¿Quieres Abs? (You Want Abs?)

By Herman Garcia

Those desired six-packs. For someone trying to reshape their body or just overall aesthetics, those abdominals have become highly coveted–perhaps even an obsession.

Just take a trip to any gym and you’ll see the abdominal machines and “captain’s chair” occupied 90% of the time. In another corner of the facility you’ll see others doing hundreds of crunches, either on a stability ball, or on the floor. Nine out of ten times, these people still have a big panza (belly).

The answer may be simpler than you think. Not by doing 1000’s of crunches, nor starving yourself–its simple mathematics, some education, and a real desire to want those abdominals bad enough.

I’ll start with the equation. It’s about 65% nutrition–not starving yourself, or going on some restrictive diet–but good solid nutrition. In other words, it requires eating the right types of foods.

The second piece of the equation is fitness (training). That’s about 25% of the equation. And the final piece (10%)–either you’re blessed with it or not. Your DNA (genes). Some people are just naturally gifted with really good genes. Those are the ones that perhaps go to the gym for a week, stop, and still look great. Also the ones we don’t like very much (JK).

So we’ve got 65% nutrition, 25% fitness, and about 10% DNA–mas o menos (more or less). We’ll start with Nutrition since that’s the biggest factor.

Unfortunately, this society has made it easier for us to do less physical work and eat more–especially all those highly processed ready-to-go meals. The statistics validate this. Most major health organizations will agree that about two-thirds of our population is currently overweight or obese. Of the remaining one-third, only about 3% have low enough body fat to produce visible musculature in the abdominals.

Bottom line . . . we need to adjust our eating habits. A balanced, low fat diet is very important, not only for reducing body fat, but also for many health related concerns. The American Heart Association recommends that you reduce your daily fat intake to 30% or less of your total caloric intake. I recommend using fat grams as a marker instead. That is, keeping your fat grams to about 50 per day. Of those fifty, 80-85% of them should be the good fats–see article on fats.

Healthy eating can actually be enjoyable and doesn’t have to feel restrictive. As I alluded earlier, it just takes some educated choices such as choosing the right foods, eating at the right times, and of course eating the right quantities and proportions (moderation). See last week’s article on nutrition.

The second piece of the equation to “melting the butter” (reducing body fat) is training.

1. Include cardiovascular activity in your fitness regime to further improve your body composition and strengthen your heart muscle. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends a minimum of 20 minutes of cardiovascular activity 3 to 5 times a week. With that 20 minutes, include 5-7 minutes of warm-up before and after the work out. The sky is the limit with cardiovascular activity–just find an activity you really enjoy.
2. Be sure to include strength training for all the major muscle groups, not just the abdominals. Muscle tissue is very active tissue and burns up to 25% of the body’s total calories. By adding 5 pounds of muscle to your body, you could burn up to 250 extra calories a day! To burn, tone, and strengthen I recommend 3 sets of 12-15 repetitions per major muscle group. The right weight is the one where the last two reps are difficult.
3. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention core training. Most will do cardio and strength but neglect their center of gravity–the core. Twenty-nine muscles, 17 in the hips, 4 in the abdominals and the balance in back and spine support.

By combining healthy nutrition and good training you will see and feel significant results in 6-8 weeks. Check it out. If you reduce your caloric intake by 250 kcals (kilocalorie=1 food calorie, or 1,000 energy calories) per day and add ½ hour of cardio you will have expended 500 kcals a day. Mulitply 500 by 7 (days in the week) and you have 3,500 kcals or 1 pound of fat.

You can do it!