Q: I'm sick of being soft and blubbery. I really want to see my abs, but I'm not sure where to start. Do I just start working out harder and wait for them to appear? Please help.
A: When we get "soft and blubbery," usually over the winter (Steve's pic at left below), our first step to getting ripped abs for the warmer weather is to stop eating crap…
That crap category includes simple sugars like cake, candy, pie, sodas, etc.; pasta, bread, fruit juice (a few servings of fruit a day is okay—Steve usually eats an apple with lunch). Cutting back on alcohol consumption or eliminating it completely plays a huge role, also.
Just doing that MOST OF THE TIME will have you tightening up and getting ripped abs fast. We say "most of the time" because we allow ourselves a cheat, or Victory, day once a week, usually on the weekends. That satisfies any cravings, which will prevent binges during the week, but it does something even more important…
By boosting your calories and carbs one day per week, you stoke your metabolism big time to help with your ripped abs. That will prevent sluggish plateaus. If you're too strict for too long, your metabolism slows to a crawl, and your fat loss is much slower. So have a loose-eating day to prevent that and to keep torching fat (just don't get carried away with it)…
Your next step is to make sure you're getting five or six protein-charged meals each day. We strive for at least 30 grams of protein at each feeding. You can get that from a protein shake or solid food, like Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, nuts, beef jerky, chicken breast, fish, etc.
What we usually do is have a protein-charged breakfast, for example, oatmeal with protein powder stirred in and a boiled egg. Then a few hours later we have a protein shake. It's lunch after that (cottage cheese and fruit, for example).
Mid-afternoon it's another protein shake. Dinner is meat and vegetables plus a salad. And last, we have a protein shake before bed (a mix of casein and whey; casein is slow release so it trickle feeds your muscles during the night to prevent catabolism).
We have samples of our ripping diets in the X-treme Lean e-book, plus many alternate meals, training tactics, and workouts to help you burn fat and build muscle.
To review what you should do NOW…
Step 1: Start eating clean—cut out all the crap from your diet.
Step 2: Have a cheat, or Victory, day once a week to satisfy cravings and stoke your metabolism.
Step 3: Make sure you're eating five to six protein-charged meals a day (protein drinks can help with convenience, but you can do it with solid-food meals too).
That will get you motivated to move to the next steps, like gradual activity increases and/or portion reductions. That's when you'll really start ripping up fast…
As far as working out goes, training heavy is okay—if you're young and can handle it; otherwise, we suggest the moderate-weight 4X growth-threshold method as a great and effective approach…
Either way, make sure you have at least a few sets that produce a deep MUSCLE BURN. That causes pH changes in the blood that trigger growth hormone release. And GH is a mega-potent fat burner as well as a major muscle builder. (More on that in X-treme Lean.)
Till next time, train hard—and smart—for BIG results.
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