving your abs.
Protein Shake: Protein shakes consist simply of protein, normally from a substance called ‘whey’ which is a by-product of the cheese making process that comes from cheese. This then supplies the body with amino acids which is what it uses to rebuild the muscle when it suffers microtears (the process by which hypertrophy – muscle growth – occurs). While fairly expensive, protein shake is also invaluable when it comes to increasing muscle mass and can actually taste very good mixed with milk. It’s usefulness depends on the exact targets of the user however, as it is mostly used for building muscle as opposed to toning. As abs alone will be visible at 7% body fat with no training protein shakes are not essential for getting a ‘ripped’ looking mid section.
Guarana: Guarana is an energy supplement that many take in the place of caffeine. It is preferable for many to caffeine due to it acting over a longer period of time and being less prone to causing jitters and damaging sleep cycles. It is a herbal supplement that works for many individuals.
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Sit Up Variations
The sit up is one of the most basic and recognised of all exercises and is the go-to method for building strong abs. Overtime however our bodies can adapt to an exercise to such a point where it becomes almost pointless to continue to use the same movement. This is why bodybuilders use a process called ‘muscle confusion’ to mix and match variations of exercises to ‘keep the muscles guessing’.
Fortunately the humble sit up is an incredibly versatile exercise and can be altered in a variety of ways to change the focus and mix it up. Bellow are a list of variations.
- Use a stick behind the head between the hands. This is an advanced move and users should be careful not to ‘push’ the stick into the back of their head. This way the abs become even more isolated.
- Use punches at the end of a sit up and hit a bag or pad in front of you.
- ‘Twist’ at the end of each sit up bringing your elbows to alternate knees.
- Sit up while on an incline bench to provide more resistance from gravity and to change the angle and so the exact part of the abs used.
- Sit up while holding weights or a medicine ball to your chest to increase the resistance. Again this is a fairly advanced option.
- Hold the sit up at the most difficult position or go more slowly while lowering to engage the slow twitch muscle fibres and improve endurance.
- Alternate between sit ups and crunches.
- Have a friend firmly but gently strike you in the abs every time you lie down – this forces you to tense in the relaxed state to avoid getting winded.
- Combine variations: hold weights while on an incline bench, twist while on an incline bench, punch holding weights etc.
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Showing Off Your Abs
Having great abs is a good feeling, and it’s a sure fire ‘trump card’ that will help you attract the opposite sex or impress mates and rivals. The problem however, is that they’re hidden beneath shirts, t-shirts and jumpers 24 hours a day. By the time anyone sees them, usually the hard work is done and the person has already been sufficiently impressed.
This can be disheartening when you’ve spent a lot of time and effort to make sure your abs are ripped and cut while being strong at the same time (of course strong abs shouldn’t be about vanity but are very good for your health blah blah… you get the picture). However there are several ways you can expose your cut abs to the world and impress that guy or girl working in the office opposite you.
One quick trick is to wear a fairly tight jumper over a shirt or t-shirt. Make sure the shirt or t-shirt isn’t tucked in, then pull the jumper off over your head. This will then drag the t-shirt or shirt up long enough to expose your impressive mid section to the world while you fake looking embarrassed.
Another method is to wear shirts that border on transparent. This way you can just hint at the fact that you’re packing heat underneath by showing off the slight outline. Similarly a particularly tight top that clings to the stomach can have a similar effect.
For women it’s of course possible to get away with crop tops which can allow them to show off their abs all day long, though this is only really appropriate in certain scenarios and weather. The only place it’s acceptable to expose the mid region regardless of gender is at the beach or when swimming. Take some NO2 (nitric oxide) just before you go to rush the blood to your abs and get them looking tight and ripped.
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