I eat good, I just want to see my six-pack. I do an hour of abs every day. I do crunches, leg lifts, lying v-up twists into a medicine ball throw, and plenty more ab moves. Shouldn’t that be enough to get a killer sixer?
Sorry, but as the age old expression goes, “abs aren’t made in the gym they are made in the kitchen”. That saying holds true for any body part as a matter of fact. There is no such thing as “spot reduction”. If you want to lose your love handles, spare tire or flabby pecs, you need to lose body fat.
If you really wanted to focus on getting a six-pack, you wouldn’t just do hours upon hours of endless crunches, you would need to focus on getting your nutrition down to 90% perfect.
80% of what we see in the mirror is based off what we are eating. Doing hours of crunches will help to build and maintain our abdominal muscles but will do ZERO for the fat that is covering your stomach. This is why spot reduction does not work. Our body does not pick and choose where we store fat. Genetically we are all predetermined to hold fat in certain areas. Some people hold most of their fat in their lower halves others in their guts.
When we get our meal plan in order and we are eating in a caloric deficit our bodies will sense that it needs to release some fat from our fat cells to burn off for fuel. When our bodies do this we begin to lose body fat (that fat we see in the mirror).
Let’s say your 25% body fat and your goal is to lose your love handles. If you combine basic weight training, cardio and start tracking your calories your body will sense this and begin to bring that body fat number down lower. After a couple of weeks you maybe 20% body fat. You just lost 5%, which is a huge amount of body fat off your frame. That is when you will begin to see a difference in your physique. Will your love handles be gone? Maybe it depends on your genetic makeup but if they aren’t you might have to keep trying to bring your body fat lower. You may need to get down to 15% in order for you to be happy with what you see. That is based on you and your genetics.
The bottom line is spot reduction doesn’t exist because our body will only lose fat from all over our bodies not from a single area. If you really want to focus on seeing your six pack maybe you should focus more on what you’re eating as opposed to how many hours of situps you are doing.
