Truth about 6 Pack Abs - Top 3 Secrets

How much have you money and time have you spend on different type of ab belts, twister, flex belts? And what kind of results have you gotten? If not, are you wondering why you still can’t lose the belly fat or get the 6 pack abs you have been dreaming of?

First, let me ask one thing. When you do push-ups and chest fly, do you expect to make your chest muscle smaller, or larger? The ab muscle is the same as any other muscle groups, you can train them to make them stronger and more toned, but it’s literally scientifically impossible to “spot reduce” any section of your body. That’s a myth have been busted over and over again. Everybody has 6 pack abs. In fact, most people love them so much that they put a layer of protective fat to cover them!

You may see claims on tv that certain automatic ab flexing belts sending electric pulse will make your ab muscle do the work automatically, like doing sit-ups for you. Sounds pretty amazing right? Well, even if the claims are true, crunches and sit-ups are some of the LEAST EFFECTIVE exercise to lose belly fat at the first place. And here is why:

If you want to lose belly fat, you have to burn a certain amount of calories and fat. To be exact, to burn 1 pound of fat required 3500 calories. Doing crunches or using ab flexing belts uses the ab muscles only, which burns very small amount of calories at the first place. Studies have shown that doing 50 sit-ups burns about 10 calories. If you do that math, that’s 17,500 sit-ups just to lose 1 pound of fat!

HOLY CRAP! THAT’S A LOT OF SIT-UPS! WHAT DO I DO?

SECRET # 1: BURN FAT WITH MULTIPLE MUSCLE GROUPS 

Well, the good thing is that we are all born with other large muscle groups that burn more calories, such as your legs, your back, chest, etc. And, if you workout the smart and efficient way, you can work multiple muscles simultaneously, which guess what? BURNS MORE FAT! So, if your primary goal is to lose weight and get fit, unless you have hours to spend at the gym every single day, we highly recommend you work multiple muscle groups simultaneously, versus isolated muscle training.

SECRET #2: FOCUS ON CALORIES BURNED AFTER THE WORKOUT 

You burn calories 24/7, so why be so obsessed with how many calories you burned during your exercise? It’s been clinically proven that shorter burst of high intensity exercise (HIIT) triggers the phenomenon called the EPOC (Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption), or more commonly known as the Afterburn Effect, which basically means your body continues to burn more calories and fat for hours and hours after the workout. So, for example, if you do cardio exercise for 60 minutes and burn 500 calories, the Afterburn Effects stops immediately. You burn 500 calories total. On the other hand, if you do a high intensity interval workout for the same 60 minutes and burn 500 calories, then you burn an additional 400 calories in the next 48 hours after the workout, you would then burn a total of 900 calories!

SECRET # 3 ABS ARE MADE IN THE KITCHEN 

Now that you know how to workout the smart and efficient way, you gotta eat the same way too. If your diet is poor, then your weight loss progress is going to be poor. A proper diet is critical to your success in getting the 6 pack abs, but noticed that we place diet below the 2 workout secrets. The reason is that “diet alone” is a known receipt for failure. Many people focus on dieting without exercise by consuming very little amount of calories. The problem with that is your metabolism actually slows down, so even if you consume less calories from dieting, you also burn less calories per day. What’s even worse is that extended time of starving makes your body go into “survival mode”, which then the instinct is to “STORE FAT”.

 A smart diet & nutrition guide should be easy to follow, and more importantly sensible and achievable on a long term basis. We recommend eating at least 5 meals per day, at smaller portions. Focus on eating “clean” and natural food that are high in fiber and protein, which further help speed up metabolism and burn fat. Eating a proper amount of fat is ok. We are not telling you to fill up with burgers and fries, but eating good fat such as olive oil, almonds, walnuts, etc are great for you joints and keeping you full.

The truth is that to have any “visible” evidence of 6 pack abs, you need to cut down your overall body fat percentage, to about 8%. That might sounds daunting to many of us, but many people are able to achieve that within a few months, by doing the right way of exercising and dieting. And yes, you have to do all three. But the good thing is that you really don’t need fancy equipment, and spending tons of money on supplement and protein power, etc. Continue your training with WorkoutBuddyX.com, and you will get noticeable results. We’d love to hear from your experience in getting the 6 pack abs. Please feel free to provide additional comments below.

3 TIPS TO TURN FRIENDS INTO THE X-FACTOR OF ACHIEVING YOUR WEIGHT LOSS GOALS

Doing sports and working out is not only more fun with a friend.  In an ideal world, you and your friends can help each other to stick to the schedule, correct form to prevent injury, push each other a little bit harder, help each other to eat right, and ultimately, achieve the weight loss goals together.

Unfortunately, we all live in the real world, where distance, schedule conflicts and different skill levels can substantially hinder the possibility of working out with a friend.  Here are the 3 main obstacles (aka, “LIFE”), and some easy tips you can implement to overcome the obstacles. 

OBSTACLE #1:  EVERYONE HAS A DIFFERENT SKILL LEVEL

A few years ago, my college buddies convince me to try snowboarding with them. I can surf and skate a little, so we thought that we could learn snowboarding on the spot without professional lessons.  We found a mutually agreeable Saturday, drove up the mountains, got geared up.  My friend promised to teach me. Then, 5 minutes after we got off the lift, my friends took off and left me thumbing and falling for the rest of the day. That sucked.

It’s not that we are not good friends, it’s just the gap between our skill level was too big that it wasn’t fun for a Level 10 snowboarder to hang out at a bunny hill, and it was way too dangerous for me to even try the black diamond.  (Despite the incident, we remain friends till this day) 

This is the same challenge when you try to workout and lose weight with a friend.  Whether your activity is playing sports, biking, or as simple as running together. Everybody has a different optimal skill level of performance where the activity has the right amount of challenge and the workout is most effective.  Even if two friends start with beginner level (say dancing), one person often learns the sport faster than the other. Then the same activity becomes not as fun for you two. 

SOLUTION: FIND A SKILL-NEUTRAL ACTIVITY

We recommend team sports such as baseball, basketball, and football.  Team sport could work well here since each person can excel in a specific position and the whole team can enjoy it together. 

For Workout Buddy X routines, we painstakingly designed, tested, then revised, and re-tested different modifications of exercises that are similar, but still deliver optimal results for beginners, intermediate and advanced users.  Our testing method was quite simple.  1) We created different workout groups by mixing people of all gender, age, and shapes. 2) put them in a room together to do a WBX workout. 3) when everyone can find an intensity level that they can accomplish yet remains challenging and enjoyable, we know we have a winning receipt.

If you and your friends live in close proximity, we highly recommend you and your friend join forces to do a WBX workout at least once a week.  This will help everyone stay on track.  The Level 3 folks can also act as a team leader to push the groups a little further!  And most importantly, remember to have FUN!

 OBSTACLE #2 LOCATION CONFLICTS

Friends move, get married, have kids, have new jobs, or you are the one that moved for a job and your friends are no longer within arms reach. For some of us, it’s simply physically impossible to find friends who live in close enough proximity to workout with you.  

SOLUTION: WORKOUT WITH NEW FRIENDS

But fortunately, the solution is also quite simple. MAKE NEW FRIENDS!  Do you have co-workers, classmates, new roommates?  Sports and exercising is one of the most fundamental and rewarding activity new friends can do together!  So don’t be shy. Use working out as an opportunity to make new friends.  Remember that everybody wants to look better and feel better. 

OBSTACLE #3 SCHEDULE CONFLICTS

For those of us who are fortunate enough to have jobs, schools, kids, etc, it’s always hard to schedule group events. Even if we all have similar 9-5 work schedules, it’s still challenging to find friends in the same workout schedule, and physical meet with you. 

SOLUTION: MAKE WORKING OUT A PRIORITY

The truth is, you can always find excuses to skip exercising and eating right. But honestly ask yourself, was it REALLY that impossible? I’m not say that it’s not challenging, but if it’s not literally impossible, skip the excuses and start exercising first. You’ll be done before you know it. Not only that exercising is a key factor to lose weight and get healthy, it is also scientifically proven to improve you mood, help your brain functions, which could drastically improve your other work productivity! So next time when you and your friend already scheduled a workout session, DON”T FLAKE! Remember that the short 30 –60 min workout could potentially shorten the time on your other tasks.

OTHER SUGGESTIONS?

Now we'd love to hear from you.  From our blind studies, we found that members working out as groups are able to stick to the plan much better than the ones working out alone.  The result has been impressive.  Workout Buddy X groups on average lost 230% more body fat than the members doing it alone. What are your experience in working out with your friends?  Are you seeing the same results we are?  You can share your thoughts in the comments below.