A person can have huge muscles but still be fat while another one may have never visited a gym in his or her life and still be skinny.
It all has to do with body fat percentage. It doesn’t really matter how much muscle you have if you’re also carrying a ton of fat around.
In fact, if we consider our abs, since the fat is the outer lying tissue, covering the muscle tissue beneath, you can have great big stomach muscles but no one will ever see them as long as they’re covered with nasty stomach fat.
You need to lower your body fat percentage in order to have the kind of flat abs people will envy. This article will be all about how to get your body fat percentage way down to get those ab muscles popping.
Cutting Down Fat
The first thing you need to do is to cut down the fat. This means getting your nutrition in check. You will never, ever, have flat abs unless your eating plan is top notch. This doesn’t mean living like a medieval monk or starving yourself silly.
On the contrary, I am all for indulging yourself on occasion, but if you plan on eating fast food and pizza 4 times a week, I believe our business for today is concluded.
Here are some tips for healthy eating:
1. Eat protein for breakfast and more throughout the day – Protein is crucial for fat loss: it helps you curb your appetite and control your protion sizes and it helps to build muscle tissue (something I’ll cover later in this article). Eating protein for breakfast helps you start the day off right in order to burn more calories until you turn in for the night.
2. Eat the right foods for your metabolism – What determines the rate in which you burn calories and fat is your metabolism. Eat the right kind of food to increase your metabolism and you will not only have tasty meals but a much easier time in burning calories.
3. Don’t drink sugary sodas and juices – You won’t even notice the hundreds of calories per can or cup that you consume but you will increase your fat stores tremendously because of it.
4. Choose your snacks wisely – You can and should have sugar and sweet things. However, the sources of sugar make a dramatic difference in the kind of results you will have. Eating dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate and more fruits instead of candy bars will make a big difference while keeping your sweet tooth satisfied.
5. Eat the right kind of carbs – You can’t not eat carbs and hope to lose weight and fat. It won’t work for long. However, the kind of carbs you eat is crucial to your success. Fruit and vegetables are excellent sources of carbs as are grains, cereals, and whole grain products (as long as they’re 100% whole grain). Anything with white flour is a big NO-NO for you as of this moment.
Remember, It’s percentage
You’re not just trying to lose fat, you’re trying to get a lower body fat percentage. This is crucial for you to understand. Let’s look at the following example: let’s say you weight 100 lbs, 25 of which are fat and 25 of which are made of muscle. You have a 25% body fat percentage.
Now, let’s say you lose 20 lbs! Now you weight 80 lbs in total but you have lost 5 lbs of fat and 5 lbs of muscle. You have 20 lbs of fat left. 20 lbs out of 80 is still 25%. You’ve done a lot of work, lost a lot of weight but got little to show for it.
It doesn’t matter if you lose 50 pounds, 70 or even a 100. What matters is what makes up for this weight loss. Was it mostly fat or muscle too? You want to lose fat with a minimum of muscle tissue loss.
That’s where strength training comes in. When you do strength training, you’re losing fat but maintain your muscle mass or even gaining a bit. This is how you lower body fat percentage for real: you lose fat without losing muscle as well (or losing very little of it).
Since you can’t determine where you’re going to lose fat by exercising one body part and not another, it is best to train all your muscle groups but focus more on the bigger ones to get more muscle tissue.
Having more muscle will help you in two ways:
1. More muscle tissue reduces the percentage fat takes from your total weight.
2. Muscle tissue helps to boost your metabolism which gets you to burn even more calories even when you sleep.
This will help you melt away the fat and get you leaner and firmer, just what you need to have the kind of abs you’ve always wanted.
So, now you know what you need to do to get lean for real. Go and take action. Now’s the time.
