You need to diet to see your abs–there’s no way around it. But burning 1,000 calories or more in your workouts alone can’t hurt, either. We crunched the numbers and created this fat-smoking six-pack plan.
Abs are built in the kitchen.
“You can’t out-train a bad diet.” These are the proverbs of dieters who’ve learned that workouts alone aren’t enough. After all, it takes just moments of snacking to ingest hundreds of calories, and an hour for most people to burn a fraction as many. But hard work does burn calories, and coupled with diet, it’ll easily create the deficit you need to lose body fat.
Step 1 – Find the Calories You’ll Burn
The formula for measuring energy expenditure for any exercise (i.e., the number of calories burned) is mets x body weight (in kilograms) x time (in hours).
METs
Your metabolic rate is measured in METs. The METs for each exercise varies, but we’ll use six as an average. See below for a chart of different MET values.
Weight
First, understand that determining how many calories your body burns isn’t an exact science and depends on many variables. Nevertheless, we want to prove to you that our promise isn’t just hype, either. Assume a hypothetical lifter undertaking our program at a body weight of 180 pounds. That’s 82 kilograms.
Time
The total number of minutes spent on each exercise. (We count both the training time and rest periods, because the metabolic rate is still accelerated even when you’re resting between sets). The total minutes for Day 1’s workout average is 50 (0.833 hours).
Calories
So a 180-pound lifter will burn about 410 calories on Day 1’s workout. Each workout burns roughly the same num- ber of calories, so during the course of 3 weekly sessions, our 180-pound man will use up just over 1,200 calories in training alone.
6 METs x 82 kilograms x .83 hours = 410 calories burned*
*This equation is based on a 180-pound man. if you weigh more, you’ll burn more calories; weigh less and you’ll burn fewer.
Step 2 – Burn a Pound of Fat Per Week
One pound of fat contains about 3,500 calories. If we burn 1,200 of them in training, 2,300 remain. All you need to do now is to cut a little more than 300 calories from your current diet each day to create a 3,500-calorie deficit. The result? You can lose one pound of pure lard per week.
Sounds too easy—but is it? Yes and no. Unfortunately, losing fat isn’t as simple as third-grade math. Your metabolic rate fluctuates depending on several factors. Just recovering from intense training causes your body to burn calories at an accelerated rate for days. We did the math only to show that exercise can be a potent stimulus for fat loss. if you follow the program, we guarantee you’ll be well on your way to a leaner body, and you can let the numbers fall where they may.
Burned Calories
The total number of calories burned in training is around 1,200.
Calorie Deficit Diet
There would be 2,300 calories remaining. All you need to do now is cut just more than 300 calories from your current diet each day to create a 3,500-calorie deficit.
Fat Burn Results
One pound of fat contains about 3,500 calories. The result? You can lose one pound of pure lard per week.
1,200 total from three workouts per week + 2,300 after 300+ calories cut daily = 3,500 estimated calories in one pound of fat
Directions
Perform each workout (Days 1, 2 and 3) once per week, resting a day between each session. Exercises marked “A,” “B” and sometimes “C” are done in sequence. So you’ll perform a set of A, rest, then B, rest, and repeat the order until all sets are complete for the group.
