Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Diet = Flat Stomach


If you are one of those guys who like to Google phrases like "flat stomach", "shredded abs", "ripped abs" you finally came to the right place. Remember one thing:

"Abdominal exercises do not remove fat from your waist."

Anybody who tries to have a six pack by doing crunches and other abdominal exercises is profoundly wasting his/her time and most likely risking a lower back injury because of the large amount of twisting during all those core exercises.

The body is a very efficient unit. We store fat for two reasons:
- nothing in nature can be lost or hidden;
- survival;

The fact that your body stores fat can mean only one thing - it's working as supposed to. The stored body fat is nothing more than energy saved for later. The body first stores body fat at places where it would cause the smallest problems during physical activity - waist line and legs. Imagine what would happen if all excess body fat was stored on your face or fingers - we would simply die and the only people left would be shredded individuals with 8% body fat. The body is smart however and the fat store pattern is on auto-pilot. This is why the only way to lose the belly fat is to diet. This is the fastest and most efficient way to lose body fat. It's much better than cardio for the simple fact that a much larger caloric deficit can be achieved through dieting than running on the treadmill. One hour of moderate to high intensity cardio burns 400-500 calories. Which means that you burn 250 extra calories from running. The other 250 calories you would have burnt by just being alive during that hour. However if you cut 500 calories from your diet - you achieve 500 calories deficit right away.

The different gimmicks you see on TV want you to believe that by flexing your abs in weird ways you are somehow going to melt that fat. No gonna happen when your diet consists of Big Macs, chips, rice, potatoes, Chinese, Indian, beer...You can do all the crunches in the universe - nothing is going to happen, except back pain. 

So, don't google "flat stomach", "ripped abs"...etc anymore and start dieting. Abs are closer than you think.