Saturday, February 7, 2009

How To Get Abs Faster Than Your Friends

By Robert Casewood

Many fitness newbies who sign-up for expensive health club memberships soon learn that getting six pack abs takes more than just plunking down cash and doing mindless reps on pricy state-of-the-art ab machines. Actually, the process of getting six-pack abs has less to do with gadgetry than physiology.

The human body is designed to store surplus energy from food in the form of fat cells. These are stored mainly around our lower body- our bellies, butts and thighs. This is the main reason eliminating beer bellies and love-handles have been a source of consternation for fitness aficionados since the early days of bodybuilding.

Truth is, the muscles that form the six-pack look aren't any harder to build-up and strengthen than our biceps, traps or pectorals. There's just more frustration in getting six-pack abs because of the stubborn layer of fat covering the contours and striations of the muscle tissue underneath.

Doing the proper combination of exercises optimal for burning body fat as well as adopting healthy eating habits are the real secrets to getting six-pack abs in the shortest amount of time. The key word in the fight against The Flab is metabolism.

Donning sweats, grabbing a towel and going about the gym blindly doing reps on the ab machine is not the way to get abs quickly. Neither is limiting your food intake to diet shakes and tasteless crackers and boiled egg whites- this serves only to give you sense of feeling deprived, increasing the risk of going on a binge.

Studies show that the most effective exercises for targeting body fat are cardiovascular exercises that keep the heart rate at a steady, optimal rate (just below the maximum heart rate). These burn the most calories from body fat rather than from carbohydrates and glycogen stores. Glycogen is a substance that is essential to muscle repair and development.

A proper diet- one which doesn't necessarily mean cutting-back on intake can also help shorten the path to getting six-pack abs. The trick is to choose which foods you're getting calories from. Eating food high in carb content early in the day or before exercising and protein-rich food after workouts can mean a world of difference in preventing us from packing-on excess calories.

Skipping meals (especially breakfast) is a big no-no as this causes our body to slow down our metabolism and this can actually lessen the calories we burn from belly fat. Experts say eating small meals throughout the day (yes, with snacks) is ultimately better than trying to cut down on caloric intake by foregoing meals. - 16004

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