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Weight Loss: Abs Diet Plan Summary

(Editor's note: This excerpt was take from the new Abs Diet book, The Get Fit, Stay Fit Plan. Buy it at Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com.)

In health circles, everyone talks about the obesity epidemic. We're a fat society. We eat too much. We eat badly. We deep-fry perfectly good vegetables, for God's sake. And it's one of the main reasons we're a country with bellies the size of Jupiter. But there's something lost in all the talk about creamy sauces, grease-laced buffets, super-sized fries, and exotic coffee drinks that are the caloric equivalents of Big Macs. We're not just in an obesity epidemic. We're in an inactivity epidemic.

A recent study by the National Center for Health Statistics found that only 19 percent of the population regularly engages in "high levels of physical activity." And by "high levels", they mean only 1 hour per week. That means 4 out of 5 of us aren't getting the amount of exercise we need. (And consider this: 1 hour a week is just 1 percent of the time you're awake every week.) Now, the problem isn't that we don't know what we need to do. In fact, 63 percent of Americans -- about the same percentage who are overweight -- believe that exercise would help them live healthier and leaner. What we need is a plan that really works -- without really feeling like work.

Having worked at Men's Health magazine for more than 10 years, I've seen more dumbbells than an American Idol tryout. I've seen all the trends (uh, electrodes on my abs, no thanks). I've talked to trainers. I've tried hundreds of exercises. In a lot of ways, my workout is part of my work. But I also know what it's like to be slammed with calls, meetings, writing e-mails, and all of the daily stresses and responsibilities that go into any job. So I know exactly what you want out of an exercise plan: You want a program that fits into your life -- not one that is your life.

That's why I've constructed ABS3: to help you burn fat at the highest levels possible in the least amount of time. I want this plan to be flexible and convenient -- an excuse-proof program that gives you the tools to work it around any schedule. My overriding philosophy: Keep the workout short and keep it simple, and you'll stay focused and motivated. Oh, you'll work up a sweat and you'll breathe heavier than a 900-number operator. That's the only way you'll see results -- by challenging your body. But you won't have to claim squatter's rights at the gym to do so. Ab for ab, it's the best workout to flatten your stomach, lose fat, build muscle, and change your body forever.

A: Abdominal Muscles

Abs are a little like distant cousins. Everybody has them, but hardly anybody ever really gets to see them -- or even remembers what they look like. Typically, that's because ab muscles are smothered in a layer of belly fat called visceral fat. It's the most dangerous fat there is because of its proximity to your body's organs. So, one order of business is to remove it. That does not happen with abdominal exercises. That happens with diet, with training your big muscle groups (the B in ABS3), and with the speed interval training (the S).

So, can't we just skip the ab work? Uh-uh. You've still got to crunch away like a CPA in April. By working your abdominal muscles twice a week, you'll build them so that when you do burn fat, your abs will, in fact, stand out like Michael Moore at a GOP meeting. But even more importantly, abdominal exercises help you build a center of strength that not only turns heads but also makes you healthier. For example, gaining strength in your core -- that is, your entire trunk, not just the visible 6-pack muscles in the front -- has more benefits than a CEO's annual contract. Maybe the most convincing data is this: In a recent Canadian study of more than 8,000 people, researchers found that over 13 years, those with the weakest abdominal muscles had a death rate more than twice as high as that of those with the strongest midsections. Pretty amazing, huh? Of course, there's a very strong link between smaller waist sizes and better health; in short, when you develop your abs and strip away fat, you make your entire body healthier -- by reducing your risk of everything from heart disease to diabetes. (And that's not to mention that having a strong midsection has also been shown to improve your sex life because less fat helps improve blood flow, which is important for both male and female sexual satisfaction.) But just in case improving your health, your looks, and your sex life isn't enough for you, developing your core strength with abdominal exercises has many other benefits, such as the following:

Abs protect you. A U.S. Army study linked powerful abdominal muscles to injury prevention. After giving 120 artillery soldiers the standard army fitness test of situps, pushups, and a 2-mile run, researchers tracked their lower-body injuries (such as lower-back pain and Achilles tendonitis) during a year of field training. The subjects who cranked out the most situps (73 in 2 minutes) were five times less likely to suffer lower-body injuries than those who barely notched 50. But that's not all. Those who performed well in the pushups and 2-mile run enjoyed no such protection -- suggesting that upper-body strength and cardiovascular endurance had little effect on injury prevention. It was abdominal strength that did it. Unlike any other muscles in your body, a strong core affects the functioning of the entire body. Think of your midsection as your body's infrastructure. You don't want a core made of dry, brittle wood or straw. You want one made of solid steel, one that will give you a layer of protection that belly fat never could. And that's what abdominal exercises help do -- build that foundation of steel.

Abs prevent back pain. Most back pain is related to weak muscles in your trunk, so maintaining a strong midsection can help resolve many back issues. The muscles that crisscross your midsection don't function in isolation; they weave through your torso like a spider web, even attaching to your spine. When your abdominal muscles are weak, the muscles in your butt (your glutes) and along the backs of your legs (your hamstrings) have to compensate for the work your abs should be doing. The effect is that core weakness destabilizes the spine and eventually leads to back pain and strain -- or even more serious back problems. As you'll see in the next chapter, this program provides exercises that work your entire core -- your abdominal muscles -- from many different angles, so that you can develop a strong and balanced midsection.

Abs help you excel. If you play golf, basketball, tennis, or any sport that requires movement, the essential muscle group isn't your chest, biceps, or legs. It's your core. Developing core strength gives you power. It fortifies the muscles around your whole midsection and trains them to provide the right amount of support when you need it. So if you're weak off the tee, strong abs will improve your distance. If you also play stop-and-start sports like tennis or basketball, abs can improve your game tremendously by helping you get from point A to point B faster than your opponent. In essence, your legs don't control speed; your abs do. When researchers studied which muscles were the first to engage in these types of sports movements, they found that the abs fired first. The stronger they are, the faster you'll get to the ball.

THE PLAN: Work your abdominals in a circuit routine two or three times a week. I recommend that you do them before your strength-training workouts.

Go on to the next page to find out what to do about your big muscle groups...

B: Big Muscle Groups

Muscles are what allow grooms to carry brides, football players to make tackles, and moms to carry three children, a bag of groceries, a cell phone, and car keys in one hand. But while lean muscle mass allows you to function every day and helps give your body a strong appearance and shape, muscles are also your body's oven -- they broil fat at high heat. How does it work? Your muscles feed like little piranhas. They need to scour the body for calories in order to keep themselves well-nourished and growing, so they end up churning and burning the calories you're ingesting. So by adding a little more muscle mass to your body, you'll burn more calories throughout the day. In fact, each pound of muscle you have uses up to 50 calories a day just to maintain itself. So if you add just 3 pounds of muscle, you'll burn up to an extra 150 calories a day. That may not seem like much, but at that rate, you'd burn off 15 pounds of fat in a year -- simply by doing nothing!

This program focuses on working your big muscle groups -- your legs, chest, back, and shoulders -- because that's where you can build the most muscle in the least amount of time. Plus, when you work your larger muscles, you fire up your metabolism by creating a longer calorie afterburn -- meaning that you'll burn calories until the next time that you do a strength-training workout.

But, hey, I'm not interested in turning you into the size of a Hummer, or even an H3. I think most of us want to be lean and strong, but still muscular and toned. A Porsche of a body, perhaps? So this plan isn't about spending as much time in the gym as you spend at your keyboard. It's about spending enough time to build a solid base of lean muscle mass -- enough to change your shape and enough to build some muscle that will burn fat by itself. So that's why you'll be using two primary strength-training principles that maximize muscle growth and fat-burning and minimize the time you spend exercising.

Circuit training. It's a simple program: Perform different exercises one right after another with no more than 30 seconds of rest (1 minute in some cases). For example, you'll do a set of leg exercises followed immediately by a set of an upper-body exercise, until you do a number of different exercises in a row (some programs will contain 8 to 10 different exercises; some only 4 or 5). There are two reasons circuit training works. First, by keeping you moving and cutting down the rest periods between exercises, circuit training keeps your heart rate elevated throughout your training session, maximizing your fat burn and providing tremendous cardiovascular fitness benefits. Second, circuit training keeps your workout short -- you won't waste time resting between sets of an exercise.

Compound exercises. These are the exercises that call into play multiple muscle groups rather than just one. For example, with the Abs Diet workouts, I don't want you to exercise your chest on Monday and then your shoulders on Tuesday, your triceps Wednesday, and so on, the way some programs recommend. I want you to hit many different muscles at the same time and within one circuit. One study showed that you can put on 6 pounds of muscle and lose 15 pounds of fat in 6 weeks (6 weeks!) by following an exercise program that employs the compound exercises found in the Abs Diet workout. Not only do compound exercises make your workouts more fun and more challenging, but they will also increase the demands on your muscles -- even though you're not actually doing more work. For instance, the squat hits a whopping 256 muscles with just one movement. These big-muscle exercises are what will lead to big-time calorie burns.

THE PLAN: Do a strength-training circuit three times a week, focusing on compound exercises that work many muscle groups.

Go on to the next page to learn about speed work...

S: Speed Work

Your body reacts to cardiovascular exercise the way you react to music. If you hear a long, slow piece of music, you'll get lulled into zone-out mode. But if you hear something that's high-energy, you can't help but jump, bob, and mosh. Sure, there are some wonderful benefits to long, slow music -- anybody who's ever brought Marvin Gaye along on a date will testify to that -- but your body reacts better in terms of fat loss when you engage in cardiovascular exercise that's high-energy and high-intensity. That is, the most effective cardiovascular workouts are ones that mix periods of high intensity (going close to all out) with periods of low intensity (think light jog). Bottom line: You want a Ludacris workout, not a Chopin one.

Time and time again, research has shown that higher-intensity workouts promote weight loss better than steady-state activities like running 3 or 4 miles at the same pace (Bo-o-oring!). In a Canadian study from Laval University, researchers measured differences in fat loss between two groups of exercisers following two different workout programs. The first group rode stationary bikes four or five times a week and burned 300 to 400 calories per 30- to 45-minute session. The second group did the same, but only one or two times a week, and they filled the rest of their sessions with short intervals of high-intensity cycling. They hopped on their stationary bikes and pedaled as quickly as they could for 30 to 90 seconds, rested, and then repeated the process several times per exercise session. As a result, they burned 225 to 250 calories while cycling, but they had burned more fat at the end of the study than the workers in the first group. In fact, even though they exercised less, their fat loss was nine times greater. Researchers said that the majority of the fat burning took place after the workout. And that's really what makes it so effective -- you'll keep your fat-burning mechanisms revved not only during your exercise but after it as well.

THE PLAN: Do one 20-minute interval workout per week to complement your strength training. Pick a traditional cardiovascular exercise (running, swimming, biking, cardiovascular machine), and alternate between periods of high intensity and periods of lower intensity. On your off days, I'd encourage you to do 30 minutes of brisk walking or a light workout with the cardiovascular exercise of your choice -- as a way to increase your weekly calorie burn. As you advance, you can add another weekly interval workout.

Go on to the next page for your workout schedule...

3: 3 Times per Week

Go back to the study where subjects added 6 pounds of muscle and lost 15 pounds of fat using compound exercises. Their workout? They followed an exercise plan for only 20 minutes three times a week. That's it. In order to make this work, that's all the time you need. Of course, you can spend more time if you want -- and as you get stronger. You'll maximize your fat burn by adding one other interval workout to your schedule, for instance, and you'll also see a speedier weight loss by doing something light -- like brisk walking -- on your off days. And if you're like the many other people who have succeeded on the Abs Diet, you'll find that exercise is a little bit like a bag of potato chips -- once you've dug in, you won't want to stop. Once you start seeing results, you'll push to accelerate them even more. But you have to be careful, because exercise is like a bag of chips in another way, too: You can OD on it, which will negate all the gains you've made. For instance, you don't want to strength train any more than three times a week (your muscles grow when they're at rest). Plus, by keeping your workout schedule balanced throughout the week, you'll achieve one of the main goals you should have with any exercise program: Finish one workout looking forward to -- not dreading -- your next one.

Putting It All Together

I have the same goal with ABS3 as yogis do with Downward Dog -- maximum flexibility. I want you to be able to make choices under the framework of the ABS3 guidelines -- to be able to adapt workouts based on your own life. When you construct your schedule, make sure to:

• Leave at least 48 hours between weight workouts. Your muscles need time to recover and repair themselves after a workout. Walk or go for a light run instead.

• Take 1 day each week to rest, with no formal exercise.

• Before starting to exercise, warm up for 5 minutes, either through a light jog, riding on a stationary bike, jumping rope, or doing slow jumping jacks.

• On off days, you can do optional cardiovascular exercise, such as cycling, swimming, or running. Light cardiovascular exercise like brisk walking is recommended for 2 of your

3 days off.

The three components of your weekly schedule include:

A = Abdominal Exercises

Twice a week. I recommend doing them before your strength training or interval workouts.

B= Big Muscle Groups

Strength training three times a week. These are total-body workouts, with one workout that puts extra emphasis on your legs.

(S) = Speed Intervals

Once a week.

Suggested Weekly Schedules

This At-a-Glance Guide gives you suggested options for planning your training programs.

If You Have Time for 3x/Week . . .

Monday: Abdominal workout (10 minutes)