Tuesday, February 8, 2011

How To Sculpt Abs

Many men and women want to have a flat stomach these days in order to be able to sharply sculpt and define their abs into what is called a six pack. It is no longer enough to just simply lose weight nor just build muscles in general. Because you can find no cheats or quick fixes to do it right, it is not easy to attain that goal. It is very important to have determination, consistency and commitment to your program as well as to long term maintenance. Proper workouts and the right diet for losing fat and building muscles make up the basics of the program.

To build abs you need to flatten the stomach through weight loss. It is, in fact, necessary to trim down your body fat to just ten percent to be able to sculpt out and define those abs well. To burn off all your excess fat and to ensure that your weight loss should consist of fat loss, cardio workouts should be done three times a week. For half an hour to an hour in each cardio session your heart rate should be elevated to the maximum level and kept at that fat burning zone. Whatever kind of cardio workout you choose, whether indoors or outdoors, including aerobics, jogging, cycling or swimming, does not really matter. To enable your body to continue burning fat for the remainder of your day, your metabolism will be raised by each session. In order to have more hours of raised metabolism to burn fat, it is therefore best to do cardio workouts in the morning.

In tandem with burning off fat through cardio workouts you also need to do muscle building workouts that are specifically designed to strengthen and tighten stomach muscles. Body core exercises that do exactly this are part of the Pilates workouts. Abdominal crunches, reverse crunches and oblique crunches are likewise very effective when done with the proper techniques.

To be truly effective, though, your cardio and strength training workouts should be accompanied by the right diet. You should be eating less calories than you are burning off, but not too few as to lower your metabolism, n order to lose fat. All unhealthy fats, simple carbohydrates like sugar and starch, and dairy products that cause bloating and gas should be cut out of your diet. Make sure your diet contains adequate lean complete proteins supplemented by high fiber complex carbohydrates and healthy unsaturated fats. Your daily intake should therefore be made up of lean meat, chicken, fish, whole grains, vegetables and fruits divided into six light meals eaten through the day, with the last meal ending three hours before bedtime.

You can successfully create sharply defined six pack abs through the right combination of cardio workouts, stomach tightening and strengthening workouts and the right diet.

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