Saturday, February 7, 2009

How To Get Abs Quickly

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.

Knowing the proper exercises to do, eating the right foods at the right time of the day, and leading a healthy lifestyle can be effective weapons in the fight against The Flab and can drastically reduce the time it takes to attain six-pack abs.

Doing set after set on that expensive ab machine in your pricy home gym or local health club will just be a waste of time if bringing out those ab muscles are your goal. Neither is trying to shrink belly fat by skipping breakfast as this will only slow down your metabolism and make you lose weight from muscle instead of fat.

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.

Avoiding food with excess calories and saturated fat as well as eating the proper foods at the right times can also shorten the path to six pack abs significantly. Eating energy-rich foods early in the day can fuel our workouts and give us the energy boost we need to exercise properly.

A lot of people have the notion that cutting-back on food intake by skipping meals is the fastest way to lose weight and flatten the tummy. This can in fact be detrimental to losing belly fat because the human body purposely slows down metabolism in order to conserve calories when we start to go hungry. It's actually better to avoid from going hungry and eating just enough whenever we feel like it.

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