Getting a defined six pack is a challenging yet achievable feet once you align your diet and exercise regimen to that goal. I'll say this right now, no, you cannot spot train to lose belly fat faster and no amount of abs workout will make your love handles go away within a few days.
Let's dive right into how to get a shredded mid section as fast as possible.
What is your current fitness level?
How much abdominal fat do you currently have? What's your resistance and cardio levels (you'll need both to get a six pack). How strong is your discipline? (Yes that is a component of fitness). How is your nutrition knowledge?
These will all influence how fast can get your abs to pop out.
Your body will almost always start storing fat in your belly area before anywhere else on your body. This means that this part will be the LAST place your body will get rid of fat.
Being able to do tough cardio or HIIT workouts that burn lots of calories is also a skill that takes a while to acquire. If you're starting from scratch, you will need to spend some time learning proper form, increasing your workout intensity and building a muscle base before you can really start burning some serious fat.
What is the best ab workout?
There are two types of workouts that will help your get rid of love handles lose belly fat:
Calorie burning workouts: HIIT and cardio sessions are your best options here. Although as we will see later, nutrition will play a huge role in this effort
Directly building and strengthening your abs: strength and HIIT workouts will be the best options here
The easy rule to remember is the leaner your are, the more muscle definition you have and the more you can see your abs.
Keeping that in mind, I personally spend little time directly working out my abs. I find my time better spent doing intense HIIT workouts or heavy squats and deadlifts. These two full body moves place a lot of pressure on your core muscles which helps them get stronger and more developed.
Doing targeted abs workout are part of the equation, but not the most important one, in my opinion. That's why all of our core workouts we do on Youtube happen less frequently and are shorter than the full body intense sessions.
Remember than no matter how hard you train your abs, you won't see them until you align you diet with that goal.
What's the best diet to get abs?
Any diet that is high enough in protein and puts you in a calorie deficit will help you get rid of belly fat.
There is no one diet that will do this better than others. There are a few important variables to keep in mind.
Eat in a calorie deficit - this will burn fat. This is the easiest way to lose belly fat.
Eat at least 1.6g of protein per kg of body weight - this will help you build muscle and help you train better
Don't drink calories - this will help you control the amount of calories you consume and help you maintain a calorie deficit
Choose whole, unprocessed foods - not only are those lower in calories, they give you loads of micro nutrients (vitamins and minerals) and make you feel more full. Follow the PHD rule to easily identify these foods.
Pick it: can you pick that food from a plant or a tree?
Hunt it: can you hunt or fish that food?
Dig it: can you dig up that food from the ground
If the answer is no to all three, that food has been processed one way or another.
To deepen you nutrition understanding, you can peruse the nutrition articles of this blog.
As a reminder, here is a list of high protein foods to include in any healthy diets:
Chicken breast - 31g of protein per 100g
Steak - 25g protein per 100g
Egg - 13g per 100g
Salmon - 20g per 100g
Greek yogurt - 10g protein per 100g
Lentils (cooked) - 9g protein per 100g
Chickpea (cooked) - 9g per 100g
Hempseeds - 30g protein per 100g
Oysters - 9g protein per 100g
How long does it take?
The time it takes to see your six pack show it's face will depend on two factors:
How fast you can get on a healthy training and nutrition routine. Both of these can take weeks or months to achieve if you are starting from scratch.
How much body fat you currently have. You can safely lose 1 pound of fat per week once you have you nutrition and training dialed in.
If you have 10 pounds of excess fat, you can reasonably plan on losing it in 10 weeks.
This is where the majority of people will fail. A six pack doesn't happen over night. Not only does it take time to lose weight, you need to have a diligent routine consistently during this time,
If you are starting from scratch, it will take AT LEAST 3 months to get abs.
A note on lower abs
If abs are already tough to show, lower abs are seen as the pinnacle of shreddedness. That's where your body will remove fat from last and why it's the hardest section of a six pack to see.
No amount of lower abs exercises will make them appear. It's all nutrition.
If your goal is to have a full six pack, you will need to align some fundamentals beliefs with your goal. The main one being seeing food as fuel vs enjoyment.
From personal experience, achieving a well defined six pack is achievable but not enjoyable on the long term. Being in a constant calorie deficit isn't something that resonates with me or my lifestyle, so I like to see my lower abs from time to time but don't mind it when they go away.
how to get visible abs Conclusion
Getting a visible six pack is achievable once we align both our nutrition and trining routines. Focusing on high protein diet with an overall calorie deficit is the most efficient way to eat during this time.
You can do specific abs workout but remember to also spend time doing full body routines as well to burn off as much fast as possible.
Finally, it will take time. However long you think it'll take, double it. Most people only think about the time it will take to lose weight but fail to take into account the time it will take for the weight to start coming off.
Losing weight doesn't happen as fast as turning on a switch. A lot of the time you need to modify your routine, realign beliefs and conceptions, all of which takes time.
Take your time setting up your foundations and you will see that it will become easier and easier as you stay consistent in your efforts.
You got this,
Clem
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