Step One – Focus On Your Diet
The first step in getting six pack abs is to focus on your diet – and that means completely understanding how many calories you should be having, and how many you actually are having.
The first thing you need to do is to find out your basal metabolic rate. A quick search online will give you any number of online basal metabolic rate calculators. All you will need to enter is your age, sex, height and current weight, and the calculator will tell you exactly how many calories you will need to intake to maintain your current weight.
Doctors and health experts agree that a safe amount of weight to lose per week is around 1 lb (just less than half a kilogram). Since 1 lb is approximately equivalent to 3,500 calories, all you need to do to safely lose weight is to trim your diet so that you’re eating approximately 500 calories less than your basal metabolic rate.
Of course, this does mean that you’ll need to know how many calories are in all of your favorite foods. There are plenty of online resources to help you, or you could purchase a pocket sized calorie counter which will help you to count calories on the go. Recent editions of the most popular brands of calorie counters also include the nutritional information for fast food restaurants, which takes all the guesswork out of eating out.
Step Two – Cardiovascular Exercise
Once you’ve got your diet under control, the next step to focus on is your . It is a common misconception among kids (and even adults!) who want to achieve six pack abs that all they need to do is concentrate on their abdominal exercises. The problem with this, as mentioned above, is that you may have the most toned, lean abdominal muscles in the world – but if they’re hidden under a layer of belly fat, no one will know they’re there.
The best advice is to do cardiovascular exercise at least three times per week. Not only will the cardiovascular exercise burn the fat on your stomach, it will increase your metabolism so that you burn fat all over your body at a higher rate.
Cardio doesn’t have to be boring. There are so many different kinds of cardiovascular exercise that there will surely be a few things that you enjoy. Any exercise that gets your heart pumping and that you can maintain for at least twenty minutes is cardiovascular exercise, so be creative!
And you don’t need to exercise for hour after hour in order for it to be effective. In fact, the American College of Sports Medicine recommends either three twenty minute sessions per week of high intensity exercise, or five thirty minute sessions per week of moderate intensity exercise.
Step Three – Abdominal Exercise
Now it’s time to look right at the problem area – your abs. The best way to achieve those six pack abs that you’re thinking of is to complete a full abdominal exercise routine two or three times per week.
While your cardiovascular exercise will peel off the fat, your abdominal exercises will sculpt the size and shape of your abdominal muscles themselves, eventually allowing them to show through the skin of your stomach.
When we say to complete a ‘full abdominal exercise routine’, we mean to choose five abdominal exercises (and there are so many to choose from!) and perform two sets of each exercise – ten sets in all. For each set, it is recommended that you do as many repetitions as you can before you simply can’t do another. It can also help to keep a journal of the exercises that you do and how many repetitions you can handle – this will give you something to beat next time. Make sure to rest for two minutes between sets to give your muscles a chance to recover and for you to catch your breath.