Gain Six Pack Abs Fast

Guideline 3: Drink Smoothies Regularly

2012-02-03T12:05:00.000-08:00

With schedules the way they are today, it’s no wonder that your
definition of a kitchen gadget is the one with a team logo that can
open bottles. You need to make one exception for the kitchen
gadget that won’t fit on a key chain: the blender. I don’t care how
many speeds it has or how it looks, and I couldn’t tell you the difference
between a mince and a frappe. All I care about is how
much stuff I can put in it and how good the stuff tastes when it
comes out. (One thing I do recommend: Get a blender with at least
400 watts, which will give it the power to handle chopping ice and
shredding fruit and to outlast any Jimmy Buffett fans who might
drop by unexpectedly.)
When you consider that changing your body takes time, motivation,
and knowledge, consider your blender to be one of your
most powerful tools in this plan. Smoothies made with a mixture
of the Abs Diet Powerfoods can act as meal substitutions and as
potent snacks, and they work for a few reasons.
They require little time.
Adding berries, flavored whey powder, or peanut butter
will make them taste like dessert, which will satisfy your
sweet cravings.
Their thickness takes up a lot of space in your stomach.
I don’t cook much. When I want a quick, healthy meal, I dump
milk, low-fat vanilla yogurt, ice, uncooked instant oatmeal, peanut
butter, and a couple of teaspoons of chocolate whey powder into my
blender and press a button. You can mix and match ingredients, depending
on your tastes (see the recipes in chapter 9), but use the
milk, yogurt, whey powder, and ice as the base. Here’s the evidence
showing these blended power drinks will help you control your
weight.
98 T H E A B S D I E T
T H E A B S D I E T N U T R I T I O N P L A N 99
Researchers at Purdue University found that people
stayed fuller longer when they drank thick drinks than
when they drank thin ones—even when calories, temperatures,
and amounts were equal.
A Penn State study found that men who drank yogurt
shakes that had been blended until they doubled in
volume ate 96 fewer calories a day than men who drank
shakes of normal thickness.
In a study presented at the North American Association
of the Study of Obesity, researchers found that regularly
drinking meal replacements increased a man’s chance of
losing weight and keeping it off for longer than a year.
A University of Tennessee study found that men who
added three servings of yogurt a day to their diets lost
61 percent more body fat and 81 percent more stomach
fat over 12 weeks than men who didn’t eat yogurt.
Wow! Researchers speculated that the calcium helps
the body burn fat and limit the amount of new fat your
body can make.
How it works: Drink an 8-ounce smoothie for breakfast, as a
meal substitute, or as a snack before or after your workout.
Guideline 4: Stop Counting
Though calorie burning is paramount to losing fat, calorie
counting will make you lose focus and motivation. By eating these
12 Abs Diet Powerfoods and their many relatives, the foods themselves
will, in a way, count your calories for you. They’ll keep you
healthy and feeling full and satisfied. Plus, the most energy-efficient
foods are almost like doormen at a nightclub: They’re not
going to let any of the riffraff in without your approval.
Of course, that doesn’t give you license to speed down the
road of monstrous portions. Most of us claim that we watch
what we eat, but most of us don’t have a clue. A U.S. Department
of Agriculture study asked men what they ate, then
checked it against reality. The truth: Men ages 25 to 50 were
eating twice the grains, fats, and sweets that they estimated. If
you eat six well-balanced meals, your body will regulate portions
through things like fiber, protein, and the sheer volume of the
smoothies. That said, it’s always wise—especially in the beginning
of the plan, when you’re most vulnerable and adjusting to
a new way of eating—to focus on portion control by limiting the
servings of some foods, especially the ones with fat (like peanut
butter) and carbohydrates (like rice or bread). A good rule: Stick
to one to two servings per food group, and keep the total contents

Guideline 2: Make These 12 Abs Diet Powerfoods the Staples of Your Diet

2012-02-03T12:03:00.001-08:00

The Abs Diet will teach you to focus on (not restrict yourself to) a
handful of food types—the Abs Diet Power 12—to fulfill your core
nutritional needs. These foods are all good for you. They’re so good,
in fact, that they’ll just about single-handedly exchange your fat
for muscle (provided you’ve kept your receipt). Just as important,
I’ve designed the Power 12 to include literally thousands of food
combinations. There are hundreds of dairy products, fruits and
vegetables, lean meats, and other choices to satisfy your tastes. Incorporating
these Powerfoods into your six meals a day will satiate
your tastes and cravings and keep you from feasting on the dangerous
fat promoters in your diet.
You’ll read more about these Powerfoods in chapter 8. For now,
I just want you to remember:
Almonds and other nuts
Beans and legumes
Spinach and other green vegetables
Dairy (fat-free or low-fat milk, yogurt, cheese)
Instant oatmeal (unsweetened, unflavored)
Eggs
Turkey and other lean meats
Peanut butter
Olive oil
Whole-grain breads and cereals
Extra-protein (whey) powder
Raspberries and other berries

Guideline 1: Eat Six Meals a Day

2012-01-29T17:16:00.000-08:00

We’re so used to hearing people talk about eating less food that
it’s become weight-loss doctrine. But as you remember from the
physiology of metabolism, you have to eat more often to change
your body composition. The new philosophy I want you to keep
in mind is “energy balance.”
Researchers at Georgia State University developed a technique
to measure hourly energy balance—that is, how many
94 T H E A B S D I E T
calories you’re burning versus how many calories you’re taking
in. The researchers found that if you keep your hourly surplus
or deficit within 300 to 500 calories at all times, you will best be
able to change your body composition by losing fat and adding
lean muscle mass. Those subjects with the largest energy imbalances
(those who were over 500 calories in either ingestion
or expenditure) were the fattest, while those with the most balanced
energy levels were the leanest. So if you eat only your
three squares a day, you’re creating terrific imbalances in your
energy levels. Between meals, you’re burning many more calories
than you’re taking in. At mealtimes, you’re taking in many
more than you’re burning. Research shows that this kind of
eating plan is great—if your dream is to be the next John
T H E A B S D I E T N U T R I T I O N P L A N 95
OBESITY RISKS
Almost as important as what you eat is when you eat. Researchers at the University
of Massachusetts analyzed the eating habits of 500 men and women
and found connections between the way people eat and the risk of becoming
overweight.
HABIT
CHANGES YOUR RISK
OF OBESITY BY
Eating at least one midday snack –39 percent
Eating dinner as your biggest meal of the day +6 percent
Waiting more than 3 hours afterwaking up
to eat breakfast
+43 percent
Eating more than a third of yourmeals
in restaurants
+69 percent
Going to bed hungry
(3 or more hours after your last meal or snack)
+101 percent
Eating breakfast away from home +137 percent
Not eating breakfast +450 percent
Candy. But if you want to look slimmer, feel fitter, and—not coincidentally—
live longer, then you need to eat more often. In the
same study, subjects who added three snacks a day to three regular
meals balanced out their energy better, lost fat, and increased
lean body mass (as well as increased their power and
endurance).
In a similar study, researchers in Japan found that boxers who
ate the same amount of calories a day from either two or six meals
both lost an average of 11 pounds in 2 weeks. But the guys who
ate six meals a day lost 3 pounds more fat and 3 pounds less
muscle than the ones who ate only two meals.
There’s science to support the fact that more meals work, but
the plain-speak reason it works is because it does something that
many diets don’t do: It keeps you full and satiated, which will reduce
the likelihood of a diet-destroying binge.
How it works: For scheduling purposes, alternate your larger
meals with smaller snacks. Eat two of your snacks roughly 2
hours before lunch and dinner, and one snack roughly 2 hours
after dinner.
Sample time schedule:
8 A.M.: breakfast
11 A.M.: snack
1 P.M.: lunch
4 P.M.: snack
6 P.M.: dinner
8 P.M.: snack
For a complete 7-day meal plan, check out page 104. It’s not
something you need to stick to religiously, just a suggestion for
how you can make the Abs Diet work for you. It also shows
how to incorporate the recipes you’ll find in chapter 9 into your
everyday life.

THE ABS DIET NUTRITION PLAN

2012-01-29T17:15:00.001-08:00

IN THE PREVIOUS CHAPTERS, I GAVE AN
overview of some cool science—
how your body reacts to different
foods, why some fats are good and
others are evil, and how some
foods such as dairy products have a secret ingredient
that helps your body burn fat. Science can be fun, but by
this point in the book, you’ve probably got one burning
question in your mind:
Hey, when can we eat?
So let’s get right to it, because eating more of the right
foods more often is the basis of the Abs Diet. Remember:
MORE FOOD MORE MUSCLE LESS FLAB

That’s why the Abs Diet isn’t a diet you’ll feel you “have to”
stick to. It’s one you’ll want to stick to.
See, I’ve talked to lots of men who’ve tried diets, and many of
them describe trying to stick to a strict diet plan as sort of like
standing waist-deep in the ocean and being pummeled by one
wave after another. Those waves come in the form of doughnuts
the boss brought in, the office vending machine you’re stuck with
when the boss makes you work late, and the happy hour to celebrate
the firing of the boss who gave you all those doughnuts and
late vending machine nights. When you’re staring at a wave
that’s clearly bigger than you, you have three choices. You could
run back to shore or try to jump over it, but those options will
leave you with a suit full of sand. But if you dive through the
wave head-on, you’ll emerge unscathed. Same with a diet. You
can try to run away by avoiding restaurants, parties, weddings,
or anyplace that’s likely to tempt you with nachos grande. You
can also try to take the high road, but ordering a salad and water
after a softball game hardly feels right. If you want a diet to
work—if you want to emerge on the other side of this plan with
a new body—your only choice is to have the flexibility and
freedom to keep yourself from getting hungry and the knowledge
that you can eat well no matter what.
You’re about to dive into the Abs Diet.

FIVE WAYS TO ADD MORE FIBER

2012-01-26T16:02:00.001-08:00

To your eggs: A third of a cup of chopped onion and a clove of garlic will add
1 gram of fiber to a couple of scrambled eggs.
To your sandwich: Hate whole wheat? Go with rye. Like wheat, it has 2 grams
of fiber per slice. That’s more than twice the amount of fiber in white.
To your dinner: Have a sweet potato. It has 2 grams more fiber than a typical
Idaho potato.
To your cereal: Half a cup of raspberries adds 4 grams of fiber.
To your snack: Eat trail mix. Half a cup of Raisin Bran, 1 ounce of mixed nuts,
and five dried apricot halves give you almost 7 grams of fiber.
has risen 15 percent in the past 10 years.) Like today’s low-carb
craze, the low-fat craze originally appears to work because it creates
a restrictive eating program that eliminates certain foods
and, hence, a certain number of calories. If you suddenly have to
cut out countless steaks, baked goods, slabs of butter, nuts, dairy
products, and desserts, presto, you lose weight.
But, as with carbohydrates, our bodies crave fat. Fatty foods
(beef, fish, and dairy products, for instance) are usually high in
muscle-building proteins and supply critical vitamins and minerals
(the vitamin E in nuts and oils, the calcium in cheese and
yogurt). So you can go on a low-fat diet for only so long before you
wind up facedown in a pint of Chunky Monkey. That’s the way
Mother Nature planned it.
What she didn’t plan for, however, was the craftiness of food
marketers. Knowing that low-fat dieters are secretly pining for
the old days when a nice slice of cake and a scoop of ice cream
ended every celebratory meal, grocery manufacturers go into the
laboratory and come out with hundreds of new low-fat foods. And
that leads to what should go down in history as The Great Snack-
Well’s Debacle.
Nabisco conceives SnackWell’s as the ultimate answer to the
low-fat diet craze. SnackWell’s, which you can still find on grocery
shelves today, are fat-free and low-fat cookies that somehow carry
nearly all the flavor of full-fat cookies. The secret is that Nabisco
loads up the cookies with extra sugar (except in the sugar-free varieties),
so consumers can indulge their sweet tooth without ever
missing the fat. How this development plays out in the mind of the
average consumer is simple to predict:
“All I have to do to lose weight is to cut out fat.”
“Yo! These cookies have no fat. Let’s buy two packages!”
“Honey, did you eat that second package of cookies for
breakfast? I wanted it!”
S H O C K E R : H OW L OW- C A R B D I E TS M A K E YO U FA T 91
The magic bullet doesn’t work, in part because we need to eat
fats and in part because we’ve been fooled into thinking that we
can eat whatever we want, in whatever quantity we want, as long
as we aren’t eating fat. So we scarf down sugar calories by the
spoonful—and we all get just a little bit fatter in the process.
Okay, hop out of the time machine—trip’s over. It’s a decade
later and, instead of a low-fat craze, America is caught up in the
throes of a low-carb craze. And the same scenario is playing out
all over again. Every grocery store and corner deli is filled with
products—particularly “meal replacement” bars—that are marketed
with bywords like low-carb or carb smart.
Suddenly, it’s not hard to eat low-carb anymore. Today—and
increasingly more so tomorrow—we can fill our shopping carts
with all the foods we cut out for the past couple of years. Food
marketers are altering the makeups of their products, packing
them with soy protein and fiber and sugar alcohols—all ingredients
that lower the “net carb” impact of the food. Now, I’m all for
more protein and fiber. Sugar alcohol, on the other hand, is nothing
but empty calories that, in elevated quantities, cause gastric distress
and flatulence—but hey, whatever turns you on.
What I am against is the notion that marketers are peddling—
that we can eat whatever and whenever we want, as long as we’re
not eating carbs. It is exactly the same trap we fell into 10 years
ago: a restrictive diet that offers short-term success, turned into
a food craze that guarantees even greater health risks and higher
obesity rates.
And that’s a time travel destination no one wants to arrive at.

Low-Carb Dilemma #2: Follow the Money

2012-01-26T16:01:00.001-08:00

REMEMBER WHAT I said about why the low-carb diet appears to
work? Because it cuts out a majority of foods that people love to eat,
and because it makes eating on the run difficult. Those two factors
conspire to restrict calories, and fewer calories mean less weight.
Now, here’s an easy question: How do food manufacturers
make money? By selling you food. So what happens when 60 million
Americans decide they’re going to stop buying all the candy
bars, loaves of bread, boxes of pasta, and jars of sugary spreads
that manufacturers have obligingly loaded with carbohydrates
over the past half century?
Food manufacturers are going to have to come up with something
else to sell. Something they can tout as low-carb, to appeal
to Atkins-oriented dieters, but something that’s familiar, easy to
find, and even easier to consume. And so begins the next phase in
the American obesity epidemic.
In February 2004, the New York Times reported on the growing
trend toward low-carb marketing among restaurants and grocery
stores. Retailers are being counseled by their business
advisors to open up “low-carb” aisles; restaurants are vying for the
coveted “Atkins approved” label to hang in their windows. And in
the past 5 years, an estimated 728 new food products claiming to
be low in carbohydrates have hit the shelves. Today, you can
snack on low-carb candy, low-carb cake, and low-carb brownies,
washing it all down with a couple bottles of low-carb beer.
To get a sneak preview of where all this is going, let’s hop back
into that time travel machine. This time, we’re not going to the
storied Middle Ages or the dawn of man . . . we’re just going back
about 10 years or so, to the beginnings of the last diet craze that
swept the nation: the low-fat craze.
It’s the early 1990s. The low-carb craze hasn’t yet begun to
blossom. (For better or worse, neither has Britney Spears.) But
S H O C K E R : H OW L OW- C A R B D I E TS M A K E YO U FA T 89
another mantra has begun to take hold in American society: EAT
LESS FAT.
This directive comes not from a book-peddling diet doc but from
the U.S. government, in the form of a revised food pyramid designed
by the Food and Drug Administration. Fat has been fingered as the
root of all dietary evils: Simply put, fatty foods translate into fatty
people. Diet experts race to defend this idea, which on the face of
it sounds pretty logical: Dietary fat is more easily transformed into
body fat, whereas carbohydrates are preferentially burned off for
energy. Hence, swap your fat calories for carb calories, and voilà,
you’ve entered into the magical weight loss zone.
Quickly, food manufacturers move to capitalize on these exciting
developments. As sales of fat-free milk rise, packages of
reduced-fat, low-fat, and fat-free cheeses, spreads, yogurts, ice
creams, cakes, and cookies begin to fill the supermarket shelves.
Some taste okay. Some taste like sugar-crusted cardboard. But
what the hell—no fat, no foul. Carbo-loading becomes a byword of
amateur athletes all across the country.
However, this whole low-fat theory comes with one big but.
(Actually, it comes with millions of big butts, as the obesity rate

The Origins of a Sweet Tooth

2012-01-21T15:33:00.001-08:00

TO UNDERSTAND WHY carbohydrates are important, we have to
take another fantasy trip, this time back to the dawn of man. On
the savannahs of Africa, the high plains of Europe, the wetlands
of Asia, and the woodlands and jungles of the Americas, primitive
man learned how to feed himself from nature’s banquet table. He
learned how to fish and hunt, and later, how to domesticate animals
and grow grain. But since he first stood upright, man has
also had a craving for sweets.
As with all things, there’s a reason why we crave sweets. The
sweetest things on earth, back in those days before Cherry Garcia,
were fruits: wild berries, pears, citrus fruits, and the like. Not coincidentally,
fruits are also packed with nutrients: vitamins to
fend off disease, minerals to assist with cell function, and fiber to
regulate hunger, control blood pressure, and help ease digestion.
Without our sweet tooth, we would have been happy to eat
nothing but wooly mammoth and buffalo meat—the original
Atkins program. But nature saw to it that we craved the foods
that would make us healthy.
Fast forward to today, when the sweetest things don’t look
anything like tangerines. Whereas our sweet tooth was once nature’s
way of protecting us from disease, now it’s the food industry’s
way of tricking us into it. To satisfy our cravings, we turn
to cookies and cakes and chocolates instead of apples and pears
and blackberries. That’s one of the main reasons Americans today
are so fat. And it’s one of the main reasons why, in the short-term,
low-carb diets work.
By limiting carbohydrate intake, diets like Atkins create bydefault
weight loss. If you restrict yourself to just one class of
foods—low-carb foods, in this instance—you’re bound to lose
weight. That’s because the stuff you’re used to munching on, from
the doughnut you nosh in the car on the way to work to the
S H O C K E R : H OW L OW- C A R B D I E TS M A K E YO U FA T 85
Snickers bar you snag from the vending machine before your drive
home, are now voided from your diet. You’re eating less food, so
you’re taking in fewer calories, so you lose weight.
The other sneaky advantage of an Atkins diet is that it focuses
on foods that are difficult to prepare and consume. It’s easy to pop
a bagel or a grapefruit into your briefcase; shove some steak and
eggs in there instead, and things get a little messy. So low-carb
diets restrict calories in two ways: by limiting food options, and by
limiting the ease with which we can consume food.
But there are two major reasons why, in the long-term, lowcarb
diets won’t work: Mother Nature and the almighty dollar.
Low-Carb Dilemma #1:
Take That out of Your Mouth!
SOMEONE WITH A SOUND understanding of nutrition and a sadistic
streak could have a field day torturing low-carb enthusiasts.
Here’s an evil trick: Take two pieces of soft, fresh, whole-grain
bread. Slather one side with 2 tablespoons of all-natural peanut
butter. Now take 1⁄2 cup of blackberries, mash them lightly with a
fork, and (this is where it gets really nasty) spread the mashed
berries onto the other piece of bread. Put the two sides together
and you’ve created the world’s healthiest PB&J sandwich: 5
grams of fiber (about as much as the average American gets in a
single day), 25 percent of your daily intake of vitamin C, 13 grams
of protein, and (sacre bleu!) a verboten 30 grams of carbohydrate.
(Oh, by the way, it tastes incredible.)
Float this concoction in front of a low-carb enthusiast and you
might as well be serving broiled rat viscera. (Come to think of it,
they’d probably prefer the rat viscera. No carbs.) The sandwich is
achingly sweet, soft, and chewy, a delicious comfort food that, at
the same time, is a cholesterol-busting nuclear missile. The fiber
86 T H E A B S D I E T
protects you from heart disease as well as from stroke and colon
cancer. The vitamin C boosts your immune system. And the highquality
(meaning high in fiber) carbs give you long-burning energy
and food for your brain. Yet phase one of the Atkins diet bans
every single ingredient in this simple sandwich.
Every single one.
In fact, the Atkins diet focuses on something called net carbs
that Atkins claims are the carbohydrates that actually impact
blood sugar. A rough formula for figuring out net carbs is to subtract
the number of fiber grams from the total number of carb
grams. (The reasoning being that fiber doesn’t impact blood sugar,
spike insulin, or contribute to fat storage.) By that calculation,
this sandwich has about 33 net carbs. Phase one of the Atkins diet
limits you to 20 net carbs per day. Eat this one super-good-for-you
food, and you’ll have to fast for the next day and a half to keep
your Atkins diet in effect.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think this whole low-carb plan is
simply crackers. (Oh, sorry—not allowed to eat those.)
See, carbs are not our enemies. As I explained earlier, we crave
carbs because we need them to protect us against a host of ailments.
The low-carb craze works temporarily not because it limits
carbs but because it limits food intake. And if I came out with some
crazy diet plan that said you could only eat foods that are high in
fat or low in protein or bigger than a breadbox or start with the
letter P, believe me—you’d lose weight. For a little while, at least,
until you couldn’t look at pudding, parsnips, and poultry ever again.
You’d lose weight because, by restricting your food intake, I’ve
restricted your calorie intake. And the fact is, when you take in
fewer calories than you burn, you lose weight; when you take in
more calories than you burn, you gain weight. That’s true regardless
of where those calories come from. The Abs Diet works
both by cutting the number of calories you take in through a sen-
S H O C K E R : H OW L OW- C A R B D I E TS M A K E YO U FA T 87
sible-but-satiating eating plan and by increasing the number of
calories you burn away by improving your metabolic function.
Fewer calories coming in here, a few more burned off there, and
presto—weight loss. No magic, no deprivation, and no pointing
fingers at the evils of carbohydrates.
The confusion about carbs comes from the fact that in today’s
society, we’re surrounded by high-carbohydrate foods that have
had all their positive attributes stripped from them. Commercial
bread baking has followed the same path as Michael Jackson—the
whiter it gets, the less wholesome it becomes. The refined flours
and sugars and sugar substitutes that you find in everything from
cookies to ice cream to mass-produced ketchup and peanut butter
give us all the calories and none of the nutritional benefits of their
original ancestors: whole grains and fruits. The lack of fiber in, say,
a plain bagel causes the calories in the bagel to be digested quickly,
flooding our bloodstreams with glucose, triggering spikes in the digestive
hormone insulin—which then turns the blood sugar into
fat cells and leaves us hungry once again.
But fruits, vegetables, and whole-grain bread products have a
very different effect on the body: They’re digested slowly, giving
us long-burning energy. Insulin levels stay steady while fiber
scours our bodies for cholesterol and other harmful substances,
and the vitamins and minerals inherent in those foods help protect
us from a host of ills.
The longer we try to go without carbs, the more our bodies
crave them. Eventually, you have to fall off a carb-restricting diet:
Your body is programmed to make you seek out carbs, just the
way it’s programmed to blink when something hurtles toward
your eye. It’s one of our natural defense mechanisms, and what
Mother Nature wants, she will eventually get.
Then again, what corporate America wants, it too will get.
Which presents us with part two of why the low-carb craze is a
disaster waiting to happen.

SHOCKER: HOW LOW-CARB DIETS MAKE YOU FAT

2012-01-21T15:32:00.001-08:00

THROUGHOUT THIS BOOK, I’VE HIT
you with scientific evidence,
persuaded you with
real-life testimonials, and
referenced study after study
to show how the Abs Diet works and why it makes sense
for anyone who wants to manage his weight and live a
healthful, active, disease-free life. But just for a moment,
I want to step away from all the hard science and
take you on a bit of a fantasy adventure. Come this
way—I promise you’ll find it revealing.

First, I want you to imagine that you’ve taken a time machine
back to the Middle Ages. You find yourself at the door of an alchemist’s
laboratory, where magic elixirs and potions fill the
shelves and the echoes of mantras and spells fill the air. You’ve
traveled long and hard, through terrifying dark woods and vast,
arid deserts to seek out a Holy Grail of sorts: a concoction that
legend says will make you lose weight, magically.
The sorcerer appears, and he holds up before you two vials.
The first, he says, contains an elixir that will protect you from
most of the diseases known to man. Its ingredients hold properties
that will change your cholesterol profile and protect you from
heart disease; help scour your body for toxins and protect you
from the onslaught of cancer and the side effects of aging; energize
your body and your brain, making your thinking clearer and
helping to immunize you from Alzheimer’s; and, over the course
of your long life, control your weight and keep obesity and diabetes
at bay.
The second vial will do none of that. It will, in all likelihood,
raise your cholesterol profile and increase your risk for cancer,
stroke, and heart disease, as well as other ailments. But, if you
take it, it may help you lose weight dramatically—though only for
a short period of time. And there’s one more drawback: If you
choose the second vial, you can never sip from the first.
Which do you choose?
In the past 5 years, about 60 million Americans chose vial
number two.
Now, scrape the dust from the label on that vial and guess
what it says? LOW-CARBOHYDRATE DIET.
The first vial, on the other hand, brims with all sorts of things:
fruits and vegetables, whole-grain breads and cereals, beans and
nuts—the sorts of thing that nature intended us to eat but diet
plans like Atkins’s do not. And over the long term, if Americans
keep choosing vial number two, I think we’re going to pay—heavily.

A SIX-PACK IN 6 WEEKS

2012-01-15T12:43:00.000-08:00

IF YOU FLIP THROUGH THIS BOOK, YOU’LL
meet some of the men and women
who went on the Abs Diet—and
succeeded.
Patrick Austin dropped 30
pounds, half of it in just the first 2 weeks. Now he can’t
wait to take off his shirt at the beach.
John Betson turned a flabby 36-inch waist into a solid
32-incher and saw his abs for the first time in years.
And Jessica Guff stopped skipping meals—and
started wearing skimpier tops.
For Bill Stanton, the turnaround was an eye-opener:
“I’d been lifting weights all my life, but just by
changing my diet, my body got leaner and stronger

than ever. Guys at the gym even accuse me of being on steroids!”
Everyone’s body is different, and everybody who tries this plan
will have a different starting point. But based on the scientific research
I’ve outlined, you can expect an average loss of up to
20 pounds of fat on the 6-week plan and, for men, a gain of 4 to 6
pounds of muscle (about half that amount for women). For the average
man, that’s enough of a transformation to have your abs show.
One of the bigger challenges, however, is monitoring your progress
on the plan. Here’s a look at the four major measurements you can
use to see just how effectively the Abs Diet will work for you.
Weight. It’s the most straightforward. The heavier you are, the
more at risk you are for disease and the less fit you are. It’s a good
measuring stick to gauge how well you’re progressing on your diet,
but it’s incomplete in that it doesn’t take into account the amount
of muscle you’re going to develop over the course of a plan. Muscle
weighs about 20 percent more than fat so even a dramatic fat loss
may not translate into a dramatic drop in body weight.
76 T H E A B S D I E T
ABS DIET SUCCESS STORY
“I CUT MY BODY FAT IN HALF!”
Name: James Schellman
Age: 26
Height: 5'8"
Starting weight: 164
Six weeks later: 156
A former professional athlete and an active guy who snowboards 60 days a
year, James Schellman didn’t feel like he needed to lose that much weight.
But then a series of nagging injuries started hampering his active lifestyle,
and he packed on an extra 10 pounds of belly flab. Schellman could have
blamed the weight gain and injuries on getting older, but that wasn’t his
style. “I didn’t want to slow down,” he says, “but I knew I needed a
change.” So he went on the Abs Diet to improve his condition and increase
Body mass index (BMI). The BMI is a formula that takes
into consideration your height and your weight, and gives you an
indication of whether you’re overweight, obese, or in good shape.
To calculate your BMI, multiply your weight in pounds by 703,
and divide the number by your height in inches squared. For example,
let’s say you are 6 feet tall (that’s 72 inches) and weigh 200
pounds. So first we multiply your weight by 703.
200 703 140,600
Next, we calculate your height in inches squared, meaning we
multiply the number by itself.
72 72 5,184
Now we divide the first number by the second.
140,600 5,184 27.1
That’s not terrible. A BMI between 25 and 30 indicates you’re
overweight. Over 30 signifies obesity.
This measurement, too, has flaws. It doesn’t take into account
A S I X - P A C K I N 6 W E E K S 77
his muscle tone. Besides, Schellman says, “I figured I need to look good for
my wife.”
During the plan, Schellman lost 8 pounds. But the most significant transformation:
He cut his body fat from 18 to 11 percent.
Schellman has always enjoyed eating healthfully, but adjusting to the Abs Diet
paid off. “Before the plan, I ate about four meals a day and counted calories.
And with this one, I ate six times a day and let calories go by the wayside,” he
says. By basing meals around the delicious Powerfoods, “I didn’t have to
worry about the calories I was taking in.”
Schellman, who is used to spending a lot of time in the gym, credits the Abs
Diet Workout and its emphasis on lower-body exercises for making him
stronger and leaner and helping him burn off that burgeoning belly. “I have
seen stomach fat decrease. I can clearly see some of the muscles [in my abdomen],”
he says. “The plan has been a huge success—I’ve seen an increase
in my overall body strength, an increase in my motivation, an increase in my
self-esteem, and an increase in my well-being.”
muscle mass, and it also leaves out another important factor—
weight distribution, that is, where most of the fat on your body resides.
But BMI can give you a pretty good idea of how serious your
weight problem is.
Waist-to-hip ratio. Researchers have begun using waist size
and its relationship to hip size as a more definitive way to determine
your health risk. This is considered more important than
BMI because of that visceral fat I talked about earlier—the fat
that pushes your waist out in front of you. Because abdominal fat
is the most dangerous fat, a lower waist-to-hip ratio means fewer
health risks. To figure out your waist-to-hip ratio, measure your
waist at your belly button and your hips at the widest point
(around your butt). Divide your waist by your hips. For example,
if your hips measure 40 inches and your waist at belly button
level measures 38 inches, your waist-to-hip ratio is 0.95.
38 40 0.95
That’s not bad, but it’s not ideal. You want a waist-to-hip ratio
of 0.92 or lower. If you were to lose just 2 inches off your waist—
something you can do in just 2 weeks with the Abs Diet—you’d
find yourself in the fit range.
36 40 0.90
Body fat percentage. Though this is the most difficult for the
average man to measure because it requires a bit of technology,
it’s the most useful in terms of gauging how well your diet plan is
working. That’s because it takes into consideration not just weight
but how much of your weight is fat. Many gyms offer body fat measurements
through such methods as body fat scales or calipers
that measure the folds of fat at several points on your body. See
your local gym for what options they offer. Or try an at-home body
fat calculator. I like the Taylor Body Fat Analyzer and Scale 5553
for its price (about $50), convenience, and accuracy. If you want a
simple low-tech test (and this isn’t as accurate as what the elec-
78 T H E A B S D I E T
tronic versions will give you), try this simple exercise: Sit in a
chair with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor. Using
your thumb and index finger, gently pinch the skin on top of your
right thigh. Measure the thickness of the pinched skin with a
ruler. If it’s 3⁄4 inch or less, you have about 14 percent body fat—
ideal for a guy, quite fit for a woman. It it’s 1 inch, you’re probably
closer to 18 percent fat, which is a tad high for a man but desirable
for a woman. If you pinch more than an inch, you could be at
increased risk for diabetes and heart disease.
This last measurement can be the most significant because it’ll
really help give you a sense of how well you’re sticking to a plan.
As you see your body fat percentage decrease, you’ll see an increase
in the amount of visible muscle. Experts say that in order
for your abs to show, your body fat needs to be between 8 and 12
percent. For the average slightly overweight man, that means cutting
body fat by about half.
Before you start the plan, it’s important to record some of these
measurements so that you’ll know how far you’re progressing.
Take one baseline measurement, and then remeasure as needed
for motivation. I’d recommend measuring every 2 weeks. That’ll
be enough time to see significant differences to propel you
through the next 2 weeks. (Measure body fat percentage only at
the beginning and end of the plan, unless you have easy access to
a measurement system.) Any sooner than that, and you’re focusing
too much on numbers rather than process.
As with any diet plan, it’s also important to develop some kind
of quantitative goal—your ideal weight, waist size, or percentage
of body fat. This chart will help you figure out where you are and
where you need to go.
I don’t mean to hit you with more numbers than a fantasy
baseball nerd. In fact, it might be easiest to simply focus on one
number—six—so that the others will fall into place. When you
start to see those six abdominal muscles, it’ll mean that everything
else has decreased—your weight, your BMI, your waistto-
hip ratio, and your body fat percentage. This 6-week plan
will get you there. Here’s what you can expect from going on
the diet.
1–2A significant weight loss as
your body adjusts to a new
approach to eating. Some may see losses
up to 12 pounds in the first 2 weeks (especially
if you’re walking, or otherwise active,
each day), but 5–8 pounds will be average.
PATRICK AUSTIN LOST 15 POUNDS
IN JUST THE FIRST COUPLE OF
WEEKS ON THE ABS DIET.
“I haven’t gone shirtless on
the beach in years,” he says.
“This year, I’m going to be
shirtless.” Read more about
Patrick’s success on page 100.
3–4By integrating a modest amount
of strength training into your routine,
you’ll start to feel your body change because
your metabolism is working hard. You’ll
notice an additional drop in weight (most likely
averaging another 5–8 pounds), but you’ll also
notice significant changes in your shape.
BRIAN ARCHIQUETTE DROPPED
25 POUNDS IN 6 WEEKS. “I definitely
have more energy and
a more positive outlook on
life,” he says. Read more
about Brian’s success on page
160.
5–6After 2 weeks of exercise, your
body is primed to make a significant
push to drop more fat while also gaining
muscle mass. You’ll notice that your
upper body is more toned and that your
waist and other fatty parts of your body are
smaller. Depending on your starting point,
this is where you’ll begin to see abs.
JOHN BETSON DECREASED HIS
BODY FAT FROM 23 PERCENT
TO 16 PERCENT. “You can see
more muscle,” he exclaims.
“You can see my abs.” Read
more about John’s success on
page 140.
A S I X - P A C K I N 6 W E E K S 81
What you’ll find so remarkable about this program is how
simple it is to follow, how often you’ll eat—each meal and each
snack is an easy, muscle-building, fat-burning treat—and how unlike
any other “diet” the Abs Diet is. Very simply, the Abs Diet is
a plan that will ask you to:
Eat three meals and three snacks each day, with each
of your meals or snacks including several of the wideranging
Powerfoods discussed in an upcoming chapter.
Keep an eye out for a handful of diet busters that you’ll
learn to easily spot and cut down on—not eliminate.
Perform a simple, 20-minute workout three times a
week to turbocharge your fat loss and muscle growth.
The Abs Diet is so simple that unlike most diets, we don’t
break it into phases, and we didn’t design a complex “maintenance”
program (just a few simple words of wisdom that you’ll
find on page 261). The weight loss and muscle gains are yours to
keep for life, and so is the eating plan. We guarantee you won’t be
waiting for your “diet” to end. You’ll enjoy this program so much—
and be so wowed by the results—that you’ll effortlessly follow this
plan for life.
Other people have done it—other people who were in worse
physical condition than you. When they talk about why it worked,
they talk of the plan’s simplicity and its ability to keep hunger in
check. The Abs Diet is going to change your shape, your health,
your life.

WHAT THE HECK ARE . . . CANCER CELLS?

2012-01-14T07:12:00.001-08:00

Cancer is the one scourge that can strike any of us at any time in life. It can hit
in the places we think about and care about on a daily basis—the skin, the
lungs, the brain—or in obscure places we don’t even understand, like the pancreas,
the kidneys, or the lymphatic system.
Simply put, cancer develops when cells in one part of the body begin to grow
out of control. As children, our cells are constantly dividing, creating the new
cells that help us grow. Once we reach adulthood, that cell growth stops, for
the most part. Once we reach our genetically programmed height and weight,
cells in most parts of the body divide only to replace worn-out or dying cells
or to repair injuries. (That’s why there’s no mid-thirties growth spurt, much as
we may wish for it.)
But cancer cells act like kids—they keep growing, dividing, and multiplying,
outliving our normal cells and interfering with the various functions of the
body. The most common type of cancer among men is prostate cancer (the
prostate is the gland located behind the scrotum that produces most of our
seminal fluid). The most common type of cancer among women is breast
cancer. Both result in about a quarter million new cases every year.
We don’t fully understand what causes cancer, but we do know some of the
risk factors: Obesity, low-fiber diets, smoking, heavy alcohol use, overexposure
to the sun, and exposure to radiation and other toxins are among the
biggest dangers. Additionally, there’s a strong link between heredity and
cancer; if one or more close relatives has suffered a bout of the disease,
you’re at increased risk for cancer in general and for that specific form of
cancer in particular.
I’d like to tell you that the Abs Diet is a magic bullet against cancer, but I can’t;
while dietary changes and exercise can dramatically decrease your risk for
heart disease, stroke, and especially diabetes, cancer remains a bit more elusive.
Still, by adopting the principles of the Abs Diet, you’ll automatically decrease
your risk for many forms of cancer, because you’ll decrease your weight
and increase your fiber intake. In the meantime, you can also follow these additional
tips to slash your risk even more.
Toss in the tomatoes. Tomatoes are one of the best sources of lycopene, a
nutrient that has been shown to inhibit the growth of prostate cancer cells. In
fact, researchers say that two to four servings of tomatoes a week can cut your
prostate cancer risk by 34 percent. (Even better news: Lycopene isn’t diminished
by cooking, so pasta sauce and pizza will strike a blow against the disease
as well.)
H O W T H E A B S D I E T W O R K S 73
Color your plate. A 14-year study found that men whose diets were highest
in fruits and vegetables had a 70 percent lower risk of digestive-tract cancers.
Order the Chilean red. Chilean cabernet sauvignon is 38 percent higher than
French wine in flavonols—compounds called antioxidants that help deter
cancer.
Try the cheese platter. A large-scale study of 120,000 women found that premenopausal
women who consumed a lot of dairy products, especially low-fat
and fat-free ones, ran a lower risk of breast cancer. Pay attention, men: You
can get breast cancer, too. And Harvard researchers have found that men with
diets high in calcium were up to 50 percent less likely to develop some forms
of colon cancer.
Squeeze a carrot. One 8-ounce glass of Odwalla Carrot Juice—pure pressed
carrot juice—gives you 700 percent of your daily recommendation for betacarotene
(and only 70 calories). Beta-carotene has been linked in several
studies to a lower risk of cancer.
Bite the broccoli. It contains a compound called indole-3-carbinol, which has
been shown to fight various forms of cancer. Don’t like broccoli? Try daikon,
an Asian radish that looks like a big white carrot. It’s a distant cousin.
Serve the salmon. Or any other fish high in omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3’s
can help mollify your cancer risk.
Order drinks with a twist. According to University of Arizona research,
lemon zest and orange zest contain d-limonene, an antioxidant that can reduce
your risk of skin cancer by up to 30 percent if you consume quantities as
small as 1 tablespoon per week.
Go green. In a recent Rutgers University study, mice given green tea had 51
percent fewer incidences of skin cancer than control mice. Green tea is another
great source of cancer-fighting antioxidants.
Get a D. Foods high in vitamin D, like low-fat milk, help detoxify cancercausing
chemicals released during the digestion of high-fat foods, according
to a study at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
Be Popeye. Japanese researchers found that neoxanthin, a compound in
spinach, was successful at preventing the growth of prostate cancer cells.
Show yourself the whey. Whey protein is a great source of cysteine, a major
building block of the prostate cancer–fighting agent glutathione.
Eat the whole grain. Whole-grain carbohydrates are a great source of fiber.
European researchers found that men with the highest daily intakes of fiber
also had a 40 percent lower risk of developing colon cancer.

Calcium: The Future of Fat Fighting

2012-01-14T07:11:00.001-08:00

YOU’VE SEEN MORE than enough milk moustaches to know that
calcium strengthens your bones, but did you know that calcium
can also firm up your gut? Researchers at Harvard Medical School
showed that those who ate three servings of dairy a day—which
in conjunction with other foods provides about 1,200 milligrams
of calcium (about the daily recommendation)—were 60 percent
less likely to be overweight. In studies at the University of Tennessee,
researchers put subjects on diets that were 500 calories a
day less than what they were used to eating. Yup, the subjects lost
weight—about 1 pound of fat a week. But when researchers put
another set of subjects on the same diet but added dairy to their
meals, their fat loss doubled, to 2 pounds a week. Same calorie intake,
double the fat loss.
Calcium seems to limit the amount of new fat your body can
make, according to the University of Tennessee research team. In
another study conducted at the same lab, men who added three
servings of yogurt a day to their diets lost 61 percent more body
fat and 81 percent more stomach fat over 12 weeks than men who
70 T H E A B S D I E T
didn’t eat yogurt. A study in Hawaii found that teens with the
highest calcium intakes were thinner and leaner than those getting
less calcium.
Some researchers speculate that dairy calcium helps fight
fat because it increases the thermic effect of eating—in other
words, you burn more calories digesting calcium-rich foods than
you would if you ate something with equal calories but no calcium.
That’s one reason why calcium supplements, though good
for bone-building and other bodily functions, don’t have the
same effect as dairy—fewer calories to digest, so fewer calories
to burn.
And calcium has its benefits beyond stronger bones and leaner
bodies. After analyzing data from 47,000 men involved in the
Health Professional’s Follow-Up Study, Harvard researchers
found that men whose diets included 700 to 800 milligrams of the
mineral a day were up to 50 percent less likely to develop some
forms of colon cancer than men whose diets contained less than
500 milligrams. For best effect, shoot for about 1,200 milligrams
(mg) of calcium per day.
The Abs Diet recommended calcium-rich foods are:
1 ounce grated Parmesan cheese (314 mg)
1 cup large-curd cottage cheese (126 mg)
8 ounces low-fat yogurt (415 mg)
8 ounces low-fat milk (264 mg)
1 ounce (1-inch cube) Swiss cheese (224 mg)
1 ounce (1 slice) Cheddar cheese (204 mg)
1 ounce mozzarella cheese (143 mg)
1 scoop (28 g) whey powder protein (110 mg)

INSULIN: THE TWO-FACED HORMONE

2012-01-08T10:08:00.001-08:00

The hormone insulin is like your pack-rat grandmother: It likes to store stuff.
The only problem is that it’s also as schizophrenic as old Uncle Judd. Sometimes
it makes your muscles grow; sometimes it makes your fat cells grow.
Different foods create different insulin responses. Foods that have
high–glycemic index rankings (including white bread, most cereals, grapes,
and bananas) dump a lot of sugar into your bloodstream soon after eating,
causing insulin levels to spike. In this case, insulin works quickly to turn that
blood sugar into fat.
Some foods, though, cause a different reaction. Dairy products—milk, yogurt,
ice cream—create dramatic insulin surges without the corresponding
effect on blood sugar. You also get this insulin response from some foods
that are virtually carbohydrate-free, such as beef and fish, which have hardly
any effect on blood sugar. When blood sugar remains relatively constant, it
allows insulin to use the nutrients in your blood to build and repair cells, including
muscle tissue.
That’s why the Abs Diet centers around high-fiber, nutrient-dense foods that
are also the ones thought to be most useful for weight control. Most are moderate
to high protein, some are high in dairy calcium, and those that are carbbased
emphasize fiber and other important nutrients.
(By the way, if all this talk about blood sugar and insulin reminds
you of a certain health problem—diabetes—then you were
obviously paying attention in health class. Continuing to flood
your bloodstream with high levels of sugar, followed by high levels
of insulin, eventually trains your body to become less efficient at
processing these blood sugars. That’s called insulin resistance,
which is another term for diabetes. It is a terrible, terrible disease—
and it is also highly preventable. In a Harvard study, men
who ate foods with the lowest GIs, like whole-wheat bread, were
37 percent less likely to develop diabetes than those who ate high-
GI foods, such as white rice. For more information on battling diabetes,
see our Health Bulletin on page 50.)
It’s hard to generalize about which carbs are high on the GI
list and which are low, because glycemic index is simply a measure
of time—that is, how long it takes 50 grams of the food’s carbohydrates
to turn into blood sugar, regardless of serving size. It’s
a measure, for instance, of the carb-to-sugar conversion time for a
whole apple or watermelon, but it doesn’t tell you how much carb
is in one serving of the food. Nobody eats a whole watermelon,
anyway.
That’s why the latest advancement in food science is to look at
a meal’s glycemic load (GL). The GL considers both the GI of a
food and the amount of carbs in one serving of that food. It helps
you gauge the glycemic effect, or the projected elevation of blood
glucose, that food will cause.
The higher a food’s GL, the more it will cause your blood
sugar to spike, and the less control you’ll have over your energy
levels and your appetite. But considering the GL is only one aspect
of creating a balanced diet. “It’s better to have a high-GL
diet than one full of saturated fat,” says Jennie Brand-Miller,
Ph.D., professor of human nutrition at the University of Sydney
and author of the International Table of Glycemic Index and
Glycemic Load. “Aiming for the lowest GL possible is not a good
H O W T H E A B S D I E T W O R K S 69
move because that means you’ll be eating too little carbohydrate
and too much fat—probably saturated fat.” Instead, to maintain
you’re body’s best glycemic response, center your meals around
foods with GLs of 19 or less and shoot for a GL of less than 120
for the whole day.
Sound confusing? It doesn’t need to be. The Abs Diet Powerfoods
and the Abs Diet recipes all have low to moderate glycemic
loads. All you have to do is follow the plan. And on those occasions
when you are stuck and need to choose between two or more foods,
refer to the chart on page 276.

Carbohydrates: A Bad Rap

2012-01-05T13:19:00.001-08:00

WITH THE BEATINGS that carbohydrates have taken over the past
few years, it’s a wonder that bread isn’t protected by the Endangered
Species Act. Everywhere I look, I see people eating burgers
without buns, ordering spaghetti and meatballs—hold the
spaghetti—or bragging about their all-bacon-all-the-time diet.
While it’s clear that protein and fat have tremendous nutritional
benefits, it’s unfair—and unhealthy—to kick carbohydrates off the
dietary island.
With more and more evidence showing that a high-carbohydrate
diet helps promote fat storage (unless you run marathons), it’s
becoming more accepted that low-carbohydrate diets work in
helping people control weight. A 2002 study in the journal
Metabolism confirmed that very stance. Researchers at the University
of Connecticut found that subjects who ate only 46
grams of carbohydrates a day—about 8 percent of calories—lost
7 pounds of fat and gained 2 pounds of muscle in 6 weeks. And
they did it while downing a satisfying 2,337 calories a day. But
you can make a major mistake by eliminating carbohydrates entirely.
Many carbohydrates—like fruits, vegetables, whole grains,
and beans—help protect you against cancer and other diseases,
and some carbs contain nutrients like fiber, which helps you
lose and control weight.
Traditionally, the confusion about carbohydrates has centered
around finding ways to classify them and figuring out which ones
66 T H E A B S D I E T
are better for your body. It used to be that we thought of carbohydrates
only by their molecular structure—either simple or
complex. Simple indicates a carb with one or two sugar molecules—
things like sucrose (table sugar), fructose (in fruit), and
lactose (in dairy products). Complex carbohydrates are ones that
include more than two sugar molecules—like pasta, rice, bread,
and potatoes. The flaw is that you can’t generalize and say a carbohydrate
is good or bad for you based simply on its molecular
structure. For example, an apple contains nutrients and helps
keep you lean; sugar does not. Both are simple carbs, but they’re
hardly comparable in nutritional value.
Instead, the way to decide what carbohydrates are best for
you stems from how your body reacts to the carbohydrates chemically.
One of the tools that nutritionists use today is the
glycemic index (GI). The GI assigns numbers to foods that indicate
how quickly a food turns into glucose. High-GI foods—ones
that are quickly digested and turned to glucose—are generally
less nutritionally sound than low-GI choices.
Another term for glucose is blood sugar. The presence of sugar
in your blood causes your body to produce the hormone insulin.
Insulin’s job is to move the sugar you’re not using for energy out
of your bloodstream and store it in your body. Here’s where the GI
comes into effect: Foods with a high GI (like pasta, bread, white
rice, and Snickers bars) are digested quickly, flooding your bloodstream
with sugar. Insulin rushes in and says, “Whoa, what do I
do with all of this?” Whatever glucose isn’t immediately burned
for energy quickly starts getting stored as fat. What’s worse is
that if you eat a carb with a high GI in combination with fat—
bread with butter, for example—none of the fat you eat can be
burned for energy either, because your bloodstream is so flooded
with sugar. Insulin does such a good job of turning this new
blood sugar into fat, in fact, that soon your blood sugar begins
H O W T H E A B S D I E T W O R K S 67
to drop, and you know what that means: You’re hungry again.
If you eat a meal with a low GI (like a balanced dinner of
chicken, high-fiber vegetables, and brown rice), the food is digested
more slowly. Your blood sugar rises only incrementally, and
that slow digestion means that glucose is available as energy for
hours and hours. That means you have hours and hours to burn
off the blood sugar. Insulin doesn’t need to rush in and turn the
sugar into fat; it can use the sugar slowly for other construction
projects, like building and repairing muscle. Moreover, because
your blood sugar levels stay even, you don’t turn ravenously
hungry just a few hours after eating. You build more muscle, you
store less fat, you have more energy, and you keep your appetite
under control.

“THE ABS DIET HELPED ME CHEAT DEATH!”

2012-01-03T20:58:00.001-08:00

Name: Dan Shea
Age: 40
Height: 5'7"
Starting weight: 226
Six weeks later: 207
Dan Shea had seen what happens to a man who doesn’t take charge of his
weight and his health, and he didn’t want it to happen to him. His own dad—a
once-fit airborne ranger who used to be in incredible shape—was now, at age
70, on the verge of losing a foot to diabetes. Shea wanted to plot a different
course: “I want to be skiing when I’m 70,” he says.
But at 40 years old, 5 feet 7 inches, and 226 pounds, Shea knew he had to
make a change—a 60-pound change. He had a 13-year-old daughter he
wanted to watch grow up, and at the rate he was going, he was a heart attack
waiting to happen. So he started the Abs Diet and immediately took to it. He
realized he wasn’t eating enough breakfast and also realized the importance
found in most animal products, and those food products are important
for the Abs Diet for other reasons (the calcium in dairy
products, the protein in meat). But I do want you to consume the
low-fat and leaner versions of meat and dairy products. You want
the nutritional benefit from one part of the food without high
amounts of saturated fat.
AVOID
Fatty cuts of red meat
Whole-milk dairy products
Polyunsaturated fats: GOOD. There are two types of
polyunsaturated fats: omega-3’s and omega-6’s. You’ve probably
H O W T H E A B S D I E T W O R K S 63
of eating often—making sure he had a midmorning snack consisting of a
couple of the Powerfoods. “Even though I wasn’t hungry, I ate it,” he says. “It
was like fighting years of dietary knowledge to have that midmorning snack. I
wasn’t hungry yet, but if I hadn’t eaten, I’d have been starving at lunch.”
But his biggest affection is for the Abs Diet smoothies that he makes with lowfat
yogurt, low-fat milk, some fruit, and a scoop of protein powder. “Best damn
thing on the planet, like going to Dairy Queen,” Shea says. “For fun, I’d layer it
with a couple of tablespoons of fat-free, sugar-free whipped topping. My life is
all about smoothies now. It’s my snack of choice—really my meal of choice. If I
could have a blender in my office, I’d have them three times a day.”
Shea lost 19 pounds on the plan and now has made the Abs Diet his regular
eating and nutritional plan as he strives for his goal of 165 pounds. “I look
great, or so my wife tells me. My pants are much looser, and I need a new belt.
I tuck in my shirts now. I walk taller somehow, stand taller. My confidence level
has been boosted. In fact, I had an interview for a position for which I was way
underqualified, yet I was short-listed and came quite close to getting it, based
largely on my strength of presence,” Shea says. “I’ve lost in my gut and butt,
but mainly my man breasts are now less Dolly Parton and more Gwyneth Paltrow.
I know this is a great plan, and I know I’m going to reach my goal. I mean,
I’m in it for the long haul, and this is a plan that is easy to do for the long term.”
heard of omega-3 fatty acids. They’re the fats found in fish, and
a diet high in omega-3’s has been shown to help protect the
heart from cardiovascular disease. That’s plenty enough reason
to include seafood in your diet. But new evidence suggests that
this type of fat can actually help you control your weight. In one
study, subjects who took in 6 grams a day of fish oil supplements
burned more fat during the course of a day than those who went
without. Researchers suspect that a diet high in omega-3’s actually
alters the body’s metabolism and spurs it to burn fat more
efficiently.
Now, you can take fish oil supplements if you want, but you’ll
miss the muscle-building protein benefits of real fish. The fish
with the highest levels of omega-3’s are the fish you probably
enjoy the most already—salmon and tuna, to name two. (To see
where your favorite fish falls in the omega-3 sweepstakes, see the
chart on the opposite page.) In addition to being packed with
heart-healthy, fat-burning omega-3’s, fish is also a great source
of lean, muscle-building protein.
There’s another amazing, secret Powerfood that bodybuilders
know about but you may have never even heard of: flaxseed. Flax
is a seldom-used grain that’s loaded with omega-3’s as well as cholesterol-
busting fiber. You’ll find flaxseeds and flaxseed oil in most
health food stores. Grab it! I keep ground flaxseed in the fridge,
and I toss it on breakfast cereals, into smoothies, and on top of ice
cream. It’s got a mild nutty flavor you’ll like. It crushes cholesterol
with its omega-3’s, it adds artery-scouring fiber to your diet, and
it might just be your best weapon against fat.
Omega-6 fatty acids also help lower bad cholesterol and raise
good cholesterol. They’re found in vegetable oils, meat, eggs, and
dairy products. They’re so common to so many foods, in fact, that
only those of you currently shipwrecked on deserted islands living
off flotsam and jetsam need worry about not getting enough in
your diet.

HOW TO CHOOSE A MULTIVITAMIN

2012-01-03T14:04:00.001-08:00

Multivitamins are good insurance for the day you don’t get the daily maximum
amount of nutrients. Look for one with a concentration of chromium and vitamins
B6 and B12. Chromium improves your body’s ability to convert amino acids
into muscle. A University of Maryland study found that men who exercised regularly
and took 200 micrograms of chromium a day added more muscle and
lost significantly more body fat than lifters not taking the supplement. Also,
since hard workouts deplete your B vitamins, it’s good to find vitamins with high
doses, like Solaray Men’s Golden Multi-Vita-Min, which has megadoses of vitamins
B6 and B12, plus your entire daily allowance of endurance-boosting zinc.
Take control of your trans fat intake. Check the ingredient labels
on all the packaged foods you buy, and if you see PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED
OIL on the label, consider finding an alternative. Even
foods that seem bad for you can have healthy versions: McCains
shoestring french fries, Ruffles Natural reduced-fat chips, Wheatables
reduced-fat crackers, and Dove dark chocolate bars are just
a few of the “bad for you” snacks that are actually free of trans
fats. And remember—the higher up on the ingredients list PARTIALLY
HYDROGENATED OIL is, the worse the food is for you. You might
not be able to avoid trans fats entirely, but you can choose foods
with a minimal amount of the stuff.
The other way to avoid trans fats is to avoid ordering fried
foods. Because trans fats spoil less easily than natural fats and
are easier to ship and store, almost all fried commercial foods are
now fried in trans fats rather than natural oils. Fish and chips,
tortillas, fried chicken—all of it is packed with belly-building
trans fats. Order food baked or broiled whenever possible. And
avoid fast-food joints, where nearly every food option is loaded
with trans fats; drive-through restaurants ought to come complete
with drive-through cardiology clinics.
For more on trans fats—where they come from, how they act
inside your body, and how to fight back, see the Special Report on
page 127. In the meantime:
AVOID
Margarine
Fried foods
Commercially manufactured baked goods
Any food with PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED OIL on its list of ingredients
Saturated fat: BAD. Saturated fats are naturally occurring
fats found in meat and dairy products. The problem with saturated
fats is that when they enter your body, they tend to do the
H O W T H E A B S D I E T W O R K S 61
same thing they did when they were in a pig’s or cow’s body:
Rather than be burned for energy, they’re more likely to be stored
as fat in your flanks, in your ribs, even—ugh—in your loin. In fact,
they seem to have more of a “storage effect” than other fats. A new
study from Johns Hopkins University suggests that the amount
of saturated fat in your diet may be directly proportional to the
amount of fat surrounding your abdominal muscles. Researchers
analyzed the diets of 84 people and performed an MRI on each of
them to measure fat. Those whose diets included the highest rates
of saturated fat also had the most abdominal fat. Saturated fats
also raise cholesterol levels, so they increase your risk for heart
disease and some types of cancer.
I don’t want you to eliminate saturated fats entirely; they’re

Fat: Underrated, Understand?

2012-01-03T08:43:00.001-08:00

WHEN YOU THINK of fat, you probably think of foods that have a lot
of fat—or people who do. After a few years with some extra
pounds, the only thing you know about fat is that you’re tired of
it and want to get rid of it forever. But it’s probably one of your
body’s most misunderstood dietary nutrients, stemming from a
widely held but misguided belief that fat should take much of the
blame for our obesity epidemic.
In the 1980s, the U.S. government released nutritional guidelines
that essentially said we should base our diets on potatoes,
rice, cereal, and pasta and minimize the foods with a lot of fat and
protein. That gave way to the idea that fat makes you fat. And
that gave way to a new breed of diets that said if you limit the fat
in what you eat, you’ll limit the fat that exercises squatter’s rights
on your gut. But that line of thinking didn’t hold out when researchers
tried to find links between low-fat diets and obesity. In
H O W T H E A B S D I E T W O R K S 57
1998, for example, two prominent obesity researchers estimated
that if you took only 10 percent of your calories from fat, you’d lose
16 grams of fat a day—a loss of 50 pounds in a year. But when a
Harvard epidemiologist, Walter Willett, tried to find evidence that
this occurred, he couldn’t find any link between people who lost
weight and the fact that they were on a low-fat diet. In fact, in
some studies lasting a year or more, groups of people showed
weight gains on low-fat diets. Willett speculated that there was a
mechanism responsible for this: When the body is on a low-fat diet
for a long period, it stops losing weight.
Part of the reason our bodies rebel against low-fat diets is that
we need fat. For instance, fat plays a vital role in the delivery of vitamins
A, D, E, and K, nutrients stored in fatty tissue and the liver
until your body needs them. Fat also helps produce testosterone,
which helps trigger muscle growth. And fat, like protein, helps
keep you satisfied and controls your appetite. In fact, if we’ve
learned anything about weight loss over the past several years, it’s
that reducing your fat intake doesn’t necessarily do a darn thing
to decrease your body fat. One small study, for instance, compared
a high-carbohydrate diet and a high-fat diet. The researchers
found that the group with the high-fat diet experienced less muscle
loss than the other group. The researchers theorized that muscle
protein was being spared by the higher-fat diet because fatty acids,
more so than carbs, were being harnessed and used for energy.
The truth is that reasonable amounts of fat can actually help
you lose weight. In a study from the International Journal of Obesity,
researchers at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and
Harvard Medical School put 101 overweight people on either a
low-fat diet (fat was 20 percent of the total calories) or a moderatefat
diet (35 percent of calories) and followed them for 18 months.
Both groups lost weight at first, but after a year and a half, the
moderate-fat group had lost an average of 9 pounds per person,
whereas the low-fat dieters had gained 6 pounds. The results sug-
58 T H E A B S D I E T
gest that a healthy amount of fat is a factor in keeping your weight
under control.
Here’s a primer on the fats in your life.
Trans fat: BAD. You won’t find trans fatty acids listed on most
food labels, even though there are more than 40,000 packaged
foods that contain this type of fat. You won’t find it listed because
it’s so bad for you that food manufacturers have fought for years
to keep it off ingredient labels. In 2003, the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration finally adopted regulations requiring manufacturers
to include trans fat content on their packaging, but the regulations
will be phased in over the next few years. For now, you
have to be a smart food consumer to spot where the danger lies.
Trans fats were invented by grocery manufacturers in the
1950s as a way of appealing to our natural cravings for fatty foods.
But there’s nothing natural about trans fats—they’re cholesterolraising,
heart-weakening, diabetes-causing, belly-building chemicals
that, for the most part, didn’t even exist until the middle of
the last century, and some studies have linked them to an estimated
30,000 premature deaths in this country every year. In one
Harvard study, researchers found that getting just 3 percent of
your daily calories from trans fats increased your risk of heart disease
by 50 percent. Three percent of your daily calories equals
about 7 grams of trans fats—that’s roughly the amount in a single
order of fries. Americans eat an average of between 3 and 10
grams of trans fats every day.
To understand what trans fats are, picture a bottle of vegetable
oil and a stick of margarine. At room temperature, the vegetable
oil is a liquid, the margarine a solid. Now, if you baked cookies
using vegetable oil, they’d be pretty greasy. And who would want
to buy a cookie swimming in oil? So to create cookies—and cakes,
nachos, chips, pies, muffins, doughnuts, waffles, and many, many
other foods we consume daily—manufacturers heat the oil to very
high temperatures and infuse it with hydrogen. That hydrogen
H O W T H E A B S D I E T W O R K S 59
bonds with the oil to create an entirely new form of fat—trans
fat—that stays solid at room temperature. Vegetable oil becomes
margarine. And now foods that might normally be healthy—but
maybe not as tasty—become fat bombs.
Since these trans fats don’t exist in nature, your body has a hell
of a time processing them. Once consumed, trans fats are free to
cause all sorts of mischief inside you. They raise the number of LDL
(bad) cholesterol particles in your bloodstream and lower your HDL
(good) cholesterol. They also raise blood levels of other lipoproteins;
the more lipoprotein you have in your bloodstream, the greater
your risk of heart disease. Increased consumption of trans fats has
also been linked to increased risk of diabetes and cancer.
Yet trans fats are added to a shocking number of foods. They
appear on food labels as PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED OIL—usually vegetable
or palm oil. Go look in your pantry and freezer right now,
and you won’t believe how many foods include them. Crackers.
Popcorn. Cookies. Fish sticks. Cheese spreads. Candy bars. Frozen
waffles. Stuffing. Even foods you might assume are healthy—like
bran muffins, cereals, and nondairy creamers—are often loaded
with trans fats. And because they hide in foods that look like
they’re low in fat, such as Wheat Thins, these fats are making you
unhealthy without your even knowing it.

Protein: The MVP

2012-01-01T08:01:00.000-08:00

IN SPORTS, FEW THINGS are as valued as versatility—a center who
can rebound and shoot, a quarterback who runs as well as he
passes, a shortstop who can belt homers and flash leather. In your
body, protein is the most versatile player on your nutrient team.
It comes in many forms and does so many things well—all
without a $254 million contract.
Protein builds the framework of your body, including
muscles, organs, bones, and connective tissues.
In the form of enzymes, it helps your body digest food.
As a hormone, it tells your body when to use food
as energy and when to store it as fat.
It transports oxygen through your blood
to your muscles and organs.
As an antibody, it protects you from illness when
viruses and bacteria attack.
So protein is critical for helping your body function at optimum
levels. But we’ve made protein the foundation of the Abs Diet for
four other crucial reasons.
1. It tastes good. Juicy steaks. Sliced smoked turkey.
Roasted pork loin. Steamed lobster. Peanut butter. The
54 T H E A B S D I E T
Abs Diet is built around the foods you crave, so it’s a program
you’re not going to have to stick to; it’s a program
you’re going to want to stick to.
2. It burns calories even as you’re indulging in it.
Food contains energy in the form of chemical bonds, but
your body can’t use them in that form. Your body has to
break down the food and extract energy from that chemical
bond; that process of extracting energy itself requires
energy, so your body’s burning more calories to do it.
That’s the thermic effect of eating, as I explained in
chapter 3, and protein pushes the thermic effect into high
gear. It takes almost two times more energy to break
down protein than it does to break down carbohydrates.
So when you feed your body a greater amount of protein,
your body automatically burns more calories throughout
the day. When Arizona State University researchers compared
the benefits of a high-protein diet with those of a
high-carbohydrate diet, they found that people who ate a
high-protein diet burned more than twice as many calories
in the hours after their meals as those eating predominantly
carbs.
3. It keeps you feeling satisfied. Research has shown
that if you base your meals around protein, you’ll feel
fuller faster. Consider one study in the European Journal
of Clinical Nutrition. Subjects downed one type of four
different kinds of shakes—60 percent protein, 60 percent
carbohydrate, 60 percent fat, or a mixture with equal
amounts of all three. Then they were offered lunch. The
subjects who had either the high-protein or mixednutrient
shakes ate the least for lunch. The shakes they
had downed contained the same number of calories, but the
protein made them feel fuller and eat less at lunchtime.
H O W T H E A B S D I E T W O R K S 55
4. It builds muscle and keeps your body burning fat
all day. Remember, more muscle burns more fat. When
you lift and lower weights, you create microscopic tears in
your muscles. To repair the tears, protein acts like the
Red Cross in a federal disaster area. Your body parachutes
in new protein to assess the damage and repair the
muscle. Proteins fortify the original cell structure by
building new muscle fibers.
This whole process through which proteins make new
muscle fibers after a workout can last anywhere from 24
to 48 hours. So if you lift weights 3 days a week—triggering
proteins to rush in and repair your muscles—your
body essentially stays in muscle-building, and thus fatburning,
mode every day.
As you know, protein comes in many forms—such as
turkey, beef, fish, nuts, and tofu. You want to concentrate
on the proteins that best help build your muscles. Research
has shows that animal protein builds muscle
better than soy or vegetable protein does. So poultry, fish,
and lean cuts of beef or pork are a better choice than tofu
or other soy-based products. If you’re the kind of guy who
likes to count, you’ll want to shoot for about 1 gram of
protein per pound of body weight per day—that’s roughly
the amount of protein your body can use every day. For a
160-pound man, that’s 160 grams (g) of protein a day,
which would break down into something like this:
3 eggs (18 g)
2 cups of 1% milk (16 g)
1 cup of cottage cheese (28 g)
1 roast beef sandwich (28 g)
21⁄2 ounces of peanuts (16 g)
8 ounces of chicken breast (54 g)
56 T H E A B S D I E T
Combine those four reasons—an easy and delicious eating
plan, more calorie burn, less calorie intake, and more fat-burning
muscle—and you can easily see how a high-protein diet translates
into weight loss. In a Danish study, researchers put 65 subjects on
a 12 percent protein diet, a 25 percent protein diet, or no diet (the
control group). In the first two groups, the same percentage of
calories—about 30 percent—came from fat.While the low-protein
dieters lost an average of more than 11 pounds, the high-protein
subjects lost an average of 20 pounds and ate fewer calories than
the low-protein group.
The more amazing statistic wasn’t how much they lost but
where they lost it: The high-protein dieters also lost twice as
much abdominal fat. One reason may be that a high-protein diet
helps your body control its levels of cortisol, a stress hormone that
causes fat to converge in the abdominal region.

HOW THE ABS DIET WORKS

2012-01-01T08:00:00.000-08:00

IN THE CRUDEST FORM, THE WAY IN WHICH
food travels through your body
seems simple. There’s one way in
and one way out, and anything left
behind snowballs into a mound of
fat on your gut, over your hips, or under your chin. In reality,
the travel patterns of your breakfast, lunch, and
dinner flow more like a Los Angeles interstate system
than anything else. You’ve got the traffic jams (clogged arteries)
and the occasional drive-by shootings (indigestion),
but you also have a complex network of roads that shuttle
nutrients to and from vital organs and tissues. Your
ability to lose weight and gain muscle largely depends on
how and when you fuel your body to work in that system.

In the previous chapter, I showed how the key to effective
weight management was concentrating on your body’s calorie
burn—not on how effectively you burn calories while exercising
but on how effectively you burn calories when you’re not exercising.
Additionally, I explained a little about how the foods you eat
can affect your body’s daily calorie burn. Before I explain the howto’s
of the Abs Diet, you should know the most important substances
and nutrients that affect the way your body processes food.

WHAT THE HECK IS . . . DIABETES?

2011-12-31T03:19:00.001-08:00

If someone you love has ever struggled with the scourge of diabetes, you
know what a devastating disease it can be. In the year 2000, diabetes was the
sixth leading cause of death in the United States. But chances are that this demonic
disorder probably contributes to many more deaths; it’s a leading cause
of heart disease, kidney disease, and stroke, and its other complications include
blindness, amputation, impotence, and nerve damage. It’s also highly
preventable—and the Abs Diet and the Abs Diet Workout are near-perfect
prescriptions.
Diabetes works like this: Your digestive system turns brunch into glucose—
the form of sugar your body uses for energy—and sends it into the bloodstream.
When the glucose hits, your pancreas—a large gland located near
your stomach—produces insulin, a hormone, and sends that into the
bloodstream as well. Insulin is your body’s air traffic controller: It takes
command of all your glucose and directs it into your cells, where it can be
used for rebuilding muscle, for keeping your heart pumping and your brain
thinking, or for doing the macarena (if you’re the type to do the macarena,
that is).
But over time, bad health habits can take a toll on your flight command
center. Overeating, particularly eating high–glycemic index foods, floods
your body with massive amounts of glucose time and time again. Like any
air traffic controller, insulin can become overwhelmed when it’s asked to
do too much all at one time, and eventually, it burns out. Insulin loses its
ability to tell cells how to properly utilize the glucose in your blood—a
condition known as insulin resistance. After several years, the pancreas gets
fed up with producing all that ineffective insulin and begins to produce less
than you need. This is called type 2, or adult-onset, diabetes. (Given that
poor diet is the major risk factor, it’s no surprise that 80 percent of people
with type 2 diabetes are overweight.) Glucose builds up in the blood,
overflows into the urine, and passes out of the body. Thus, the body loses
its main source of fuel even though the blood contains large amounts of
glucose.
Two bad things happen: First, you start to lose energy, and your body starts to
have trouble maintaining itself. You feel fatigue and unusual thirst, and you
begin losing weight for no apparent reason; you get sick more often, and injuries
are slow to heal, because your body is losing its ability to maintain itself.
Second, the sugar that is hanging around in your blood begins to damage the
tiny blood vessels and nerves throughout your body, particularly in your ex-
B U R N F A T D A Y A N D N I G H T 51
tremeties and vital organs. Blindness, impotence, numbness, and heart
damage ensue.
But diabetes is a relatively preventable disease. Exercising and eating right
are the two best ways to manage it—and what a coincidence, that’s just what
this book is intended to teach you to do. So adopt the principles of the Abs
Diet and the Abs Diet Workout, and while you’re at it, consider these additional
steps.
Get mushy. Oatmeal is high in soluble fiber, which may decrease your risk of
heart disease, some cancers, diverticulitis, and diabetes. Mix it up: Eat oatmeal
with berries and nuts one day, and have eggs and meat another.
Climb. Yale researchers found that men with insulin resistance—a risk factor for
diabetes and heart disease—who exercised on a stairclimber for 45 minutes 4
days a week improved their sensitivity to insulin by 43 percent in 6 weeks.
Steal from the teacher. Researchers at the National Public Health Institute in
Helsinki, Finland, studied the diets of 60,000 men and women over the course
of a year and found that individuals who ate apples the most frequently were
12 percent less likely to die during the course of the study than those who
rarely bit into a McIntosh or Granny Smith. In particular, they cut their risk of
diabetes by 27 percent.
Eat the right carbs. Get to know the glycemic index, a measure of how quickly
the carbohydrates in a particular food are converted to glucose and released
into the bloodstream. In a Harvard study, men who ate foods with the lowest indexes,
like whole-wheat bread, were 37 percent less likely to develop diabetes
than those who ate high–glycemic index foods, such as white rice. (To find out
the glycemic index of your favorite foods, go to www.glycemicindex.com.)
Eat more E. In the alphabet soup of vitamins, E is the one that may prevent
the big D. When Finnish researchers evaluated the diets of 944 men, they
found that those with the highest vitamin E intake had a 22 percent lower
risk of diabetes than men with the lowest intake. Vitamin E may also prevent
the free radical damage that plays a role in the complications caused by
diabetes.
Start wining. In a study of 23,000 twins, researchers found that individuals
who had one or two drinks a day were up to 40 percent less likely to develop
diabetes than individuals downing less than one drink daily. Previous
research has linked alcohol consumption to increased insulin sensitivity.
Just don’t overdo the amount you drink. In a separate study, researchers
found that binge drinking may increase your risk of colorectal cancer
threefold.

Changing the Way You Think About the Word Diet

2011-12-31T03:18:00.001-08:00

HERE’S A TYPICAL diet scenario: You nibble on a piece of toast for
breakfast and a sack of baby carrots for lunch, and you figure that
puts you well ahead of the calorie-counting game. By dinner,
48 T H E A B S D I E T
though, you’ve got so many onion rings jammed into your mouth
that you look like Dizzy Gillespie. If you’re so restricted in what
you can eat, you’ll eventually act like a rebellious teen and break
the rules. While most diets say “no” more than your boss at review
time, the Abs Diet gives you options. Most diets are about restricting.
This one is about fueling.
For years—or maybe for all your life—you’ve probably had one
notion about what dieting needs to be. Restrict your foods, eat
like a supermodel, sweat on the treadmill, and you’ll lose fat. In
reality, those could be the very reasons why you couldn’t lose
weight. It’s why you gained back what you lost. It’s the reason
why your speedboat metabolism may have geared down to that
of an anchored barge. It’s why you don’t see much progress when
you try new weight-loss programs. And it’s why the only real
recipe many diet plans offer is a recipe for pecan-encrusted
failure. What the Abs Diet will do is reprogram your circuitry.
You’ll stop thinking about every calorie and start thinking about
how best to burn calories. Once you master that, your body will
be equipped with all the tools it needs to strip away fat—and
show off your abs.

Changing the Way You Eat

2011-12-30T11:51:00.001-08:00

FEW THINGS IN American society have failed more often than diets
(with the exception of the hapless Red Sox). I think there’s an explanation
for the high failure rate. For one, many diets have re-
B U R N F A T D A Y A N D N I G H T 47
volved around low-fat menus. I’ll discuss fat in a later chapter, but
one of the problems with low-fat diets is that they can suppress
the manufacture of testosterone, the hormone that contributes to
the growth of muscle and the burning of fat. When testosterone
levels are low, your body stores fat like squirrels store nuts. In one
study, men with higher testosterone were 75 percent less likely to
be obese than men with lower levels of testosterone. Many diets
also fail because they don’t take advantage of the single most powerful
nutrient for building muscle and increasing your metabolism:
protein.
Protein—in proportion with foods from other groups—works
in two primary ways. First, eating more protein cranks up the
thermic effect of digestion by as much as one-third. Second, protein
is also the nutrient that builds calorie-consuming muscle. In
effect, you get a double burn—while you’re digesting food and
later, as it helps build muscle. In the Abs Diet, you’ll emphasize
protein for these very reasons, but you’ll also emphasize the most
powerful sources of protein. A Danish study published in the
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition took a group of men and
gave them diets that were high in protein either from pork or
from soy. They found that men on the diet higher in animal protein
burned 2 percent more calories during a 24-hour period than
men on the soy protein diet, despite the fact that they ate slightly
less food. That’s 50 calories a day if you’re eating a 2,500-calorie
diet. In other words, if you want to burn calories, tenderloin is
better than tofu.

Changing the Way You Exercise

2011-12-29T13:06:00.001-08:00

HAVE YOU EVER seen a gym at rush hour? Everyone hovers around
the treadmills, elliptical trainers, and stationary bikes. Signs
warn you of 20-minute maximums so that the next sweat seeker
can have his turn. It seems like everyone wants a cardiovascular,
44 T H E A B S D I E T
aerobic workout. The more you sweat, the more calories you burn,
the more weight you lose, right? In a way, yes, the headphoneand-
Lycra set is right. Cardiovascular exercise—steady-state endurance
exercises, like running, biking, and swimming—burns a
lot of calories. In fact, it often burns more than other forms of exercise
like strength training or trendier workouts like yoga or Pilates.
But when it comes to weight control, aerobic exercise is
more overrated than the fall TV lineup. Why? For one reason: Aerobic
exercise builds little (if any) muscle—and muscle is the key
component of a speedy metabolism. Muscle eats fat; again, add 1
pound of muscle, and your body burns up to an additional 50 calories
a day just to keep that muscle alive. Add 6 pounds of muscle,
and suddenly you’re burning up to 300 more calories each day just
by sitting still.
Here’s the problem with low-intensity aerobic exercise. Just
like a car can’t run without gas or a kite can’t fly without wind,
a body can’t function without food. It’s the fuel that helps you
run, lift, and have the legs to make love all night long. Generally,
during exercise, your body calls upon glycogen (the stored
form of carbohydrate in muscles and the liver), fat, and in some
cases protein. When you’re doing low-intensity aerobic exercise
like jogging, your body primarily uses fat and glycogen (carbohydrates)
for fuel. When it continues at longer periods (20 minutes
or more), your body drifts into depletion: You exhaust your
first-tier energy sources (your glycogen stores), and your body
hunts around for the easiest source of energy it can find—protein.
Your body actually begins to eat up muscle tissue, converting
the protein stored in your muscles into energy you need
to keep going. Once your body reaches that plateau, it burns up
5 to 6 grams of protein for every 30 minutes of ongoing exercise.
(That’s rougly the amount of protein you’ll find in a hard-boiled
egg.) By burning protein, you’re not only missing an opportunity
to burn fat but also losing all-important and powerful muscle. So
B U R N F A T D A Y A N D N I G H T 45
aerobic exercise actually decreases muscle mass. Decreased
muscle mass ultimately slows down your metabolism, making it
easier for you to gain weight.
Now here’s an even more shocking fact: When early studies
compared cardiovascular exercise to weight training, researchers
learned that those who engaged in aerobic activities burned more
calories during exercise than those who tossed around iron. You’d
assume, then, that aerobic exercise was the way to go. But that’s
not the end of the story.
It turns out that while lifters didn’t burn as many calories during
their workouts as the folks who ran or biked, they burned far more
calories over the course of the next several hours. This phenomenon
is known as the afterburn—the additional calories your body burns
off in the hours and days after a workout.When researchers looked
at the metabolic increases after exercise, they found that the increased
metabolic effect of aerobics lasted only 30 to 60 minutes. The
effects of weight training lasted as long as 48 hours. That’s 48 hours
during which the body was burning additional fat. Over the long
term, both groups lost weight, but those who practiced strength
training lost only fat, while the runners and bikers lost muscle mass
as well. Themessage: Aerobic exercise essentially burns only at the
time of the workout. Strength training burns calories long after you
leave the gym, while you sleep, and maybe all the way until your
next workout. Plus, the extra muscle you build through strength
training means that in the long term, your body keeps burning calories
at rest just to keep that new muscle alive.
That raises a question. What aspect of strength training creates
the long afterburn? Most likely, it’s the process of muscle repair.
Weight lifting causes your muscle tissues to break down and
rebuild themselves at a higher rate than normal. (Muscles are always
breaking down and rebuilding; strength training simply accelerates
the process.) That breakdown and rebuilding takes a lot
of energy and could be what accounts for the long period of calorie
46 T H E A B S D I E T
burning. In fact, a 2001 Finnish study found that protein synthesis
(the process that builds bigger muscles) increases 21 percent
3 hours after a workout.
The good news is that you don’t have to lift like a linebacker to
see the results. A recent Ohio University study found that a short
but hard workout had the same effect as longer workouts. Using a
circuit of three exercises in a row for 31 minutes, the subjects were
still burning more calories than normal 38 hours after the workout.
(The Abs Diet Workout is designed along similar principles, to
mimic these results.)
As I said earlier, building muscle increases your metabolism so
much that you burn up to 50 calories per day per pound of muscle
you have. The more muscle you have, the easier it is for you to lose
fat. That’s why one of the components of the plan includes an exercise
program that will help you add the muscle you need to burn
fat and reshape your body. And it also points to one of the reasons
why you should deemphasize cardiovascular, aerobic exercise if
you want to lose fat: because it depletes your body’s store of fatburning
muscle.
Now, before you think I’m some sort of anti-aerobics fanatic,
let me clarify a few things: I run almost daily, and I’ve even completed
the New York City Marathon. Aerobic exercise burns calories,
it helps control stress, and it improves your cardiovascular
fitness. It also helps lower blood pressure and improve your cholesterol
profile. If your choice is aerobic exercise or no exercise, for
Pete’s sake get out there and run. But when it comes to long-term
weight management, I’ll take gym iron over road rubber any day.

What Is “Metabolism”?

2011-12-28T12:17:00.001-08:00

Metabolism is the rate at which your body burns its way through
calories just to keep itself alive—to keep your heart beating, your
lungs breathing, your blood pumping, and your mind fantasizing
about the Caribbean while crunching year-end accounting figures.
Your body is burning calories all the time, even while you’re
reading this sentence. The average woman burns about 10 calories
per pound of body weight ever day; the average man, 11 calories
per pound.
There are three main types of calorie burn that happen
B U R N F A T D A Y A N D N I G H T 41
throughout your day. Understand how they work, and you’ll understand
exactly why the Abs Diet is going to turn your body into
a fat-burning machine.
Calorie burn #1: The thermic effect of eating. Between 10
and 30 percent of the calories you burn each day get burned by
the simple act of digesting your food. Now that’s pretty cool—satisfying
your food cravings actually makes you burn away calories.
But not all foods are created equal: Your body uses more calories
to digest protein (about 25 calories burned for every 100 calories
42 T H E A B S D I E T
ABS DIET SUCCESS STORY
“THE PROOF IS IN THE PANTS!”
Name: Jessica Guff
Age: 43
Height: 5'4"
Starting weight: 130
Six weeks later: 120
Jessica Guff doesn’t believe in stepping on a scale. See, numbers don’t
give a total health picture, Guff says. What really matters is how you view
yourself—not to mention how others view you, too. Take the time she was
walking into a client’s office. The people there hadn’t seen her for a
couple of weeks, and one employee said to another, “Who’s that skinny
woman over there?”
“It’s Jessica,” the other employee told her. “She’s on this thing called the Abs
Diet.”
That exchange took place just 2 weeks after Guff started the Abs Diet—and
she felt the effects immediately. Guff, 43, who runs marathons, has always
been in good shape. But the effect of having two kids had taken a toll on her
belly. “I was in pretty good shape, except for my stomach,” she says. “But
since going on the plan, I really noticed a difference. I could probably crunch
walnuts with my abs.”
consumed) than it does to digest fats and carbohydrates (10 to 15
calories burned for every 100 calories consumed). That’s why the
Abs Diet concentrates on lean, healthy proteins. Eat more of
them, in a sensible way, and you’ll burn more calories.
Calorie burn #2: Exercise and movement. Another 10 to 15
percent of your calorie burn comes from moving your muscles,
whether you’re pressing weights overhead, running to catch the
bus, or just twiddling your thumbs. Simply turning the pages of
this book will burn calories.
B U R N F A T D A Y A N D N I G H T 43
The key for Guff was changing the way she approached eating. Sacrificing her
own eating habits to get her kids out the door and keep up with her fitness
training, she’d start the day with tea—and often little else. “I used to go out
and run without eating anything, and that was really stupid,” Guff says. “I was
horrified to learn the truth—that exercising on an empty stomach causes you
to burn muscle, not fat.” But the simple strategies of the Abs Diet changed all
that. “Now I’m having smoothies for breakfast, and it’s made me fitter and
stoked up my energy,” Guff says.
Guff says she couldn’t do a program in which she’d have to count calories or
weigh food. “What I love about the Abs Diet is the flexibility,” she says. “All I
have to remember is the catchy acronym—ABS DIET POWER—and I can remember
the 12 Powerfoods.”
The results: She’s leaner—and stronger. When her 56-pound daughter fell
asleep on the couch, Guff was the one who picked her up and carried her to
bed. “I thought, either I’m getting stronger or she’s losing weight,” she says.
And she’s also more confident. “When women look at other women, they look
at their boobs, their butts, and their waists—especially women who’ve had
children. Every woman who’s had a child cares about having a flat stomach.”
But the true measure of her success came in the form of a pair of green satin
cargo pants. Guff says, “They’re kinda hot, but my stomach shows when I
wear them. I have two kids, so I have no business flashing my midsection.”
But after 2 weeks on the plan, she decided to put them to the public test.
“All these people started complimenting me. A guy I went to college with
said, ‘Nice outfit.’ My husband said I looked great,” Guff says. “I’m going out
tonight and I’m wearing the pants again.”
Calorie burn #3: Basal metabolism. This one’s the biggie.
Your basal, or resting, metabolism refers to the calories you’re
burning when you’re doing nothing at all. Sleeping, watching TV,
sitting through yet another mind-numbing presentation on corporate
profit-and-loss statements—you’re burning calories all
the while. In fact, between 60 and 80 percent of your daily calories
are burned up just doing nothing. That’s because your body
is constantly in motion: Your heart is beating, your lungs are
breathing, and your cells are dividing, all the time, even when
you sleep.
Add up the percentages and you’ll see that the majority of your
daily calorie burn comes from physiological functions that you
don’t even think about—the thermic effect of eating and your basal
metabolism. While exercise is important, you need to realize that
the calories you burn off during exercise aren’t important. Let me
repeat that: Exercise is important, but the calories you burn off
during exercise aren’t important. That’s why the exercise program
we outline in the Abs Diet is designed to alter your basal metabolism,
turning your downtime into fat-burning time. And it’s why
the food choices we outline for you are designed to maximize the
number of calories you burn simply by eating and digesting. I
want you to forget about the calories you’re burning during those
30 minutes in the gym and concentrate on the calories you’re
burning the other 231⁄2 hours a day.
In effect, the Abs Diet is going to change your body into a fatfrying
dynamo by several means.

The Case against Calorie Counting

2011-12-28T06:15:00.000-08:00

Before you bust a button, hear me out. Labels and machines both
have their appropriate uses (the former for the simple knowledge
of the vitamins, minerals, and ingredients in your food, the latter
for getting people off their duffs and exercising). My beef with
labels and machines is not what they do per se but the myth
they perpetuate. Through their function, they feed into a way of
thinking about weight loss that actually makes it harder to control
weight. They’ve turned us into a community of heavies who worship
at the altar of one seemingly omnipotent number: the calorie.
With every food you eat and with every workout you finish,
you look at how many calories come in and how many calories go
out. It’s the turnstile theory of weight loss: If you exercise away
more than you take in, then you’ll lose weight. Experts tell us that
a pound of fat contains roughly 3,500 calories, so if you simply
delete 500 calories from your daily meals, increase your daily exercise
by 500 calories, or some combination thereof, you’ll lose a
pound of fat a week. That sounds great in theory, but in real life,
the whole concept of calorie management is more likely to make
40 T H E A B S D I E T
you lose heart than lose weight. You hump it on the stairclimber
for 30 minutes and sweat like a guest on The O’Reilly Factor.
When you see the final readout—“Workout Completed; 300 Calories
Burned!”—you feel like you’ve just chipped away at your belly
and gotten closer to your goal. That is, until you reach for a midnight
snack and see that a serving and a half of Raisin Bran also
equals 300 calories. What took 30 minutes to burn takes 30 seconds
to dust off during Leno. It’s a psychological diet killer.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with using nutritional labels
to track what you eat or as a deterrent to stay away from highcalorie
foods in the first place. And it can be helpful to use machine
readouts to gauge the intensity of your exercise. But you
will derail your weight loss efforts if you keep focusing on the
number of calories you take in during meals and the number of
calories you burn off during exercise. You need to focus, rather, on
what is happening inside your body during the rest of your day—
when you’re working, sleeping, making love, or just sitting still
right now reading this book. Right this very instant, your body is
either gaining fat or losing fat. The Abs Diet will train your body
to lose fat while you’re sitting still, because the Abs Diet focuses
on something other diet plans miss: your metabolism.

BURN FAT DAY AND NIGHT

2011-12-27T15:24:00.001-08:00

IN CHAPTER 2, I DISCUSSED HOW MOST
popular diets are designed to offer
only short-term weight loss, and
how following these programs sets
you up not only to regain the
weight you initially shed but to actually gain even more
fat in the long run. Most diets, in fact, are not long-term
fat-loss plans but long-term muscle-loss plans. The Abs
Diet is different: It’s a program that helps you rev up
your body’s natural fat burners and keep them revved
up for life.
As harmful as most diet crazes may be, diets alone
aren’t to blame for the obesity epidemic in America. In
fact, there’s plenty of blame to go around: fast food,

funnel cakes, stress, sedentary lifestyles, supersizing, all-you-caneat
buffets, the demise of physical education classes, free refills,
couches, movie theater popcorn, you name it. We’re a society of
overeaters who often hold desk jobs and would lobby to make the
Bloomin’ Onion its own food group. But in the battle of weight
control, these are the easy targets. Instead, I’d argue, one of the
reasons we keep getting fatter is that we put our faith in two
things that are supposed to help us lose weight. These weight loss
“double agents” reap praise for their contributions to good health,
but they’ve also done their part in skewing the way we think
about weight loss. The two culprits I blame for our obesity epidemic?
Nutritional labels and exercise machines.

WHAT THE HECK IS . . . HIGH CHOLESTEROL? (CONT.)

2011-12-27T13:46:00.000-08:00

every day. Grapefruit is gaining ground as a power food. New research shows
that it can fight heart disease and cancer, trigger your body to lose weight,
and even help you get a better night’s sleep. A grapefruit a day can lower
your total cholesterol and LDL (bad) cholesterol levels by 8 and 11 percent,
respectively.
Cram in the cranberry. Researchers at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania
found that men who drank three glasses of cranberry juice daily raised
their HDL (good) cholesterol levels by 10 percent, which in turn lowered their
risk of heart disease by 40 percent. Plant compounds called polyphenols are
believed to be responsible for the effect. (Note: Cranberry juice often comes
diluted, so make sure the label says that it contains at least 27 percent cranberry
juice.)
Spread some on. Instead of butter or margarine, try Benecol spread. It contains
stanol ester, a plant substance that inhibits cholesterol absorption. A
study at the Mayo Clinic found that people eating 41⁄2 tablespoons of Benecol
daily lowered their LDL (bad) cholesterol by 14 percent in 8 weeks. When they
stopped using it, their LDL returned to previous levels. Benecol can also be
used for cooking.
Gain with grains and beans. Researchers at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto
had people add several servings of foods like whole grains, nuts, and beans to
their diets each day. One month later, the test subjects’ LDL (bad) cholesterol
levels were nearly 30 percent lower than when the trial began. In another
study, this one at Tulane University, researchers found that people who ate
four or more servings a week had a 22 percent lower risk of developing heart
disease (and 75 percent fewer camping companions) than less-than-once-aweek
bean eaters.
Don’t let your tank hit empty. A study in the British Medical Journal found
that people who eat six or more small meals a day have 5 percent lower cholesterol
levels than those who eat one or two large meals. That’s enough to
shrink your risk of heart disease by 10 to 20 percent.
Refrain from fries. In a study published in the New England Journal
of Medicine, the exercise and nutritional habits of 80,000 women were
recorded for 14 years. The researchers found that the most important
correlate of heart disease was the women’s dietary intake of foods containing
trans fatty acids, mutated forms of fat that lower HDL (good)
ABS DIET HEALTH BULLETIN
WHAT THE HECK IS . . . HIGH CHOLESTEROL?
(CONT.)
W H Y T H E A B S D I E T ? A N D W H Y N O W ? 37
and increase LDL (bad) cholesterol. Some of the worst offenders are
french fries.
Sow your oats. In a University of Connecticut study, men with high cholesterol
who ate oat bran cookies daily for 8 weeks dropped their levels of LDL
cholesterol by more than 20 percent. So eat more oat bran fiber, such as oatmeal
or Cheerios. A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reports
that two servings of whole-grain cereal (Cheerios count) a day can reduce a
man’s risk of dying of heart disease by nearly 20 percent.
Rise and dine. In a study of 3,900 people, Harvard researchers found that
men who ate breakfast every day were 44 percent less likely to be overweight
and 41 percent less likely to develop insulin resistance, both risk factors for
heart disease.
Fortify with folic acid. A study published in the British Medical Journal found
that people who consume the recommended amount of folic acid each day
have a 16 percent lower risk of heart disease than those whose diets are
lacking in this B vitamin. Good sources of folic acid include asparagus, broccoli,
and fortified cereal.
Order a chef’s salad. Leafy greens and egg yolks are both good sources of
lutein, a phytochemical that carries heart disease–fighting antioxidants to your
cells and tissues.
Be a sponge. Loma Linda University researchers found that drinking five or
more 8-ounce glasses of water a day could help lower your risk of heart disease
by up to 60 percent—exactly the same drop you get from stopping
smoking, lowering your LDL (bad) cholesterol numbers, exercising, or losing a
little weight.
Give yourself bad breath. In addition to lowering cholesterol and helping to
fight off infection, eating garlic may help limit damage to your heart after a
heart attack or heart surgery. Researchers in India found that animals who
were fed garlic regularly had more heart-protecting antioxidants in their blood
than animals that weren’t.
Crank up the chromium. According to new research from Harvard, men with
low levels of chromium in their systems are significantly more likely to develop
heart problems. You need between 200 and 400 micrograms of chromium per
day—more than you’re likely to get from your regular diet. Look for a supplement
labeled chromium picolinate; it’s the most easily absorbed by the body.
Snack on nuts. Harvard researchers found that men who replaced 127 calories
of carbohydrates—that’s about 14 Baked Lay’s potato chips—with 1 ounce
of nuts decreased their risk of heart disease by 30 percent.

WHAT THE HECK IS . . . HIGH CHOLESTEROL?

2011-12-26T12:12:00.001-08:00

Cholesterol is a soft, waxy substance found among the lipids (fats) in the
bloodstream and in all your body’s cells. For all the bad press it gets, the fact
is that you need cholesterol, because your body uses it to form cell membranes,
create hormones, and perform several other crucial maintenance operations.
But a high level of cholesterol in the blood—hypercholesterolemia—
is a major risk factor for coronary heart disease, which leads to heart attack.
You get cholesterol in two ways. The body—mainly the liver—produces
varying amounts, usually about 1,000 milligrams a day. But when you consume
foods high in saturated fats—particularly trans fats—your body goes cholesterol
crazy, pumping out more than you could ever use. (Some foods also contain
cholesterol, especially egg yolks, meat, poultry, fish, seafood, and
whole-milk dairy products. But the majority of it, and the stuff I want you to
focus on, is made by your own body.)
Some of the excess cholesterol in your bloodstream is removed from the
body through the liver. But some of it winds up exactly where you don’t
want it—along the walls of your arteries, where it combines with other substances
to form plaque. Plaque is wack for several reasons: First, it raises
blood pressure by making your heart work harder to get blood through your
suddenly narrower vessels, which can eventually wear out your ticker.
Second, plaque can break off its little perch and tumble through your bloodstream,
eventually forming a clot that can lead to stroke, paralysis, death,
and other annoyances.
Inside your body, a war is raging right now between two factions of specialized
sherpas called lipoproteins that are moving cholesterol around your insides
according to their own specialized agendas. There are several kinds,
but the ones to focus on are the Jekyll and Hyde of health, HDL (highdensity
or “helpful” lipoprotein) and LDL (low-density or “lazy” lipoprotein)
cholesterol.
The good guy: HDL cholesterol. About one-fourth to one-third of blood
cholesterol is carried by helpful HDL. HDL wants to help you out by picking
up cholesterol and getting it the hell out of your bloodstream by carrying it
back to the liver, where it’s passed from the body. That’s good. Some experts
believe that HDL removes excess cholesterol from plaques and thus
slows their growth. That’s really good. A high HDL level seems to protect
against heart attack. The opposite is also true: A low HDL level (less than
40 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) indicates a greater risk. A low HDL cholesterol
level may also raise stroke risk.
W H Y T H E A B S D I E T ? A N D W H Y N O W ? 35
The bad guy: LDL cholesterol. Lazy LDL has no interest at all in helping you
out. LDL just wants to stick cholesterol in the most convenient place it can
find, meaning your arteries. LDL doesn’t care that too much cholesterol lining
your arteries causes a buildup of plaque, a condition known as atherosclerosis.
A high level of LDL cholesterol (160 mg/dL and above) reflects an increased
risk of heart disease. Lower levels of LDL cholesterol reflect a lower risk of
heart disease.
Simply put, HDL is trying to come to your aid, but LDL is just sitting there,
laughing at you. (I also heard it said something bad ‘bout your momma.) So
whose side are you on? If you want to give HDL a hand, start stocking up on
the Abs Diet Powerfoods, and follow the guidelines of the Abs Diet Workout.
Here are some more quick ideas on beating the bad guy for good.
Butt out. Tobacco smoking is one of the six major risk factors of heart disease
that you can change or treat. Smoking lowers HDL (good) cholesterol levels.
Drink up. In some studies, moderate use of alcohol is linked with higher HDL
(good) cholesterol levels. But take it easy there, Dino. People who consume
moderate amounts of alcohol (an average of one to two drinks per day for
men and one drink per day for women) have a lower risk of heart disease, but
increased consumption of alcohol can bring other health dangers, such as alcoholism,
high blood pressure, obesity, and cancer.
Johnny B good. A B vitamin called niacin reduces LDL (bad) cholesterol at the
same time it raises beneficial HDL. In fact, niacin can be more effective at
treating these things than popular cholesterol-busting drugs, which tend to
act more generally on total cholesterol and gross LDL. (Be careful, though.
While the niacin you get from foods and over-the-counter vitamins is fine,
super-high doses of niacin can have serious side effects and should be taken
only under a doctor’s supervision.)
Tea it up. Three recent studies confirm that drinking green tea can help lower
your cholesterol level and reduce your risk of developing cancer. In a 12-week
trial of 240 men and women, researchers at Vanderbilt University found that
drinking the equivalent of 7 cups of green tea a day can help lower LDL (bad)
cholesterol levels by 16 percent. Seven cups a day is a lot of tea, but even 1 or
2 cups a day could have a beneficial impact. Meanwhile, researchers at the
University of Rochester recently determined that green tea extract can help
prevent the growth of cancer cells, and Medical College of Ohio researchers
found that a compound called EGCG in green tea may help slow or stop the
progression of bladder cancer.
Go for the grapefruit. If you want to make one simple dietary change for
better health, the best thing you can do is eat a single white or ruby grapefruit

I WENT FROM BRANDO TO RAMBO

2011-12-25T04:30:00.001-08:00

Name: Bill Stanton
Age: 40
Height: 5'8"
Starting weight: 220
Six weeks later: 190
Bill Stanton, a security consultant, had been pumping iron since he was 15.
But even with his rigorous weight training, he kept getting fatter: By the time
he reached 40, he had ballooned to 220 pounds on his 5-foot-8 frame. Why?
Because Stanton’s diet and exercise routine consisted of doing bench presses
and squats and then finishing the night with chicken wings and booze.
“My pants were fitting me like a tourniquet, and it was like I was in a bad
marriage—I was living comfortably uncomfortable,” Stanton says. “The Abs
Diet challenged me to get on the program, step up to the plate, and step
away from the plate.”
you want. Anything. During the bulk of the week, you’ll focus on foods
that will charge your metabolism and control your temptations, but
you’ll also have the freedom and flexibility to stray just enough to
keep you satisfied without ruining all the work you’ve already put in.
You’ll gain time. On some diets, it seems like it would take less
time to organize a hunting party and stalk a woolly mammoth than
it would take to plan and cook the recipes they tout. On this diet, all
of the meals and recipes are low-maintenance. For planning purposes,
all I want you to do is take this program 2 days at a time. Since
mindless noshing is the nation’s number one diet buster, your best
defense is to plot out a simple strategy for how and what you’re going
to eat each day. Every night, take 5 minutes to sketch out what and
when you’ll eat the next day, and you’ll have deflated temptation
and gained control. After reading the principles, you’ll see that the
Abs Diet establishes a new paradigm for weight control. Simply:
MORE FOOD MORE MUSCLE LESS FLAB
W H Y T H E A B S D I E T ? A N D W H Y N O W ? 33
After following the Abs Diet for 6 weeks, Stanton lost 30 pounds—and has cut
his body fat from 30 percent to 15 percent. “I looked pregnant. I looked like a
power lifter—big arms, a big chest, and a big gut. Now I look like Rambo.”
Stanton appreciated the diversity of the Abs Diet meals and the plan’s totalbody
approach to working out, though he admits that eating six times a day
took some getting used to. “What I had to do was learn to eat to live, not live
to eat,” he says. And then, he says, everything just rolled from there. Once his
mental approach changed—being committed to the plan, limiting the number
of times he partied at night, and eliminating late-night meals—he was able to
turn everything around. “You wake up attacking the day rather than waiting
for the day to end,” he says.
Now, everything just feels better. He’s always in a good mood. He walks taller.
He has more energy. And now he’s a model for others.
“I work out at Sports Club L.A., where people are really focused on looking great,“
he says. “Even there, guys and girls all come up to me.One guy said, ‘You are
kicking butt. Everybody sees that transformation. You’re inspiring a lot of people.’”
Stanton has changed his physique so dramatically that he’s even been accused
of taking steroids. “I take that as a compliment,” he laughs.

The South Beach Diet: Eating Right Is Just the Start

2011-12-24T04:45:00.001-08:00

IN THE SOUTH BEACH DIET, Arthur Agatston, M.D., emphasizes
balanced eating, relying on lean protein, good fats, and good carbohydrates.
As you’ll see, some of South Beach’s nutritional principles
are similar to those of the Abs Diet. Agatston focuses
heavily on the role of insulin and how spikes in blood sugar
make you hungry. While his diet focuses on how food works in
relation to losing weight, it doesn’t show you how to tune up
your metabolism, your body’s natural fat burner. The Abs Diet,
on the other hand, incorporates factors like exercise that can
have a profound impact on not only the amount of fat you can
lose but also the rate at which you lose it. By revving up your
body’s fat-burning mechanism, you can take control over not
30 T H E A B S D I E T
only the calories coming into your body but also the calories
being burned away by it.
• • •
As I said at the beginning of this book, most diets are about
losing. The Abs Diet is about gaining. The Abs Diet is based on the
simple notion that your body is a living, breathing, calorieburning
machine, and that by keeping your body’s fat furnace constantly
stoked with lots and lots of the right foods—and this is
important—at the right time, you can teach it to start burning off
your belly in no time. In fact, this diet can help you burn up to 12
pounds of fat—from your belly first—in 2 weeks or less. And just
look at what you’ll gain in return.
You’ll gain meals. Americans have huge appetites.We hunger
for success, we hunger for freedom, and yeah, we hunger for food.
Traditional calorie- or food-restricting diets run counter to this
uniquely American appetite. They leave us hungry, miserable, and
one snap away from going psycho in the chips aisle. But not the Abs
Diet. You will eat on this program—and eat often. In fact, you’ll be
refueling constantly, and with every delicious meal or snack, you’ll
be stoking your body’s natural fat burners. Imagine that: Every
time you eat, you help your body lose weight and turn flab into abs.
You’ll gain muscle. With the Abs Diet and the Abs Diet
Workout, the more you eat, the more muscle you’ll build, and the
more fat you’ll lose. This program converts the food you eat into
muscle. The more lean muscle mass you have, the more energy it
takes to fuel it—meaning that calories go to your muscles to sustain
them rather than convert to fat. In fact, research shows that
adding lean muscle mass acts as a built-in fat burner. Again, for
every pound of muscle you gain, your resting metabolic rate goes
up as much as 50 calories a day. The strength-training component
can put several pounds of muscle onto your body. You won’t beef
up like a bodybuilder, but you will build enough muscle to shrink
and tighten your gut—and, depending on your starting point,
W H Y T H E A B S D I E T ? A N D W H Y N O W ? 31
show off your abs. When you add exercise into the mix, you can
think of it as a simple equation:
MORE FOOD MORE MUSCLE LESS FLAB
Now, consider the alternative:
LESS FOOD LESS MUSCLE MORE FLAB
Isn’t it incredible that most diets focus on the “less food” equation?
And isn’t it time we changed that? (Sure, some studies have
shown that you’ll live longer on a super-restrictive diet of less
than 1,400 calories a day. But given how such a plan would make
you feel, you probably wouldn’t want to.)
You’ll gain freedom. Most diets deprive you of something—
whether it’s carbs, fat, or your manhood. (Tofu? No thanks.) In this
plan, you will not feel deprived. You’ll stay full. You’ll eat crunchy
food. You’ll eat sweet food. You’ll eat protein, carbs, and fat. In fact,
there’s even one meal during the week when you can eat anything.

Dr. Phil: Just a Little Too Emotional

2011-12-22T07:50:00.003-08:00

DR. PHIL MCGRAW, the pop psychologist who made it big as the
tough-love guru on Oprah’s talk show, has a hugely popular diet
W H Y T H E A B S D I E T ? A N D W H Y N O W ? 29
program whose main emphasis is on stripping food of its emotional
power. McGraw’s book, The Ultimate Weight Solution: The
7 Keys to Weight Loss Freedom, stresses the notion that we’ve allowed
food to have too much power in our lives and that, in
order to quit binge eating, we need to (a) limit our access to junk
food, (b) select foods that take a long time to prepare and chew
so that it’s harder for us to eat, and (c) stop eating to satisfy
cravings and feelings of stress. Sounds good, except that in
today’s world, Antarctica is about the only place that doesn’t
have convenient access to junk food. I agree that we should stop
eating to satisfy cravings and stress, and I applaud Dr. Phil for
recognizing the psychological aspects of our eating habits. What
the Abs Diet does is show you how to eat to prevent cravings
and stress. The Abs Diet makes it easy to snack smartly
throughout the day, so you’ll never go hungry. It also helps you
take control of your food intake, your body, and your life, so you
can beat back stress. The best reason the Abs Diet is superior to
Dr. Phil? No moustache!

Sugar Busters: Making Sweets a Sin

2011-12-22T07:50:00.001-08:00

THE SUGAR BUSTERS DIET philosophy centers around eliminating
foods high in sugar as well as foods that spike your blood sugar
and make you hungry (like some carbohydrates such as pasta,
corn, beer, and potatoes). The benefit, proponents say, is that if
you follow the plan, you’ll be able to enjoy steak, eggs, and
cheese—and still lose weight. But simply eating less sugar won’t
help you lose weight. Without nutritional balance, you can still
consume a lot of high-calorie foods that are low in sugar and end
up gaining weight. And as with other diets, you’ve done nothing
to change the way your body processes foods to achieve the
highest calorie burn that you can.

The Zone: A Too-Delicate Balancing Act

2011-12-21T03:11:00.001-08:00

THE ZONE DIET, by Dr. Barry Sears, involves balancing the kinds
of food that you eat with the goal of putting you “in the Zone.” The
basic premise is that at every meal you should have carbs, protein,
and a little bit of monounsaturated fat in the precise ratio
that Sears recommends. Carbs are divided into desirable carbs,
such as vegetables and some fruit, and undesirable carbs, such as
bread, juice, beer, and sweets. Proteins and fats are divided similarly.
This gives you freedom to eat what you want, but when
choosing undesirable foods, you must eat less of them and they
must be accompanied by other foods. For example, you can indulge
in “bad” carbs, but only in moderation, and you must accompany
them with protein and some fat. So if you’re planning to have a
28 T H E A B S D I E T
beer, plan on a side of cottage cheese and a few olives to balance
it out. This is why many people complain about the Zone—some
of the food combos can be out of the ordinary, and measuring how
much of each group you can and should eat can be overly complicated.
Sears provides formulas to determine how much of which
foods you should eat based on how much you exercise and your
level of body fat. This number can be converted to how many
“blocks” of each food you should have in a day. You can distribute
them throughout the day but not let 5 hours pass between meals.
The business of measuring, dividing, and combining can get pretty
complex to manage; even though the balance of food is pretty sensible,
you’d have to be an air traffic controller to keep everything
straight. The diet is so reliant on its central gimmick that almost
no one has the time or energy to follow it for very long.

Weight Watchers: Too Much Math, Too Little Food

2011-12-20T16:29:00.001-08:00

WEIGHT WATCHERS—a popular point-tallying system that enforces
portion control by having you log the amount of food you eat every
day—works for many people. Those who overeat can benefit by
tracking what they consume and being conscious of reducing calories.
But this program has its flaws. First, I don’t know many
people who have the time or long-term discipline to measure foods
and count calories on a daily basis. Second, Weight Watchers
doesn’t guarantee nutritional balance. You could count your points
so that you eat nothing but junk if you skimped during other parts
of the day. In theory, you could eat your day’s worth of points at one
or two meals—and that would slow down your metabolism and
might actually make you gain weight. Calorie counting, as I’ll explain
in the next few sections, is only one component of a successful
weight-control program. Third, and most important, a lot of people
don’t like the support group atmosphere of Weight Watchers.

The Atkins Diet: Limiting Food, Limiting Nutrition

2011-12-19T09:18:00.001-08:00

THE ATKINS DIET eliminates practically all carbohydrates for the
first part of the plan, leaving you with only foods that contain protein
and fat: no bread, no pasta, no fruit, no vegetables, no juice—
no fun. The Atkins diet, no question, helps people lose weight. I’ve
seen men lose 10, 20, even 30 pounds on Atkins—all of them
feasting on steak, cheese, and bacon while doing so, and I’ve seen
the studies that support the plan’s effectiveness in helping people
26 T H E A B S D I E T
lose weight, at least in the short term. Emphasizing protein is
smart, but eliminating many other foods that are important to
maintaining good health isn’t. But here’s my real issue with this
kind of diet, one that often gets overlooked in the whole no-carbohydrate
debate. I could restrict you to any couple of foods—let’s
say chips, ice cream, and burgers. Go on a diet eating just those
things, and chances are that you’d lose weight—because you
simply can’t force yourself to eat the same stuff over and over
again. By simply restricting the foods you eat to only a handful of
them, you’ll automatically drop pounds because you’ve dramatically
reduced your total calories. But you’ve also dramatically reduced
your intake of vitamins, minerals, and fiber, while upping
your intake of artery-clogging saturated fats. Even more important,
you just couldn’t stay on such a diet long-term, no matter
how much you liked it, because your lifestyle (and taste buds) demand
a more flexible, more enjoyable eating plan—and because
your body is programmed to crave fruits and grains and juices
just as much as it craves burgers and chips.
Well, as crazy as it sounds, that super-restrictive, low-nutrient
diet is exactly what you get with Atkins. You eat a limited number
of foods—the vast majority containing protein and saturated fat.
You’ll drop pounds because you’ve eliminated carbohydrates, but
you’ve also put yourself at risk for a number of health problems.
For one, the foods on Atkins have high amounts of saturated fats,
and there’s overwhelming evidence that societies with diets high
in saturated fats face a greater prevalence of heart disease.
Second, by eliminating most carbohydrates from your diet, you’re
eliminating some important nutrients, like vitamin B and fiber
and phytonutrients that help your immune system. Worst of all,
even though Atkins does introduce carbohydrates later in the
plan, few people can stick to the limited number of foods that
Atkins allows. So that short-term weight loss leads to long-term
weight gain and, potentially, long-term health problems.

WHY THE ABS DIET? AND WHY NOW?

2011-12-18T16:02:00.000-08:00

EARLIER IN THIS BOOK, I OUTLINED
half a dozen ways the Abs
Diet will improve your life.
And I told you about the
unique and scientifically
proven promise of the Abs Diet, how it can strip off up to
20 pounds of fat in 6 weeks—starting with your belly.
But the next steps are up to you.
If you’re simply not interested in improving your
life—if the idea of becoming a slimmer, fitter, healthier,
pain-free, more successful, more sexually vital person
doesn’t appeal to you—then close this book right now,
and return it. (After you wipe off the Cheetos grease
23
stains, of course.) If you’re not interested in achieving the greatest
possible results with the least possible effort, this book is not
for you.
But if you do want to make a change—one you can see, one you
can feel, one that will last a lifetime—then this book is for you.
The only one for you.
The Abs Diet is a simple plan built around 12 nutrient-packed
foods that, when moved to the head of your dietary table, will give
you all the vitamins, minerals, and fiber you need for optimum
health while triggering muscle growth and firing up your body’s
natural fat burners. I’ll tell you more about these foods in an upcoming
chapter, but here’s a quick overview. (Tell me this isn’t a
meal plan you can stick to!)
Almonds and other nuts
Beans and legumes
Spinach and other green vegetables
Dairy (fat-free or low-fat milk, yogurt, cheese)
Instant oatmeal (unsweetened, unflavored)
Eggs
Turkey and other lean meats
Peanut butter
Olive oil
Whole-grain breads and cereals
Extra-protein (whey) powder
Raspberries and other berries
12!
I’ve chosen these foods both for their nutritional content and
for their simplicity. See, every day, new diet books and weightloss
advice shuffle across my desk. (In fact, if you plug “diet” in
24 T H E A B S D I E T
to Amazon.com’s search engine, you’ll turn up more than 80,000
titles.) Some of these diet schemes are a little wacky: grapefruit
diets, cabbage soup diets, cottage cheese diets, raw-egg-and-Slim-
Jim diets. Some of them sound good—low-fat diets, low-carb
diets, low-salt diets. But most of them have one thing in common:
They are actually designed to make you fail in the long run.
That’s because even the diet plans that are based on sound
principles sometimes fail to acknowledge the realities of life—that
you’re too busy to whip up intricate meals like mango-flavored
shrimp kebabs. That you enjoy food too much to swear off pasta
and potatoes all the time. That eating is supposed to be a pleasure,
not a chore. That’s why I based the Abs Diet on common foods that
are easy to prepare and enjoy. The way I see it, most other diet
plans are too complicated and invite failure in three major ways.
1. They reduce calories too severely. With a strict—or
drastic—calorie reduction, you may lose weight at first,
but you’re left hungry. When you’re hungry, you’ve increased
the chances that you’ll gorge at some point during
the day. When you gorge, you feel as if you failed, then feel
guilty for failing, then drop off the plan and resume your
cold-pizza-for-breakfast habits. With the Abs Diet, however,
you’ll never go hungry—in fact, you’ll find yourself
eating much more often than you do now: six times a day!
2. They restrict too many foods. It would be easy to
build a plan that didn’t include cheeseburgers, pizza, or
beer. But if I did that, you’d ditch the plan on the first
Monday night of football season. Even though changing
your eating habits is a fundamental part of this program, I
think there’s a greater chance you’ll stick to the plan if you
don’t have to give up everything you like. It’s normal to
have steaks with clients, to have hot dogs at a barbecue, to
share a pitcher of beer after work. If you deprive yourself
W H Y T H E A B S D I E T ? A N D W H Y N O W ? 25
of every food that tastes good, there’s not much incentive
for even the most motivated person to stick to the plan for
longer than a few weeks. The Abs Diet is about eating the
foods you enjoy—and indulging yourself when need be.
3. They don’t take into account lifestyle. If we all had
a chef to prepare our meals—or even more than a few
minutes to do it ourselves—losing weight would be much
simpler. But when was the last time you had 2 hours to
prepare a meal? We’re all busy. We eat in restaurants. We
order in. We hit drive-throughs. We wish we had time to
tally fat-gram totals, or measure every ounce of food, or
prepare elaborate good-for-you dishes. But the reality is
that most of us won’t, no matter how much weight we
need to lose. We have commitments to jobs and families,
and we spend so much time doing everything from commuting
to fixing our home that a mango-shrimp masterpiece
is what slips down on our priority list. The Abs Diet
is what you need: a low-maintenance program, with lowmaintenance
foods and even lower-maintenance recipes.
Let’s take a look at a handful of today’s most popular diets, and
I’ll show you why many of them are designed to offer short-term
weight loss and long-term weight gain.

WHATTHEHECKIS . . . HIGHBLOODPRESSURE? (CONT.)

2011-12-18T03:47:00.001-08:00

Journal of Human Hypertension, researchers found that prehypertensive patients
who added more potassium to their diets lowered their systolic pressure
by 2.5 points and their diastolic by 1.6 points. Potassium helps sweep excess
sodium from the circulatory system, causing the blood vessels to dilate. What
makes V8 better than a banana (another good source of potassium)? V8 also
contains lycopene and lutein, two phytochemicals that have their own blood
pressure–lowering properties.
Cut out the cold cuts. One slice of ham contains 240 milligrams of sodium,
more salt than you’ll find on the outside of two pretzel rods. The point:
Lose the lunchmeat, and lower your blood pressure. A recent study found
that prehypertensive people who reduced their daily sodium consumption
from 3,300 to 1,500 milligrams knocked nearly 6 points off their systolic
blood pressure and close to 3 off their diastolic. If you want to have your
hoagie and eat it, too, at least switch to the Boars Head line of low-sodium
meats—ham, turkey, roast beef—and leave the pickle on your plate (833 milligrams
of sodium). Another rule of thumb: If a food comes canned or jarred,
it’s probably a salt mine.
Go two rounds and out. Make the second drink of the night your last call for
alcohol. In a landmark study published in the New England Journal of Medicine,
researchers found that one or two drinks a day actually decreased blood
pressure slightly. Three drinks or more a day, however, elevated blood pressure
by an average of 10 points systolic and 4 diastolic. The type of alcohol
doesn’t matter. Heck, order a screwdriver: Orange juice is one of the best
sources of blood pressure–lowering potassium.
Drink more tea. An American Heart Association study found that men who
drank two cups of tea a day were 25 percent less likely to die of heart disease
than guys who rarely touched the stuff. The reason: Flavonoids in the tea not
only improve blood vessels’ ability to relax but also thin the blood, reducing
clotting.
Top your toast. Black currant jelly is a good source of quercetin, an antioxidant
that Finnish researchers believe may improve heart health by preventing
the buildup of the free radicals that can damage arterial walls and allow
plaque to penetrate.
Have a Mac(intosh) attack. Men who frequently eat apples have a 20 percent
lower risk of developing heart disease than men who eat apples less often.
ABS DIET HEALTH BULLETIN
WHATTHEHECKIS . . . HIGHBLOODPRESSURE?
(CONT.)
STRIP AWAY FAT, STRIP AWAY TROUBLE 19
Eat fresh berries. Raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries are all loaded
with salicylic acid—the same heart disease fighter found in aspirin.
Order the tuna. Omega-3 fats in tuna and other fish as well as flaxseed help
strengthen heart muscle, lower blood pressure, prevent clotting, and reduce
levels of potentially deadly inflammation in the body.
Squeeze a grapefruit. One grapefruit a day can reduce arterial narrowing by
46 percent, lower your bad cholesterol level by more than 10 percent, and
help drop your blood pressure by more than 5 points.
Feast on potassium. Slice a banana (487 milligrams) on your cereal, then
bake two small sweet potatoes (612 mg) or cook up some spinach (1 cup has
839 mg) for dinner. All are loaded with potassium. Studies show that not getting
at least 2,000 milligrams of potassium daily can set you up for high blood
pressure. Other good sources of potassium include raisins (1 cup, 1,086 mg),
tomatoes (1 cup sauce, 811 mg), lima beans (1 cup, 955 mg), and papayas
(one has 781 mg of the mineral).
Buy calcium-fortified OJ. Increasing the calcium in your diet can lower your
blood pressure. You’ll derive a benefit from the vitamin C as well. According
to research from England, people with the most vitamin C in their bloodstreams
are 40 percent less likely to die of heart disease.
Snack on pumpkin seeds. One ounce of seeds contains 151 mg of
magnesium, more than a third of your recommended daily intake. Magnesium
deficiencies have been linked to most risk factors for heart
disease, including high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol levels, and
increased buildup of plaque in the arteries. Other great sources: halibut
(170 mg in 7 ounces of fish), brown rice (1 cup, 84 mg), chickpeas
(1 cup, 79 mg), cashews (1 ounce, 74 mg), and artichokes (one gives
you 72 mg).
Change your oil. Researchers in India found that men who replaced the
corn and vegetable oils in their kitchens with monounsaturated fats (olive
oil or, in this case, sesame seed oil) lowered their blood pressure by more
than 30 points in just 60 days without making any other changes in their
diets.
Cut down on mindless candy snacking. A compound in licorice root
has been shown to spike blood pressure—especially in men who eat a lot
of black licorice. Fruit-flavored licorice, however, doesn’t contain the
compound.

WHATTHEHECKIS . . . HIGHBLOODPRESSURE?

2011-12-17T06:48:00.000-08:00

You know high blood pressure is bad, but you probably have a little trouble
getting your head around the whole concept of how “blood pressure” works.
“Can’t we just let a little of the blood out and lower the pressure?” you might
wonder. If only it were so easy.
When most people think of blood pressure, they think in terms of a garden
hose: Too much pressure and the hose bursts, unless you open the valve. But
that model is too simple. It helps instead to think of your circulatory system as
more like the Erie Canal—a series of locks and gates that help move blood
around to where it’s needed. See, gravity works on your blood just like it
works on the rest of your body: It wants to pull everything downward. So
imagine yourself hopping out of bed tomorrow morning and standing up.
Gravity wants to take all that blood that’s distributed throughout your body
and pull it down into your feet. You, on the other hand, would like that blood
to pump to your brain, where it can help you figure out where the hell your
keys are.
On cue, arteries in the lower body constrict while the heart dramatically
increases output. The instant result: Blood pressure rises, and blood flows
to the brain. Ahh, there they are—in the dog’s water dish, right where you
left them.
It’s an ingenious system, but one that’s incredibly easy to throw out of
whack. When you pack on extra padding around your gut, your heart pumps
harder to force blood into all that new fatty tissue. When you nosh on potato
chips and other high-sodium foods, your body retains water in order to dilute
the excess sodium, increasing overall blood volume. When you line your
arteries with plaque from too many fatty meals, pressure increases as the
same amount of blood has to squeeze through newly narrowed vessels.
When you let the pressures of the day haunt you into the night, your brain
pumps out stress hormones that keep your body in a perpetual state of
fight-or-flight anxiousness, also forcing your heart to pump harder. Highsalt,
high-fat diets and an excess of stress all combine to create a dangerous
situation.
Much to the dismay of Quentin Tarantino fans, letting out some blood won’t
relieve the pressure. Your heart is still pumping, and your blood vessels are
still dilating and contracting to make sure the blood goes where it’s needed.
When the pressure remains high for years on end, thin-walled vessels in the
brain can burst under extreme pressure; brain cells die as a result in what’s
known as a hemorrhagic stroke. Or hypertension can cause plaque buildup in
STRIP AWAY FAT, STRIP AWAY TROUBLE 17
one of the brain’s arteries, eventually cutting off bloodflow. (High blood pressure
damages smooth artery walls, creating anchor points for plaque to latch
onto.) Kidney failure or a heart attack can also follow from dangerous plaque
accumulations.
Then there’s the plain old wear and tear that high blood pressure causes on
your ticker. Over time, the extra work brought on by high blood pressure
causes the walls of the heart to stiffen and thicken. The heart becomes a less
efficient pump, unable to push out as much blood as it takes in. Blood backs
up, the heart gives out, and the coroner scribbles “congestive heart failure”
on your chart.
Ideally, your blood pressure should be 120/80 or lower. What do those numbers
mean? The top number, called the systolic pressure, is the pressure generated
when the heart beats. The bottom number is the diastolic pressure, the
pressure on your blood vessels when the heart is resting between beats.
Higher readings are broken out into three categories:
Prehypertensive: 120–139 systolic/80–89 diastolic. Prehypertensives
should start worrying now about their blood pressure, concentrating
on diet and exercise tips like those found in the Abs Diet. You
may not see the flashing lights in your mirror right now, but your radar
detector just went off. Time to slow down.
Stage I hypertensive: 140–159 systolic/90–99 diastolic. For
people who fall in this range, drug therapy is usually recommended in
addition to lifestyle changes. Your risk of heart attack or stroke is elevated,
and you need to be under a doctor’s care.
Stage II hypertensive: 160 or greater systolic/100 or greater
diastolic. Advanced drug therapy is often a must for people at this
level, who face a serious risk of being maimed or killed by their
condition.
So, two questions: Do you know what your blood pressure is? If not, are you
freaked out enough by now to start taking care of it? Fortunately, the Abs Diet
Powerfoods can help by cutting down on the bad fats in your diet and increasing
the good ones—and by slashing away some of those extra pounds.
So can the Abs Diet Workout, as well as a few stress-reduction techniques. (To
find out how you can help manage your stress level, see “How Stress Makes
You Fat” on page 156.) In the meantime, try attacking the problem with some
of these simple tips.
Make it a low-sodium V8. Make that two 5.5-ounce cans: 11 ounces of V8
contains nearly 1,240 milligrams (mg) of potassium. In a study published in theJournal of Human Hypertension, researchers found that prehypertensive patients
who added more potassium to their diets lowered their systolic pressure
by 2.5 points and their diastolic by 1.6 points. Potassium helps sweep excess
sodium from the circulatory system, causing the blood vessels to dilate. What
makes V8 better than a banana (another good source of potassium)? V8 also
contains lycopene and lutein, two phytochemicals that have their own blood
pressure–lowering properties.
Cut out the cold cuts. One slice of ham contains 240 milligrams of sodium,
more salt than you’ll find on the outside of two pretzel rods. The point:
Lose the lunchmeat, and lower your blood pressure. A recent study found
that prehypertensive people who reduced their daily sodium consumption
from 3,300 to 1,500 milligrams knocked nearly 6 points off their systolic
blood pressure and close to 3 off their diastolic. If you want to have your
hoagie and eat it, too, at least switch to the Boars Head line of low-sodium
meats—ham, turkey, roast beef—and leave the pickle on your plate (833 milligrams
of sodium). Another rule of thumb: If a food comes canned or jarred,
it’s probably a salt mine.
Go two rounds and out. Make the second drink of the night your last call for
alcohol. In a landmark study published in the New England Journal of Medicine,
researchers found that one or two drinks a day actually decreased blood
pressure slightly. Three drinks or more a day, however, elevated blood pressure
by an average of 10 points systolic and 4 diastolic. The type of alcohol
doesn’t matter. Heck, order a screwdriver: Orange juice is one of the best
sources of blood pressure–lowering potassium.
Drink more tea. An American Heart Association study found that men who
drank two cups of tea a day were 25 percent less likely to die of heart disease
than guys who rarely touched the stuff. The reason: Flavonoids in the tea not
only improve blood vessels’ ability to relax but also thin the blood, reducing
clotting.
Top your toast. Black currant jelly is a good source of quercetin, an antioxidant
that Finnish researchers believe may improve heart health by preventing
the buildup of the free radicals that can damage arterial walls and allow
plaque to penetrate.
Have a Mac(intosh) attack. Men who frequently eat apples have a 20 percent
lower risk of developing heart disease than men who eat apples less often.
ABS DIET HEALTH BULLETIN
WHATTHEHECKIS . . . HIGHBLOODPRESSURE?
(CONT.)
STRIP AWAY FAT, STRIP AWAY TROUBLE 19
Eat fresh berries. Raspberries, strawberries, and blueberries are all loaded
with salicylic acid—the same heart disease fighter found in aspirin.
Order the tuna. Omega-3 fats in tuna and other fish as well as flaxseed help
strengthen heart muscle, lower blood pressure, prevent clotting, and reduce
levels of potentially deadly inflammation in the body.
Squeeze a grapefruit. One grapefruit a day can reduce arterial narrowing by
46 percent, lower your bad cholesterol level by more than 10 percent, and
help drop your blood pressure by more than 5 points.
Feast on potassium. Slice a banana (487 milligrams) on your cereal, then
bake two small sweet potatoes (612 mg) or cook up some spinach (1 cup has
839 mg) for dinner. All are loaded with potassium. Studies show that not getting
at least 2,000 milligrams of potassium daily can set you up for high blood
pressure. Other good sources of potassium include raisins (1 cup, 1,086 mg),
tomatoes (1 cup sauce, 811 mg), lima beans (1 cup, 955 mg), and papayas
(one has 781 mg of the mineral).
Buy calcium-fortified OJ. Increasing the calcium in your diet can lower your
blood pressure. You’ll derive a benefit from the vitamin C as well. According
to research from England, people with the most vitamin C in their bloodstreams
are 40 percent less likely to die of heart disease.
Snack on pumpkin seeds. One ounce of seeds contains 151 mg of
magnesium, more than a third of your recommended daily intake. Magnesium
deficiencies have been linked to most risk factors for heart
disease, including high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol levels, and
increased buildup of plaque in the arteries. Other great sources: halibut
(170 mg in 7 ounces of fish), brown rice (1 cup, 84 mg), chickpeas
(1 cup, 79 mg), cashews (1 ounce, 74 mg), and artichokes (one gives
you 72 mg).
Change your oil. Researchers in India found that men who replaced the
corn and vegetable oils in their kitchens with monounsaturated fats (olive
oil or, in this case, sesame seed oil) lowered their blood pressure by more
than 30 points in just 60 days without making any other changes in their
diets.
Cut down on mindless candy snacking. A compound in licorice root
has been shown to spike blood pressure—especially in men who eat a lot
of black licorice. Fruit-flavored licorice, however, doesn’t contain the
compound.

Abs Will Help You Win

2011-12-17T03:41:00.001-08:00

IF YOU PLAY GOLF, basketball, naked Twister, or any sport that
requires movement, your essential muscle group isn’t your chest,
biceps, or legs. It’s your core—the muscles in your torso and hips.
Developing core strength gives you power. It fortifies the muscles
around your whole midsection and trains them to provide the
right amount of support when you need it. So if you’re weak off
the tee, strong abs will improve your distance. But if you also
play stop-and-start sports like tennis or basketball, abs can improve
your game tremendously. Though speed is the buzzword
TV analysts like to use to differentiate between Hall of Famers
and practice-squad players, athletic success isn’t really about
speed. It’s really about accelerating and decelerating. How fast
can you go from a stopped position at point A to stopping at
point B? Your legs don’t control that; your abs do. When researchers
studied what muscles were the first to engage in these
types of sports movements, they found that the abs fired first.
The stronger they are, the faster you’ll get to the ball.
• • •
These are all great reasons to pursue the Abs Diet. But the best
reason is this: The program is an easy, sacrifice-free plan that will
let you eat the foods you want and keep you looking and feeling
better day after day. It’s designed to help you lose weight in the
easiest possible ways: by recalibrating your body’s internal fatburning
furnace, by focusing on the foods that trigger your body
to start shedding flab, and by rebuilding you into a lean, mean,
fat-burning machine.

Abs Will Limit Your Aches and Pains

2011-12-15T15:06:00.001-08:00

AS YOU AGE, it’s common to experience some joint pain—most
likely in your knees, but maybe around your feet and ankles,
too. But the source of that pain might not be weak joints; it
might be weak abs—especially if you’re any kind of athlete, from
the serious golfer to the I-pull-my-groin-every-time Thanksgiving
Day football player. When you’re playing sports, your abdominal
muscles help stabilize your body during start-and-stop
movements, like changing direction on the football field or
tennis court. If you have weak abdominal muscles, your joints
absorb all the force from those movements. It’s kind of like
trampoline physics. Jump in the center, and the mat will absorb
your weight and bounce you back in the air. Jump toward the
side of the trampoline, where the mat meets the frame, and
you’ll bust the springs. Your body is sort of like a trampoline,
with your abs as the center of the mat and your joints as the
supports that hold the mat to the frame. If your abs are strong
enough to absorb some shock, you’ll function well. If they’re not,
the force puts far more pressure on your joints than they were
built to withstand.
Similar protection benefits extend to people who aren’t athletes,
too. That Dutch study of nearly 6,000 men found that
those with waist circumferences above 40 inches were more
likely to have a condition called Sever’s disease, which causes
heel pain, and to develop carpal tunnel syndrome, a painful
hand and wrist condition. One study even found that 70 percent
14 T H E A B S D I E T
of people with carpal tunnel syndrome were either overweight
or obese.

Abs Will Strengthen Your Back

2011-12-15T06:39:00.000-08:00

I HAD A FRIEND who threw out his back maybe two or three times
a year. He always did it in the simplest way—sleeping a little
awkwardly or getting out of a chair too quickly. One time, he
pulled it out reaching into the back seat of his car to get something
his young daughter had dropped. The pain once stabbed
him so badly that he collapsed to the ground while he was
standing at a urinal. (Go ahead. Imagine that.) His problem
wasn’t that he had a bad back; it was that he had weak abs. If he
had trained them regularly, he could’ve kept himself from being
one of the millions of men who suffer from back pain every year.
(And yes, he started the Abs Diet Workout a year ago, and within
weeks his back pain virtually disappeared.)
Since most back pain is related to weak muscles in your trunk,
maintaining a strong midsection can help resolve many back issues.
The muscles that crisscross your midsection don’t function
in isolation; they weave through your torso like a spider web, even
attaching to your spine. When your abdominal muscles are weak,
the muscles in your butt (your glutes) and along the backs of your
STRIP AWAY FAT, STRIP AWAY TROUBLE 13
legs (your hamstrings) have to compensate for the work your abs
should be doing. The effect, besides promoting bad company
morale for the muscles picking up the slack, is that it destabilizes
the spine and eventually leads to back pain and strain—or even
more serious back problems.

FAT’S DOMINOES

2011-12-14T20:50:00.000-08:00

Overweight people are:
50 percent more likely to develop heart disease
(obese: Up to 100 percent)
Up to 360 percent more likely to develop diabetes
(obese: Up to 1,020 percent)
16 percent more likely to die of a first heart attack (obese: 49 percent)
Roughly 50 percent more likely to have total cholesterol above 250
(obese: Up to 122 percent)
50 percent more likely to have erectile dysfunction (obese: 200 percent)
14 percent less attractive to the opposite sex (obese: 43 percent)
Likely to spend 37 percent more a year at the pharmacy
(obese: 105 percent)
Likely to stay 19 percent longer in the hospital (obese: 49 percent)
20 percent more likely to have asthma (obese: 50 percent)
Up to 31 percent more likely to die of any cause (obese: 62 percent)
19 percent more likely to die in a car crash (obese: 37 percent)
120 percent more likely to develop stomach cancer (obese: 330 percent)
Up to 90 percent more likely to develop gallstones (obese:
Up to 150 percent)
590 percent more likely to develop esophageal cancer
(obese: 1,520 percent)
35 percent more likely to develop kidney cancer (obese: 70 percent)
14 percent more likely to have osteoarthritis (obese: 34 percent)
70 percent more likely to develop high blood pressure
(obese: Up to 170 percent)
2 minutes) were five times less likely to suffer lower-body injuries
than the 31 who barely notched 50. But that’s not the
most striking element. The men who performed well in the
pushups and 2-mile run enjoyed no such protection—suggesting
that upper-body strength and cardiovascular endurance had
little effect on keeping bodies sound. It was abdominal strength
that offered the protection. Unlike any other muscles in your
body, a strong core affects the functioning of the entire body.
Whether you ski, sail, wrestle with the kids, or fool around with
a partner, your abs are the most essential muscles for keeping
you from injury. The stronger they are, the stronger—and
safer—you are.

BABY, BABY, WHERE DID OUR LUNCH GO?

2011-12-14T07:07:00.001-08:00

Your last meal didn’t wind up just in your gut. After a meal, your body begins
to apportion the calories to nutrient-hungry organs, growing muscles, and,
yes, your belly. Michael Jenson, M.D., a professor of medicine in the division
of endocrinology, diabetes, and metabolism at the Mayo Clinic, calculated this
breakdown of how your body processes food.
10 percent to the kidneys. Kidneys work to make sure the blood is balanced
with the right amounts of water and nutrients.
5–10 percent to the heart. The heart gets most of its energy from fat, which
provides more long-term energy for the hardworking heart than glucose can.
23 percent to the liver, pancreas, spleen, and adrenal glands. After the
liver pulls out nutrients, it stores excess calories as glycogen.
25 percent to muscles. Muscles require a constant source of energy just to
maintain their mass, so the more muscle you have, the more calories you
burn.
10 percent to the brain. Glucose is brain fuel. It can’t be stored long term,
which is why people often feel faint if they skip a meal.
10 percent to thermogenesis. The simple act of breaking down the food you
just ate takes up one-tenth of your calories.
2–3 percent to fat cells. Your fat cells grow and eventually divide as more
and more calories are deposited.
10 percent to no one knows where. Your body’s a big place, and some calories
go unaccounted for.
the standard army fitness test of situps, pushups, and a
2-mile run, researchers tracked their lower-body injuries (such
as lower-back pain and Achilles tendonitis) during a year of field
training. The 29 men who cranked out the most situps (73 in

Abs Will Keep You Safe from Harm

2011-12-13T21:00:00.001-08:00

IN SCHOOL, YOU were taught the story of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow
and how, with one awkward misstep, the lumbering bovine
knocked over an oil lamp that started the Great Chicago Fire
and burned much of that toddlin’ town to the ground. That
tragedy happened at a time when most urban housing was still
built with wood. Today, such a disaster is unthinkable—and not
just because we don’t let cows into the living room anymore.
It’s unthinkable because the infrastructure of today’s cities is
10 T H E A B S D I E T
built with steel—steel that stands up to fire, to earthquakes, to
hurricanes.
Think of your midsection as your body’s infrastructure. You
don’t want a core made of dry, brittle wood or straw. You want one
made of solid steel, one that will give you a layer of protection that
belly fat never could.
Consider a U.S. Army study that linked powerful abdominal
muscles to injury prevention. After giving 120 artillery soldiers

Abs Will Improve Your Sex Life

2011-12-13T12:41:00.000-08:00

WOMEN CLAIM THE GREATEST sex organ is the brain; men say it’s
approximately 3 feet due south. So let’s say we split the geographic
difference and focus on what’s really central to a good
sex life.
You know the old phrase “It’s not the size of the ship; it’s the
motion of the ocean”? Well, take that to heart. We can’t improve
upon what God gave you (though the Abs Diet may actually somewhat
increase the size of a guy’s manhood—more on that in a bit),
but we can rebuild your body to maximize the rocking and rolling
that goes on below deck. Consider how the following side benefits
can help you pull that ship into harbor.
Increased stamina. The thrusting power you generate during
sex doesn’t come from your legs; it comes from your core. Strong
abdominal and lower-back muscles give you the stamina and
strength to try new positions, stay steady in old ones, and maintain
the motion control that’s important for your staying power—
and your partner’s pleasure.
Better erections. It’s no secret that upwards of 30 million
American men have some kind of erectile dysfunction. Though
many things can cause it, one of the major causes is purely a
matter of traffic control. Artery-clogging cheeseburgers don’t discriminate,
so when you’re overweight, the gunk that gums up the
STRIP AWAY FAT, STRIP AWAY TROUBLE 9
blood vessels leading to your heart and brain also gums up the
vessels that lead to your genitals. Plaque forms on the inside of
your arteries, narrowing the passageways that blood must follow.
Think of 12 lanes of traffic bottlenecking into one. Your blood vessels
can become so clogged in your pelvic area that a sufficient
supply of blood can’t get through to form an erection. You don’t
need to have aced calculus to understand this equation: Increased
fat equals decreased bloodflow. Decreased bloodflow
equals softer (or no) erections. Softer (or no) erections equals
“This stinks” squared. (By the way, clogged blood vessels have the
same effect on women, leading to decreased lubrication, sensitivity,
and sexual pleasure.)
Increased length. When it comes to a man and his privates,
fat is his body’s side-view mirror: Objects appear smaller than actual
size. The length of the average man’s penis is about 3 inches
flaccid, but the fatter he is, the smaller he’ll look. That’s because
the fat at the base of a man’s abdomen covers up the base of his
penis. Losing just 15 pounds of fat will add up to half an inch to
the length of a man’s member. No, Little Elvis is not technically
growing, but decreasing the fat that surrounds it will allow all a
guy’s got to actually show.

I LOST 25 POUNDS IN 6 WEEKS!”

2011-12-13T07:13:00.001-08:00

Name: Paul McComb
Age: 28
Height: 5'9"
Starting weight: 180
Six weeks later: 155
Once Paul McComb left college and gained some weight, he figured that
extra heft was his to keep for life. But when he walked into a nutrition store
and stepped on a scale that told him how much he weighed (180 pounds)
and how much he should weigh (155 pounds), something changed: his
attitude.
So McComb went on the Abs Diet—and lost 25 pounds.
He made significant changes by doing such things as eliminating the four or
five daily Cokes and skipping the midnight chips. He says the transition was
easy because the Abs Diet allowed him to eat plenty—six times a day, in fact.
6 T H E A B S D I E T
higher than among lean ones, according to a Swedish study. The
World Health Organization estimates that up to one-third of cancers
of the colon, kidney, and digestive tract are caused by being
overweight and inactive. And having an excess of fat around your
gut is especially dangerous. See, cancer is caused by mutations
that occur in cells as they divide. Fat tissue in your abdomen
spurs your body to produce hormones that prompt your cells to divide.
More cell division means more opportunities for cell mutations,
which means more cancer risk.
A lean waistline also heads off another of our most pressing
health problems—diabetes. Currently, 13 million Americans have
been diagnosed with adult-onset diabetes, and many more go undiagnosed.
Fat, especially belly fat, bears the blame. There’s a
misconception that diabetes comes only from eating too much re-
STRIP AWAY FAT, STRIP AWAY TROUBLE 7
“With the eating six times a day, I didn’t feel like snacking on chips,” he reports.
“I used to not eat at all during the day; then I’d come home, eat dinner,
and have chips in the evening. When I started eating all day, it was like, holy
cow, I just wasn’t as hungry.”
McComb says the key to his success was planning meals around the Abs
Diet Powerfoods, so he wasn’t tempted by vending machines and snack
bars. He’d eat turkey on multigrain bread for lunch, have whole-wheat
pasta or chicken for dinner, and snack on peanut butter and chocolate milk.
He was happy that he didn’t have to count calories, watch carbs, or give
up the foods he loves. “Understanding the Powerfoods concept and how
these foods work together helped me eat—a lot—and still watch the
weight come off.”
McComb, who did the Abs Diet Workout at home with 20-pound dumbbells,
says he’ll always incorporate the principles of the Abs Diet into his lifestyle. “I
feel a lot better now. I feel more confident because I set a goal for myself and
I actually achieved it. Even my skin is a bit clearer. I find I’m getting better
sleep, I’m waking up more rested, and the bags under my eyes are going
away. Everything seems to be that much better in my life. I’m sure some of my
friends are sick of hearing how much weight I lost.”
fined sugar, like the kind in chocolate and ice cream. But people
contract diabetes after years of eating high-carbohydrate foods
that are easily converted into sugar—foods like white bread,
pasta, and mashed potatoes. Scarfing down a basket of bread and
a bowl of pasta can do the same thing to your body that a carton
of ice cream does: flood it with sugar calories. The calories you
can’t burn are what converts into fat cells that pad your gut and
leaves you with a disease that, if untreated, can lead to impotence,
blindness, heart attacks, strokes, amputation, and death. And
that, my friend, can really ruin your day.
Upper-body obesity is also the most significant risk factor for
obstructive sleep apnea, a condition in which the soft tissue in
the back of your throat collapses during sleep, blocking your
airway. When that happens, your brain signals you to wake up
and to start breathing again. As you nod off once more, the
same thing happens, and it can continue hundreds of times
during the night—making you chronically groggy and unable to
get the rest your body needs. (You won’t remember waking up
over and over again; you’ll just wonder why 8 hours of sleep left
you dragging.) Fat’s role is that it can impede muscles that inflate
and ventilate the lungs, forcing you to work harder to get
enough air. When Australian researchers studied 313 patients
with severe obesity, they found that 62 percent of them with a
waist circumference of 49 inches or more had a serious sleep
disturbance and that 28 percent of obese patients with smaller
waists (35 to 49 inches) had sleep problems. Being overweight
also puts you at risk for a lot of other conditions that rob you of
a good night’s rest, including asthma and gastroesophageal reflux.
When Dutch researchers studied nearly 6,000 men, they
found that even those whose waistlines measured a relatively
modest 37 to 40 inches had a significantly increased risk of respiratory
problems, such as wheezing, chronic coughing, and
shortness of breath. All of this can create an ugly cycle: Ab-
8 T H E A B S D I E T
dominal fat leads to poor sleep. Poor sleep means you drag
through your day. Sluggish and tired, your body craves some
quick energy, so you snack on some high-calorie junk food. That
extra junk food leads to more abdominal fat, which leads to . . .
well, you get the picture.
I could fill this whole book with evidence, but I’m going to boil
it down to one sentence: A smaller waist equals fewer health
risks.

Abs Will Help You Live Longer

2011-12-12T20:53:00.001-08:00

STUDY AFTER STUDY shows that the people with the largest waist
sizes have the most risk of life-threatening disease. The evidence
couldn’t be more convincing. According to the National Institutes
of Health, a waistline larger than 40 inches for men signals significant
risk of heart disease and diabetes. The Canadian Heart
Health Surveys, published in 2001, looked at 9,913 people ages 18
to 74 and concluded that for maximum health, a guy needs to
keep his waist size at no more than 35 inches (a little less for
younger guys, a little more for older ones). When your waist grows
larger than 35 inches, you’re at higher risk of developing two or
more risk factors for heart disease. And when researchers examined
data from the Physicians’ Health Study that has tracked
22,701 male physicians since 1982, they found that men whose
waists measured more than 36.8 inches had a significantly ele-
STRIP AWAY FAT, STRIP AWAY TROUBLE 5
vated risk for myocardial infarction, or heart attack, in which an
area of the heart muscle dies or is permanently damaged by a lack
of bloodflow. Men with the biggest bellies were at 60 percent
higher risk. Now the real scary part: The average American man’s
waist size is a ponderous 38.8 inches, up from 37.5 in 1988, according
to the journal Obesity Research. The same sad truth holds
for women, too: A woman with a flabby midsection is at increased
risk for the same health problems. And American women have
seen their weight rise just as men have.
Of course, abs don’t guarantee you a get-out-of-the-hospitalfree
card, but studies show that by developing a strong abdominal
section, you’ll reduce body fat and significantly cut the risk factors
associated with many diseases, not just heart disease. For example,
the incidence of cancer among obese patients is 33 percent

SixWays a Flat Stomach Will Dramatically Improve HowYou Look,F eel,and Live

2011-12-12T13:04:00.001-08:00

N GYMS, PLAYING FIELDS, BEACHES, AND
bedrooms across the country, our
bodies are constantly being measured.
And in dressing room mirrors
and on bathroom scales, we’re
constantly measuring ourselves. But let’s set aside those
vanity measurements and concentrate on measuring
ourselves by a different set of criteria—the number of
fat cells we’re carrying.
The average American has about 30 billion fat cells;
each of them is filled with greasy substances called lipids.
When you pump doughnuts, corn chips, and fried Snickers
3
bars into your system, those fat cells can expand—up to 1,000
times their original size. But a fat cell can get only so big; once it
reaches its physical limit, it starts to behave like a long-running
sitcom. It creates spin-offs, leaving you with two or more fat cells
for the price of one. Only problem: Fat cells have a no-return
policy. Once you have a fat cell, you’re stuck with it. So as you
grow fatter and double the number of fat cells in your body, you
also double the difficulty you’ll have losing the lipids inside them.
Many of us tend to store fat in our bellies, and that’s where
the health dangers of excess weight begin. Abdominal fat doesn’t
just sit there and do nothing; it’s active. It functions like a separate
organ, releasing substances that can be harmful to your
body. For instance, it releases free fatty acids that impair your
ability to break down the hormone insulin (too much insulin in
your system can lead to diabetes). Fat also secretes substances
that increase your risk of heart attacks and strokes, as well as
the stress hormone cortisol (high levels of cortisol are also associated
with diabetes and obesity as well as with high blood pressure).
Abdominal fat bears the blame for many health problems
because it resides within striking distance of your heart, liver,
and other organs—pressing on them, feeding them poisons, and
messing with their daily function.
Now take the person with a six-pack. He’s the icon of strength
and good health. He’s lean; he’s strong; he looks good in clothes;
he looks good without clothes. Defined abs, in many ways, have
defined fitness. But they define something else: They’re the hallmark
of a person who’s in control of his body and, as such, in control
of his health.
While some people may think that working toward abs of
armor is shallower than a kiddy pool, there’s nothing wrong with
striving for a six-pack. Of course, defined abs make you look
good—and make others feel good about the way you look, too.
4 T H E A B S D I E T
(Take heed, men: In one survey, 32 percent of women said that abs
are the muscles most likely to make them melt; the next closest
was biceps at 17 percent.) And for good reason: When you have
abs, you’re telling the world that you’re a disciplined, motivated,
confident, and healthy person—and hence a desirable partner.
And sometimes a little vanity can be good for your health: In a recent
Canadian study of more than 8,000 people, researchers found
that over 13 years, those with the weakest abdominal muscles had
a death rate more than twice as high of those with the strongest
midsections. Such research upholds the notion that strong abs do
more than turn heads at the beach. In fact, your abdominal muscles
control more of your body than you may even realize—and
have just as much substance as show. In short, here are my top
six reasons why striving for a six-pack is going to make your life
better.

THE ABS DIET CHEAT SHEET

2011-12-12T06:15:00.001-08:00

THIS AT-A-GLANCE GUIDE
summarizes the principles
of the Abs Diet: the 6-week
plan to flatten yourstomach
and keep you lean for life.
SUBJECT GUIDELINE
Number of meals Six a day, spaced relatively evenly throughout the
day. Eat snacks 2 hours before larger meals.
The ABS DIET POWER 12 Base most of your meals on these 12 groups of
foods. Every meal should have at least two foods
from the list.
Almonds and other nuts
Beans and legumes
Spinach and other green vegetables
Dairy (fat-free or low-fat milk, yogurt, cheese)
Instant oatmeal (unsweetened, unflavored)
Eggs
Turkey and other lean meats
Peanut butter
Olive oil
Whole-grain breads and cereals
Extra-protein (whey) powder
Raspberries and other berries
1
Secret weapons Each of the ABS DIET POWER 12 has been chosen
in part for its stealthy, healthy secret weapons—the
nutrients that will help power up your natural fat
burners, protect you from illness and injury, and keep
you lean and fit for life!
2 T H E A B S D I E T
SUBJECT GUIDELINE
Nutritional ingredients
to emphasize
Nutritional
ingredients to limit
Refined carbohydrates (or carbs with high glycemic index),
saturated fats, trans fats, high-fructose corn syrup.
Alcohol Limit yourself to two or three drinks per week, to
maximize the benefits of the Abs Diet plan.
Ultimate power food Smoothies. The combination of the calcium and protein
in milk, yogurt, and whey powder, combined with
the fiber in oatmeal and fruit, makes them one of the
more filling and easy options in the diet. Drink them
regularly.
Cheating One meal a week, eat anything you want.
Exercise program Optional for the first 2 weeks. Weeks 3 through 6 incorporate
a 20-minute, full-body workout 3 days a
week. Emphasis is on strength training, brisk walking,
and some abdominal work.
At-home workout Gym workouts and at-home workouts are both detailed
to excuse-proof your fitness plan.
Abdominal workout At the beginning of two of your strength-training
workouts. One exercise for each of the five different
parts of your abs.

FOREWORD: DIET IS A FOUR-LETTER WORD

2011-12-11T07:27:00.001-08:00

In all honesty, I hated to even call this book a “diet” book. That’s because
the word diet has been twisted around to mean something you follow temporarily—
you “go on a diet.” But if you “go on” a diet, you eventually have
to “go off” it. And that’s why most diets are really, really bad for you.
Most diets are about eating less food or about restricting you to certain kinds
of food. Most of them work in the short term, because if you reduce your
calorie intake, your body starts to burn itself off in order to keep itself alive.
Presto, you lose weight. But here’s the problem: The first thing your body
does when it’s short of calories is to dump the body tissue that takes the most
calories to maintain. That’s muscle. So on a low-calorie diet, your body burns
away muscle and tries to store fat. Sure, you’ll lose weight, and you’ll eventually
start losing fat as well. But when you “go off” your diet, you’ll start to put
weight back on. And guess what kind of weight you’ll gain? Pure fat. Because
you’ve taught your body a harsh lesson: It has to be on the lookout for potential
low-calorie periods in the future, so it had better store fat just in case.
You’ve also used up valuable calorie-burning muscle, so you’re likely to end
up fatter than you were before your diet. That’s why people who try diet after
diet not only don’t lose weight, they gain it.
The Abs Diet isn’t a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am approach to weight management.
Oh, you’ll lose weight, and you’ll lose it fast. But you’ll lose fat, not
muscle. And you’ll keep that weight off for life. You’ll follow the tenets of the
Abs Diet for life, too, because it’s about eating lots and lots of great food in
smart ways. So enjoy the Abs Diet. But let’s keep that little four-letter word between
us, okay?
is what allows you to make the most dramatic financial gains.
It’s the same concept with your body. Invest in a little additional
muscle in the next 6 weeks—through eating the right
foods and following a muscle-building, fat-burning exercise
plan—and you’ll have invested in a lean and strong body that
can last a lifetime, because your new muscle will continually
break down fat to stay alive.
I’m passionate about this plan because I know it works. I’ve
seen it work, and so will you. During the course of this 6-week
plan, you can lose up to 20 pounds of fat (much of it in the first
couple of weeks, and from your belly first) and gain 4 to 6 pounds
of lean muscle. But the biggest thing you’ll notice is that you’ll
have significantly changed the shape of your body. Some of you
will have even more dramatic results (see page 32 for the story
of Bill Stanton, who lost 30 pounds on the diet and cut his body
fat percentage in half). The Abs Diet includes all three components
to a successful body-transforming program: nutrition, exercise,
and the motivational principles to follow through. I’ve
designed this program to make it easy to stick to, even if you’ve
tried and failed with diets in the past. It’s easy to follow because:
Every component of the diet and exercise plan is quick,
simple, and flexible enough so that you can easily work it
into your life.
Every goal is attainable.
Every principle is supported by well-respected scientific
research.
The Abs Diet will change the way you think about your body.
It’s the first plan to count not just the calories your body takes
in but the calories your body burns off as well. Using the most
cutting-edge nutrition and exercise research, the Abs Diet will
show you how to retrain your body to burn fat faster and more
efficiently—even while you sleep—and to focus your meals around
I N T R O D U C T I O N xv
the foods that inspire your body to keep those calorie-burning
fires stoked. The Abs Diet isn’t about counting calories; it’s about
making your calories count.
Throughout the book, I’ll take you through the principles of the
Abs Diet and show you how to follow the 6-week plan. I’ll also explain
the exercise program (which doesn’t have to start until the
third week) and give you instructions on how to perform the exercises
and how to make the meals. (Don’t worry—if you can operate
a blender, you can cook up our Powerfood feasts.)
To keep you motivated, I’ve included the stories of real-life
men and women who credit the Abs Diet with changing their
bodies and their lives—not to mention the size of their pants.

The Plan That Will Turn Your Fat into Muscle

2011-12-10T13:15:00.000-08:00

WHEN YOU THINK OF ABS,
you may think of Brad
Pitt or Janet Jackson.
You may think of
magazine covers and
underwear commercials. You may think of six-packs,
washboards, and a belly so tight that you could bounce
a marble off it. Your cynical side may also think of airbrushing,
starvation diets, and an exercise regimen so
time-consuming it would violate labor laws. Abs, you assume,
are reserved for athletes, for models, for bodybuilders,
for trainers, for rappers, for the half-dressed
“talent” on infomercials, for genetic freaks, for the liposuctioned,
and for people who would classify celery as a
dessert.
Your conclusion: You have a better chance of scaling
Mount Everest in a Speedo than you do of getting great
abs.
As the editor-in-chief of Men’s Health magazine, I
know that you—no matter how big your belly, how many
diets you’ve tried, or how tempting the Everest Speedo
ix
challenge sounds—can develop great abs. See, I analyze health
and fitness information the way brokers analyze the market. It’s
my job to find the fastest, best, and smartest ways for you to make
tremendous gains in your most important investment: your body.
So when I think about abs, the only thing I think about is this:
how you can get them.
I understand the struggle. You look down, see a Jell-O mold
implanted in your gut, and figure that your days of having a
flat stomach vanished the day you graduated from high school.
But in a way, you really shouldn’t think of your abs as being extinct.
Think of your abs as the third cousins you met at a past
family reunion. You remember seeing them, so you have a
vague memory of what they look like, but it’s been so long that
you really don’t have a clue where they are now. Well, even if
it’s been decades since you’ve made any kind of contact with
them, the physiological fact remains: You have abs.
The Abs Diet is going to help you find them.
At a time when more than 130 million Americans are overweight
or obese and when weight-loss news garners as much
front-page attention as celebrity scandals (well, almost as much),
there’s never been a more critical time to focus on your weight,
your shape, and your health. I know that some critics will see a
chiseled midsection as the modern American symbol of vanity, but
developing a six-pack is more than just a way to support the
mirror industry.
Abs are the contemporary badge of fitness.
They’re the ultimate predictor of your health.
And since flat stomachs boost sex appeal, they represent the
one part of your body that has the same power of seduction over
both men and women.
Depending on where you fall on the body-shape scale, there’s
a good chance you’ve searched for your abs before. Maybe you’ve
failed on previous weight-loss attempts, and maybe you’ve yo-yoed
x I N T R O D U C T I O N
more than a toy store. I know what you’ve gone through—I’ve
talked to and heard from thousands of folks who have shared
their weight-loss success stories with Men’s Health. But I also
know what you’ve gone through because I, too, know what it’s like
to feel fat.
As a latchkey kid growing up in the early ’80s, I made every
mistake in the book. I ate fast food instead of smart food. I played
video games when I should’ve been playing outside. By the time I
reached 14, I was carrying 212 pounds of torpid teenage tallow on
my 5-foot-10 frame. I wanted to be built like a basketball player,
but instead I was built like the basketball. And I paid for it with
a steady bombardment of humiliation. My older brother, Eric,
would invite friends to our house just to watch me eat lunch.
“Don’t disturb the big animal,” he’d tell his friends. “It’s feeding.”
Like most kids, I learned my health habits from my parents,
particularly my father. He was more than 100 pounds overweight
for most of his adult life. Over time, he developed hypertension
and diabetes, had a minor heart attack, and would have to stop
at the top of a short flight of stairs just to catch his breath. A
massive stroke ended his life at 52. My father died because he ignored
many signals of failing health—especially the fat that
padded his gut.
But I got lucky. When I graduated from high school, I joined
the Naval Reserve, where the tenets of fitness were pounded into
me, day after day after day. Soon after I graduated from college, I
joined Men’s Health and learned the importance of proper nutrition
and—just as important—the danger of carrying around too
much fat in your gut.
Belly fat—the fat that pushes your waist out—is the most
dangerous fat on your body. And it’s one of the reasons why the
Abs Diet emphasizes losing belly fat—because doing so means
you’ll live longer. Belly fat is classified as visceral fat; that means
it is located behind your abdominal wall and surrounds your in-
I N T R O D U C T I O N xi
ternal organs. Because it carries an express-lane pass to your
heart and other important organs, visceral fat is the fat that can
kill you. Just consider one University of Alabama–Birmingham
study in which researchers used seven different measurements to
determine a person’s risks of cardiovascular disease. They concluded
that the amount of visceral fat the subjects carried was
the single best predictor of heart disease risk.
Whether you want to change your body to improve your
health, your looks, your athletic performance, or your sex appeal,
the Abs Diet offers you a simple promise: If you follow this plan,
you will transform your body so that you can accomplish each and
every one of those goals. As a bonus, the Abs Diet will do something
more than just enhance your life; the Abs Diet is going to
save it.
When you think of all you have to gain with the Abs Diet, it
becomes apparent what’s wrong with most diet plans out there:
They’re all about losing. When you consider America’s obesity
epidemic, losing weight is an admirable goal. But I think there’s
a fundamental psychological reason why many of these diets
fail: There’s no motivation in losing. Americans don’t like to lose.
We don’t like to lose a round of golf. We don’t like to lose in the
market. We don’t like to lose our looks. We don’t like to lose anything.
In a way, we don’t even like losing weight, because we’ve
all been force-fed the notion that bigger is better. Instead, we’re
programmed to gain. We want to gain fitness. We want to gain
strength. We want to add to our life, not subtract from it. We’re
empire builders. We want to win—and see our results. So consider
the Abs Diet a shift in the way you think about your body
and about weight loss. This program concentrates on what you
can gain and how you can gain it. As a result of what you’ll gain
from this program—abs, muscle tone, better health, a great sex
life (more on that later)—you’ll effortlessly strip away fat from
your body and change your body shape forever.
xii I N T R O D U C T I O N
No diet plan would work without good nutrition, so that, of
course, is the major focus of the Abs Diet. You’ll not only learn
what to eat; you’ll learn how to eat to make your body burn fat
furiously, as well as how to make sure that you can control the
cravings that threaten to add girth to your gut. The focus of the
plan revolves around—but does not restrict you to—12 “Powerfoods”
that are among the best sources for protein, fiber, and all
the other ingredients and nutrients that help fight fat. When
you build your diet around these foods, you will build a new
body in the process. But we’ve taken this weight-loss plan to a
whole other level. While nutrition remains a principal component
of most diets, too many programs out there focus solely on
how to change your eating habits—cut carbs, add cabbage soup,
eat at Subway twice a day. Those programs fail to recognize a
crucial component of weight control: the fact that our bodies
have their own natural fat-burning mechanism. . . .
Muscle.
Building just a few pounds of muscle in your body is the physiological
equivalent of kicking fat out on its butt and telling it to
never come back again. Muscle exponentially speeds up the fatbusting
process: 1 pound of muscle requires your body to burn up
to 50 extra calories a day just to maintain that muscle. Now think
about what happens if you add a mere 6 pounds of muscle over
the course of a diet program. It’ll take your body up to 300 extra
calories a day just to feed that muscle; essentially, you’ll burn off
an extra pound of fat every 10 days without doing a thing (and
that’s not even including the gains you can make by changing
your diet). When you combine exercise with the foods that most
promote muscle growth, the ones that keep you full, and the ones
that give your body a well-balanced supply of nutrients, you’ll be
in the sweet spot, doing what this plan is all about.
You’ll turn your fat into muscle.
Does that mean the Abs Diet is going to make you burly, bulky,
I N T R O D U C T I O N xiii
muscle-bound, or governor of California? Not at all. The Abs Diet
and the accompanying Abs Diet Workout emphasize leanness and
muscle tone—not big, bulky muscles.
Going back to that important investment, you can think
about muscle as your compound interest. If you’ve ever taken a
basic economics course, then you understand how compound interest
works: If you invest $100 in a high-yield fund and add a
little more every month, over time that investment will grow
and grow to half a million dollars or more. But you’ll have invested
only a fraction of the money yourself. Compound interest

Why Most People Fail At Losing Weight

2011-11-30T01:47:00.000-08:00

Why do so many people fail at losing weight? Is it because they are lazy? No. Is it because they are addicted to food? No. Is it because they aren’t good at exercising? No. Failure at weight loss stems from a few main factors:

People don’t truly understand the risks of being overweight. Why do most want to lose weight? Most would say to look better. Looking better certainly is a benefit of losing weight, but this shouldn’t be the sole reason to lose weight. There is a 1000 pound gorilla in the room and it’s often ignored. Being overweight for a long period of time kills thousands of people each year. Thousands of studies have shown and proven without any doubt that losing body fat will improve and lengthen your life. Knowing the dangers of being overweight is a tremendous motivator to not only lose fat, but to keep it off.

People don’t commit to permanent lifestyle changes. So many people think of a “diet” as something temporary. When they are on a “diet” they restrict themselves so much that they are miserable. Sooner or later failure is inevitable because of the unreasonable demands of most “diets.” Some of these diets force you to only eat certain foods (e.g., no carbs, special soups etc…) You, like myself, have probably tried them before. The key to losing weight long term is to make gradual lifestyle changes you can stick to forever.

Most individuals are not provided the truthful facts of losing weight and becoming healthier. With the conflicting information in the media, and all of the different lose weight quick fad diets, it’s understandable why so many people really don’t know the truth about losing fat and keeping it off long term.

Most people don’t understand they are constantly either gaining fat, or losing fat. There is no in-between. Some people justify binging or giving up because they hit a small road-block. This isn’t an all or nothing game. For example, when I was overweight, if I ate an unhealthy lunch, I’d go ahead and eat an unhealthy dinner since I already “messed up” the day. Or I’d say, I’ll start eating healthy on Monday since I’ve already eaten poorly this weekend. Every person at times eats too much. The successful people will not let a road bump completely derail their entire lifestyle change. If you are not implementing positive lifestyle changes and losing weight, you are gaining weight. Again, there is no “in-between.”

Most people don’t realize what they consume each day. So many overweight people eat thousands of extra calories and fat without realizing it. It’s tough to know if you are gaining weight or losing weight each day unless you are keeping an eye on what you’re consuming.
This article was written by Mandy

HOW TO GET A SIX PACK

2011-09-09T15:52:00.000-07:00

I would like to share with you a trick that will help you get your six pack in no time. Keep in mind that not a lot of people know about this and you may be the first from your friends.

As we all know there are time when you will have to eat more carbs and times when you will have to eat less carbs. Well lowering down your carb intake at night time will help you lose fat and you will see faster results in your ab area.

Eat Less Carbs At Night Time:

The reason is that at night time your metabolic rate is lower than ever. Meaning that you are not burning a lot of carbs. You are also not in an active mode, which means you are also not burning any calories.

Now this does not mean that you should start working out at night time (that is actually a bad idea). It only means to lower down the carb intake. If you eat 30g of carbs before bed, only the half of it is going to get used by your body. The other half is going to be saved as fat.

So if you are usually eating 30g of carbs, before bed eat only 10g-13g. You have got no idea how much this will help you to lose fat and get abs faster. When I was just starting out as a bodybuilder I did not know about this. After I lowered down the carb intake before bed, I started seeing faster results with my abs. The same happened with my students.

What kind of carbs:

There are two things you must remember about carbs before bed.

They must be complex carbohydrates not simple carbs - You want the carbs to last you the whole night.
NO SUGAR. You must NOT eat anything that has sugar in it. That means no fruits and no sweets. You will have to get your carbs either from vegetables or from whole grained bread.

Honey before bed:

Some people say that eating honey before bed is actually going to help you lose fat and get abs. I have tried it and honestly It did not work. You will even gain more fat instead of losing it. The reason is that it has sugar and a lot of it. This will only slow down your fat loss and will destroy the chances of you getting a six pack.

Conclusion:

If you are trying to get a six pack and trying to lose belly fat eating less carbs at night time will help you out a lot. The only sources of carbs MUST be vegetables and whole grained bread, NO SUGAR BEFORE BED. Follow these steps and you are going to get your six pack faster than ever.

Core Strength is NOT Washboard Six Pack Abs

2011-09-09T06:03:00.000-07:00

Most people associate the core with the look of your abdominals. They believe that having a strong core is associated with the look of a washboard stomach or Six Pack Abs. In reality, there are 27 muscles that make up the core of your body. From pelvis and hip muscles on up, the core is an entire system. Only a few of the muscles are visible to the naked eye.

Core Strength is the foundation of a strong body. It is a major player in balance and injury prevention. Real core strength though is more than just the musculature and bones, ligaments, tendons, and joints that make up the physical system. Building real Core Strength comes from deep within. It is a foundational power and resilience that can only be fully recognized at times of hardship where we dig deep into our core and draw forth the power and strength that is usually buried inside of us. Some people call this internal fortitude. I just look at it as soul strength.

This article is simply to give you some practical ways of activating the physical while taking a look at the deeper sides of core strength.

is highly trained and certified in many disciplines within the fields of bodywork, emotional release, energy work, nutrition, health, and kinesiology and sports therapy. For the last 17 years, he has helped transform his client’s bodies and lives through increased performance, enhancing physical, mental and emotional health.

Ari has led ergonomics and productivity seminars, as well as created corporate wellness programs for top companies all across America. He has been a successful business man within the health and fitness field utilizing his unique combination of expertise related to body posture, public speaking and facilitating trainings which gives him the capability of guiding people to create their most powerful presence and taking companies to the next level in productivity and employee benefits.

Ari is an “Outside of the Box” thinker and has a way of taking ANY situation and finding the holes that need to be filled thus creating WIN WIN relationships and powerful programs that serve to enhance everyone involved.

Abs ball exercises

2011-09-08T06:17:00.000-07:00

Would you like to get six pack abs but don’t think it’s possible? It is possible; it’s just a matter of doing the right types of exercise and eating right. Your ab muscles can be just as toned as anyone else’s if you do the right kind of exercise and stick to a healthy diet. If you look at different books, DVDs and exercise devices, you’ll see hundreds of different ab workouts all claiming that theirs is the only way to six pack abs. But great stomach muscle tone can actually be achieved by some simple exercises.\

Sit ups are often overlooked because they are so simple. It seems some people believe that exercise has to be complicated or newfangled in order to really work. But a plan including plain old, uncomplicated sit ups can be one of the best abs exercise routines you can do. It’s a good idea to do variations on a simple sit up, too. That way you’ll be using many different muscles in the torso area.

When you do sit ups, you should have your knees bent to eliminate unnecessary strain on your lower back. Holding your hands behind your head or neck will also help keep your abs working as you sit up, rather than you leading with your arms and putting the pressure to sit up on your back and shoulders. Twisting to the side (try touching your elbow to the opposite knee) helps your abs by working the muscles on the side of your waist, called the obliques.

Ball exercises are a great way to work your ab muscles. Put yourself in a sit up position, but with your back on top of a stability ball. Put your hands behind your head or neck and do tiny sit ups known as crunches. Tighten your stomach muscles as you lift just slightly. The crunch, done on a ball or on the floor, gives those muscles a more intense workout. And while you’re on a stability ball you also have to balance yourself a bit, which brings tiny muscles all across your abs and your back into play.

You can also lie on the floor on your back, raise your legs a little and bend your knees, and push your feet out in an alternate motion, like you’re riding a bicycle. This is great for toning those lower ab muscles deep in your lower stomach. Use a band to add some resistance, and you’re well on your way to six pack abs.

While there may not be any one abs diet that guarantees you a washboard stomach, there are ways of eating that can give you that extra boost toward the body of your dreams. Some of the best diet tips include a focus on protein without many simple sugars and starches. Go for whole grains and good fats like polyunsaturated and monounsaturated. Combine that great diet with abs exercise a few days a week, and you’ll be surprised by how soon you’ll see muscle definition.

How to muscle gain and lose fat FAST

2011-09-07T13:54:00.000-07:00

Keys to getting a six pack: You can have the greatest, most muscular set of abs in the world, but if they are blanketed by a layer of body fat, who cares. In order to rid yourself of the extra body fat around your midsection, you need to incorporate effective cardio sessions into your fitness plan. You cannot spot-reduce the midsection by doing extra ab exercises like crunches or sit-ups. You first must burn off the body fat through proper cardio to properly define the area. Abdominal training by itself will not do much. Cardio needs to be intense enough to do the trick. Three to four sessions a week of intense jogging, running, the Stairmaster, the elliptical, jumping rope, or biking should be enough to get the process in gear. Swimming, hiking, and taking aerobics classes are beneficial as well. Nothing beats jogging or running. It is the most intense, efficient, and effective method of burning calories. If running outside hurts your joints, try running inside on a treadmill or outside on a dirt path. It definitely is easier on the body. Again, you NEED three to four intense cardio sessions a week to help create a calorie deficit and help rid the body of the fat that covers your abs. Proper Nutrition: Do not sabotage your results in the gym by giving yourself a passport to pig out. Ridding the body of fat once and for all is accomplished by proper nutrition more so than …

Free Exercises to Flatten Stomach

2010-02-23T19:47:00.001-08:00

A number of people everyday search the internet for no cost workout routines to flatten belly areas. The waistline of American is bigger than ever and ironically, so is the demand for high quality fitness programs. Individuals wish to trim down and know how to do it; they just need a push inside the right direction. Unfortunately, even for those men and women who consider themselves to be fairly fit, the belly area can pose seriously obstacles in weight loss.

Free work outs to flatten stomachs contain just about each exercise there is currently available. You can’t crunch your strategy to a best abs exercise, you could have to lose the fats prior to it is possible to see the muscle. Picture your abdomen as a pomegranate. Underneath the tough outer layer there's well defined fruit, or muscles. The key to seeing these muscles is taking off the thick peel (the fat).

When you could have fat accumulated around your midsection it is impossible to tell whether you could have a six pack or not. This doesn’t mean you don’t work your abs, it just means you need to lose the fat which is covering them. Free of charge physical exercises to flatten stomachs contain those that will burn maximum fats.

Cardio is everyone’s first guess when it comes to blasting calories and excess fat. Cardio exercises are a good strategy to begin unwrapping that flat abdomen as they burn calories quickly and efficiently. Strength training is another important method to burn fat. Simply because muscle requires a lot more energy than fat, your metabolism is increased with each pound of muscle you put on. Free workout routines to flatten stomachs aren’t just sit ups.

Possibly a lot more significant than what you do is what you eat when combating stubborn belly fat. If you perform out on a regular basis but can’t seem to lose the pudge around your middle, take into account altering your diet. A healthy diet is crucial in getting the body of your dreams and shouldn’t be overlooked when searching for no cost work outs to flatten stomach.

Nice Abs - Best Abs Exercises For Getting Them Fast

2010-02-23T19:44:00.001-08:00

Individuals who wish to fast abs at home resort to all kinds of measures. Exercise and diet could be a excellent assist in getting the sexy, flat and well-tone abs you want. You may in fact wonder why lots of individuals are obsessed in having nice abs. The main reason is that they abs are considered as the most visually appealing part of the human physique. So, if one desires of obtaining sexier body, they first prioritize in toning the abs. If you are among the millions of individuals who aim of obtaining to-die-for abs, then there are numerous methods of achieving this. Most trainers suggest of accomplishing correct exercising and eating a well-balanced diet. The most efficient abs exercise known today are the abs crunches as well as the sit ups.

Executing this will certainly tone your stomach. Abdominals are the large muscle group that effectively responds to stimulation. But now matter how much you desire of acquiring perfectly toned abs, you have to make certain that you don't overwork the muscles.

The muscles in your stomach also deserve some rest. Also, accomplishing too significantly abs

exercise could aggravate the pain you feel within your lower back, pelvis, hips and other parts. Therefore, correct abs workout must be done on a recommended pace. Once all these pointers are followed, you might tiny by little notice the fantastic improvement with your entire body shape. With the new shape and look of your abs, folks will constantly turn in your direction to admire your new abs.

Towards Flat Abs and Firm Abs through Abs Fat Reduction

2010-02-23T19:33:00.000-08:00

A flatten stomach fast are nowadays the dreams of many. The multimillion dollar fitness industry has captured the opportunity to make money in this wide and credulous market. The result is a plethora of pills and powders, a galore of physical fitness centers with all kinds of equipments and a lot of physical fitness gurus doling out mantras to an avid and susceptible crowd who are cosmetically conscious. These days, the medley of data churned out in the mass media has in fact confused the public and they need some authentic verifiable facts on the acquiring of flat and company abs that stands out.

The greatest barrier towards the cosmetic appeal with the abs may be the accumulation of layers ugly fat above the abs. This hides abs get pack six and also the weight from the accumulated fat make the belly droop giving it and ugly shape unbecoming for the ideal human figure. Coupled with lack of exercise the muscles become flabby and atrophied. In this condition a organization abs is only a pipe dream. The so called the 6 pack abs is only a well defined stomach muscles that stand out adding on the general strength with the body.

The multi million dollar business usually suggests quick fix solutions for getting a organization abs. To remove fat they ask you to eat pills and powders. They ask you to buy costly gadgets or work out in high-tech gyms that make you pay by way of the nose. They prescribe fat reduction diets of dubious mixture and unverifiable content. Numerous individuals have fallen prey for the doubtful claims from the ruthless physical fitness business. It might have made a hole in their pockets with no palpable outcomes on their abs or general structure.

At this juncture the cosmetic conscious people are exhorted to follow systems that have been put to scientifically tenable tests, followed by clinical trials and certified by the real time credentials of users who have benefited by the use of the system. Reliable product sellers are ready to publish these credentials in photographs with verifiable contact details. This is a good practice. So those who aspire for a firm stomach ought to go by means of these credentials before they arrive at an informed decision.

The road to a organization abs today is not difficult. The successful method for the development of the firm abs boils down to three factors. The first one is fat removal that hides the six pack abs from view. The second 1 may be the use of a low carbohydrate diet that prevents the further accumulation of fat on our body. Finally we should put ourselves on an exercise regime which is practical.

It's not proper to see fitness as a separate activity. It have to be integrated into the life style with the individual. As soon as it can be part of life by a procedure of habit formation then the effects will follow. Then organization abs and fitness will be durable. The results as most people attest give them and enduring satisfaction. Once they have tasted the manna they aren't likely to chase the lewd.