The 4 Unpopular Realities of 6-pack abs and “Lean Muscle”
In the 1980’s and early 90’s it was having large arms, like, stupid large, like Arnold in the opening handshake scene of Predator large.
But now it is, unfortunately, all about the six-pack. Everyone wants them, seemingly everyone has the answer for how to get them.
Of course, they do. Because if they didn’t how could they sell you the new pill or workout? How could they tote the benefits of a new cleanse or some god awful Goop product.
They couldn’t.
Because the reality of weight loss, of getting that six-pack which really is all about hitting that magic 10–12% body fat percentage (aka weight loss) is about a few very simple things.
Look at this man beast.
What separates that chunky love muffin on the left from that bronzed hunk of weird angles on the right?
Calories. That’s it, one has a surplus to put on muscles on the off season, the other is in a deficit. All those lovely little muscles are hiding under that pudge (including that…sweet jesus, that 8 PACK!) but he has to burn more then he eats to get there. So… that brings us to our first point.
- Go into caloric deficit.
Yes, burn more then you eat. That’s it. Stupid simple, right?
So why is this not shouted upon the mountaintop? Why is every new magazine and book not just have one page with this on it? Because this little unsexy mantra sells:
0 Gym Membership
0 Health drinks
0 Diet books
0 Magazines
Lots of Brocolli
Of course, people will say.
Caloric deficit is important. In fact, if you look at most diets (which by the way have been proven again and again to get the user to gain more back then before they began) they are in one way, shape or form about getting you to eat less.
“But dieting is useless without a good exercise routine!” Screams the well-tanned fitness instructors across the globe.
Well, two things, first, Iggy Pop again,
This dude never went into a gym. He also probably never went into a kitchen much, unless they were doing lines on the counter top.
And second,
2. “Exercise is essentially useless for losing weight”
“In general, exercise by itself is pretty useless for weight loss,” says Eric Ravussin, a professor at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge , La., and an expert on weight loss
Yup, right from the horse’s mouth. Unless you are training for some grueling super-ultra-cardio endurance marathon, hitting the gym and breathing hard 4–5 even 6 days a week isn’t going to do much for you.
Elliptical machines drastically exaggerate the calories you burn so you will, you guessed it, keep using the fucking things.
Running and jogging are well and good for cardiovascular health but often leave you hungry enough that you eat more than you ever burned during the actual exercise.
“I’ve been making serious gains in the last few months at the gym, put on ten pounds of solid muscle” ← that is almost assuredly 95% fat.
“Man you are jacked, with all that muscle you can probably eat whatever you want” The average pound of muscle burns approximately 6 additional calories a day. Put on a pound of muscle a week (which would be pushing it) and enjoy an additional bag of m and m’s each month.
On top of that,
3. Your body does not care where you want to lose fat.
Want that 6-pack? Want to pull-out that tummy fat but keep all of it in those other, more alluring places? Yeah, your body doesn’t give a fuck.
The only way for something to look cut or lean is to reduce the amount of fat at the site so that the musculature can be exposed.
Wanna show off those sexy legs? You are going to have to reduce your total body fat. Everything is going to go down at the same time, not at one place or another.
Granted, doing exercises for a particular body part enlarges the muscle there but does nothing to make it distinguishable without all that additional subcutaneous fat still being there.
The people who have curves in all the right places, and lines everywhere else are outliers, and as such are touted on the front pages of magazines like lottery winners and unicorns.
On top of all of these reasons, you’re…
4. More than likely going to return to the weight you were before you began.
The only proven way to lose any amount of weight is to do so very slowly, thus changing your ingrained eating habits. Unfortunately, for most people, they will try to get those abs on this or that diet which, unless stuck to for the rest of their lives, will often times be abandoned and the user will be bounced back to their normal eating routine, and normal eating weight.
On top of this, throw in those 3 lbs a year we start gaining and you are in for no more 6-pack.
So, you can take all these very real truths and either see them as a bummer on your plans to parade an array of sexy photos of yourself in some tropical location with oil shimmering across your rigid tummy. Or, think of it as a reason to be healthy, and not shoot for some temporary, cultural opinion of what we deem to be sexy right now.
Also, check out this nifty infographic on what having a 6-pack really means in terms of dedication.
Also, be sure to read the sample provided of one of the best books about popular misconceptions regarding health and fitness,
