You’re going to lose muscle mass to get down to a body fat % that is low enough to let you diplay abs, so…
Tear your body fat % down, then focus on your abs via specific ab-centric days. Otherwise, continue on with diet, cardio and resistance training. Stick to basics now. General routines now all-around.
Going for abs now is putting the cart way out in front of the horse. Things like abs and secondary muscle groups can be targeted later, when your honing and chiseling yourself.
You want to put nice wheels on a beater car while living in the ghetto. Don’t. Put your efforts into the car, get out of the ghetto, then upgrade to expensive wheels on your new sports car that doesn’t have to hit urban ghetto roads and potholes every day.
John, we both know you’re using this thread (and others) as a form of procrastination. People who wait until they’ve got the “perfect” plan end up doing nothing but waiting. And that’s what you’re going to end up doing. Quit stalling. Do cardio. Is it perfect? No. But there’s no such thing as the perfect plan. So just do some cardio. It’s better than nothing, and if you give it time it’ll work.
Having been from legit fatbelly to legit abs, my process was this:
Get a normal exercise routine with cardio and resistance. The routine isn’t designed to get endurance or bulk, just to be in decent shape and promote general health.
Hard part: The exercise will boost your appetite. Don’t overcompensate. Stay hungry. Ignore all that stuff about your body going into hibernate mode or whatever. That’s for shipwreck survivors and feral children. You are not going into metabolic shock waiting for your dental fillings to set.
After months of doing this, I was down to 10% body fat (from 26%, go me). Yet I still didn’t have abs.
I added 400m sprints to my routine to get my body fat even lower. Here’s when the turning point came. The sprinting injured my lower back badly, and I had to go to physical therapy, where they had me doing planks 5 times a day for 3 weeks. Prior to that I had no core body workout. THAT is when my abs popped out. Even my abs had abs. (Still 10% body fat, which is fit but not extremely lean).
Then I hurt my knee and I couldn’t run anymore and I got depressed and I became an alcoholic. Hopefully soon I’ll be able to tell you if this process is reproducible, sans injuries and enormous setbacks.
First, yes, the consensus seems to be that “washboard abs” can only show at 10% body fat or less, if ever. That is a level generally achieved by a fraction of serious athletes and/or with a willingness to stay very hungry in pursuit of the goal. A typically extremely fit male recreational fitness enthusiast will be in the 14 to 17% range.
Second, not everyone has 'em underneath or can. There is a genetic component.
Third, if one has both the genetic predisposition, and the low enough body fat percentage, then one also needs to have hypertrophied those muscles. Yes, that means core. Which exercises do that best is very debatable. I have no strong opinion.
Lastly though is what HMS Irruncible’s post illustrates … the obsession with achieving washboard abs is likely a marker for some body dysmorphia if not full blown body dysmorphia disorder and likely identifies someone at high risk for depression and/or substance abuse. Please note, I am not saying it causes those conditions, but that it is a marker for risk of them.
My two cents are that if you find yourself willing to constantly stay hungry, to do exercise beyond the level that serves the goals of general physical and mental health, to the degree that is at high risk of significant overuse injuries, in order to achieve some arbitrary superficial appearance that one usually only sees in magazines and in action hero movie stars, your highest priority is not how to achieve that goal but figuring out why that goal is that important to you, and possibly considering getting some help at dealing with those issues before you end up depressed and/or alcoholic.
I hope HMS that that does not come off too harsh or personal. But very seriously your highest priority probably should not be re-achieving the washboard abs but maintaining your remission from depression and alcoholism. Exploring why you feel you need or desire that superficial physical characteristic and how to achieve the positive self-image with or without it, is likely pretty vital.
If that’s all completely off the mark for you, and only you know you, I apologize, but it is still important I think for others to hear.
Eat clean and exercise, both cardio and strength. Losing fat is mostly diet, which will allow your body to show abs, working out will develop whatever you have to show.
That’s the way. Most people struggle with the eating. Eating clean, for the first few weeks, sucks. Eating real, non-processed food is work we are not used to anymore. Good fats, protein, complex carbs.
DSeid I think normally you’re right on the money, and you’re right to highlight the whole body dysmorphia thing, but in my case I told the story poorly and you misunderstood. Abs were never my goal. I’m just explaining how they unexpectedly came about.
My personal case isn’t body dysmorphia. I have chronic depression or something like it. I overeat and also I have a pattern of problem drinking. Body image aside, this was something that needed to be fixed, so I decided to take action.
In 2011 I started pursuing the steps above, with a reasonable exercise plan. I didn’t set out to systematically starve myself. Rather, with a busy job and infant twins, I found myself incredibly busy. I found sometimes I had to skip lunch. I learned the hunger was manageable and noticed my weight dropping. At 26% body fat, you don’t complain about dropping 10 pounds. This is the only place where I’ll go contrarian… I think skipping lunch a few days a week is a perfectly fine weight loss strategy, if done conscienciously.
I continued with the exercise + calorie restriction regimen. The weight kept dropping. I got down to about 18% body fat. At this point I should mention that at this point I wasn’t feeling depressed and I wasn’t drinking at all (no wonder, with a solid exercise regimen.) I felt so bold that I wanted to try to break 50 minutes in the 10K, which entailed some 400 meter sprints.
This is probably where I went wrong. I have a desk job and my lumbar vertebra are like overcooked carrots. My strength regimen consisted entirely of an upper body physical therapy routine that had fixed some back and shoulder problems years ago. I hadn’t been doing any core exercises at all. Inevitably, one day I herniated a disc and it derailed my whole running program.
At this point - let me correct what I said earlier - I was at 12.6% body fat, not 10% as I had said (I was serious about this project and did regular hydrostatic measurements, and still have the records).
I went to physical therapy and was introduce to core exercise (specifically planks). After a few weeks of planking, I was pleasantly surprised to see the appearance of some pretty decent abs. So there’s the piece of anecdata I was trying to bring out. 12.6% body fat and the addition of some ab work.
Postlogue: back problem never resolved, and I had some other complicating health issues, so over the last 3 years I’ve lost all that progress. Back at probably 23% body fat. I think it’s not body dysmorphic to be concerned about 23% body fat, because it looks unhealthy, it feels unhealthy, and it falls in the fair to poor percentile. This time I’m starting with core training and joint stabilization from the very beginning. I’ll add more intensity, and when I reach 15% I’ll quit when I’m ahead.
There’s a distinct genetic component, too.
My workout partner, who is much stronger than me, has very flat abs. Even though his core is stronger than mine, my abs are more pronounced. So, if you have the same body type as he does, you really need to get your body fat down, and do a lot of ab work to get them to show.
Also note that the Hollywood stars who have extremely cut bodies for a few shirtless scenes in a movie typically use some pretty extreme measures. You have to get down to a ridiculously low body fat, while at the same time stuffing your body with protein. It becomes very difficult to give your body the protein it needs to build muscle while also starving it of calories to keep your body fat low.
A professional trainer who can work you ragged and plan all this so you peak at the right time to film your shirtless scenes before you crash is also necessary. And your trainer will also be getting you the steroids you’ll need.
I think you’re jumping to a bit of a conclusion saying that someone who strives for abs is suffering from BDD.
BDD is a very real disorder, I understand this, but if someone has the goal to have washboard and/or better looking abs, it’s how they go about doing it that really would qualify them for BDD, not that they want to in the first place.
It’s no secret that girls like a tone, fit guy with a good body…so what’s so wrong with someone trying to look better for them? Even if they HAVE a significant other, what’s so bad with trying to make her friends jealous?
I have some minor lower back pain that I keep in check with some core strengthening exercises a few times a week. As a result I have a rocking set of abs. Unfortunately, nobody can see them because of the layer of fat covering them. One set of regular exercises is not enough to bring them out, but they are the only ones I’m really motivated to do, since they keep my back from hurting.
No. The body stores and burns fat according to your genetic makeup, so it may pull from anywhere “first”, depending on who you are. But even if there is any preference for targeting a particular deposit, it’s probably fairly minor. In general, the body pulls from all deposits when you can trigger it to do so.
Yes but, John Clay has posted before on this sort of topic.
And before that.
And before that.
And before that.
If you go back and read his threads, I think you’ll be pretty willing to hop on the body dysmorphia bandwagon.
John, eat a well-rounded diet, in moderation, and get moderate exercise. Anything else you’re trying to do, you are unable to approach in a sufficiently reasoned way that it makes sense for you to make the attempt.
