Working Your Abs For a Flat Stomach

The Claim: Working out your abs will give you a flat stomach

Answer: FACTOID

Your ab muscles are just like every other muscle in your body…that means training them can only make them bigger and stronger.

Working on your abdominal muscles doesn’t flatten your stomach or help reduce the fat in that area, it just makes your abs bigger and stronger.

If you want to see your abs you gotta get rid of the fat on top of them…and the only way to do that is by a caloric restriction.

John

Posted by johnbarban in strength training
Tags: abs |8 Comments

8 Responses to “Working Your Abs For a Flat Stomach”

  1. Wood Says:
    February 23rd, 2010 at 6:19 am

    John, can You make a fact/factoid thing in excersise, weight lifting, working out issue? Like repetation, full body workout vs. split trainig an so on please?

  2. MikeGP Says:
    February 23rd, 2010 at 11:29 am

    Also, a good fact or factoid question would be “Does intermittent fasting burn more fat”? besides the obvious reason that you eat less calories when you fast.

  3. Shea Says:
    February 23rd, 2010 at 1:42 pm

    I have also had a question like MikeGP’s for a while now, especially now that I have moved from maintaining average daily calorie intake at +/-1500 cals through ESE twice a week to once a week to now (beginning last week) just eating at around that level every day. I know that JB cut his weight without ESE fasting, so IF is obviously sufficient but not necessary for fat loss, but given what Brad P. wrote in ESE it seems like there might be more benefits from being periodically fully fasted. Or is a calorie deficit a calorie deficit even if someone is eating at well below maintenance, say, every six hours?

    Another reason I ask is that while I was ESE-ing twice or once a week I was losing around 2.5 lbs./week like clockwork, but since I have transitioned to just eating 1500 cals/day (tracked fairly rigorously) I have ‘gained’ six pounds and a 1/2″ around my waist. I know that weight is a very imprecise measure, that given my ongoing calorie deficit it is (hopefully) physically impossible that I have actually put any fat back on, and that this weight gain is probably primarily water, but it is still a little disconcerting to see such a dramatic swing maintained over the last week when I was losing so consistently and the only thing I have changed is from fasting to not (average calorie intake, workouts, food choices, macro-nutrient ratios, etc., are all the same as before). Given that before I would weigh myself at the end of my fasting days, do I just need to accept all this extra weight and 1/2″ as a new starting point, or will most of this ‘water’ at some point dissipate and I will go back down closer to a fully fasted weight (I am not expecting to weigh what I would if I were fasted, but still…)? Or do I just need to go back to fasting?

  4. johnbarban Says:
    February 23rd, 2010 at 3:14 pm

    Shea,

    It’s probably a combination of the measurement itself (weight as you said is imprecise), being in a more consistently fed state will always be associated with more weight from water being held. I fluctuate 4-6 pounds per day based on food/fluids consumed and time of day measured…so I doubt that any of those 6 pounds are anything more than your normal size without ESE.

    So yes this is your new starting point without ESE. Remember that bodyweight is very dynamic and 6 pounds is a very realistic fluctuation.

    And IF’ing vs low cal every day is the same thing if the calories over time are the same. But as you noted there might be some other side benefits to fasting that we’re not 100% sure of.

    JB

  5. Shea Says:
    February 23rd, 2010 at 7:57 pm

    Thanks, John. I decided to transition to no ESE now with an eye towards maintenance 20 lbs. from now, so it is helpful to have some feedback to properly adjust my expectations. I am considering just not weighing for a couple of weeks because while I am sure the process is working as it should and I understand rationally where the ‘extra’ weight has come from, it is still hard to not be affected by those numbers on the scale, so why not just remove the disturbing stimulus for a while, right? Still, at least now when I do weigh myself it will be more or less normalized – before I was planning on having to drop below 170 lbs. of fasted weight to equal what will probably be my Golden Ratio weight of around 175 lbs., but now, +/-175 lbs. = +/-175 lbs.

    As a sidebar, I am also in my first 8th week of Build & Burn so I am gearing up for the Fibonacci Rage workouts next week, and boy do they look gnarly. It is just in the last week or so that I have finally felt at ease with all the lifts in the B&B and have been able to go really heavy, but now its time to change things up.

  6. Brandon Says:
    February 23rd, 2010 at 11:16 pm

    I was wondering when was the best time to take creatine? An hour before working out, directly before, directly after workout?

    Thanks

  7. Akilah Ellenwood Says:
    April 6th, 2010 at 8:36 am

    There is no better way of abdominal fat loss than to eat balanced foods and a nutritious diet. Indulge yourself into activities that will allow you to sweat. Do cardio exercises or try running, jogging or walking. There are just so many things that you can do to encourage fat loss. Weight training has the ability to increase lean muscle mass as well as your metabolic rate. This means that you can burn fat even when you are resting. So now, try to look for activities that may encourage flatter abdomen!

  8. Lisa Rogers Says:
    February 9th, 2012 at 5:19 am

    Seems these days quite a lot of people are obsessed with getting 6 pack abs! What I have come to appreciate is that abs are mostly dependent on your food intake, everybody has abdominals its the layer of body fat that prevents them from being revealed. I follow these simple guidelines for getting six pack abs and they appear to work well. On workout days I knock back a little glass of apple cider vinegar when i first wake up, then I proceed with my routine essentially on an empty stomach, this forces the body to burn body fat. My workouts are short 30 minutes max, but within a few weeks you will start seeing real results in the mirror. Doing this really gives the metabolism a major increase for the day and you will really burn a lot of fat especially if you have frequent meals throughtout the day as well.

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