The Hack:

Go from a puffy gut 15-20% body fat to defined 6 pack abs at 8-10% body fat in 90 days.

To skip the story and get to the actual how to, see the final sub-heading “Hack Your Own 6 Pack in 90 Days instead of 6 months”.

 

The Story:

January 1st, 2008.

Unhappy new year.

I flexed in the mirror, sucked in my stomach and did my best to ‘pop’ my abs out from underneath the extra fat.

“Maybe I put on a little weight but yeah my abs are still there”

Then I promptly release my stomach, let it all hang out and carry on with my day.

Operation: Self-Delusion in Full Effect.

I played this game for months while my worst fears kept gnawing at the back of my head.

“Do you still find me attractive?”

That’s what I wanted to ask. The problem was if I just came out and asked her I already knew what she’d say:

“Of course I love you”

Yeah…

I’ve also heard the same thing from ex-girlfriends with the same amount of emotion they’d feel for a pet rock.

Love, thanks to the overuse of the word to describe everything from how we feel about siblings, chocolate, a warm blanket and sex, told me nothing about how sexually attracted a girl was to me.

Like it or not, weight is a serious issue and does cause divorce.

Whether you call it superficial or Darwin’s survival of the fittest, the facts still remain. Quivering and sticking your head in the sand doesn’t stop the oncoming train of cold hard reality.

But it went deeper than that.

I felt sluggish, low on energy and lackluster about sex and just not on my “A” game. If I were grading myself, I felt like a “D”.

Fail.

 

A 73 Year Old Grandma Had Better Abs

5″6, 175 lbs. with approximately a 15-20% body fat composition (visual estimation).

While I wasn’t obese, I felt chunky. I couldn’t help but remember the skinny guy I knew myself to be in high school.

When did I go from this to this?

A 73 year old woman was in better shape than me.

WTF?

Yeah Ernestine Sheperd, I’m talking about you.

Ernestine Shepherd began working out at the age of 56. She now runs 80 miles per week and can bench press 150 pounds. She was named in the Guinness World Records as the oldest female bodybuilder.

(Courtesy Yohnnie Shambourger)

Naturally, I kept that secret to myself. Even though only I knew, I still felt embarrassed.

All throughout undergrad, all my friends knew me to be a health nut. I was in the gym 4-5 days a week and would get upset if I only got 4 days in. While I wasn’t Men’s Health magazine material, I’d get my fair share of compliments.

Now, I felt out of shape, overweight, complacent and [insert 2 or more lines of low self-esteem commentary here].

Ugh.

How does one fix this?

I’ll divulge 2 different approaches that yielded the coveted 6 pack abs in 6 months then show you how you can cut that time in half:

1. Rasta Strength Training (3 months)
2. The Abs Diet (Online) (3 months)

 

1. Rasta Strength Training (3 months)

Naashon, a 5″3, a Rastafarian poet and dancer from Jamaica, was not your typical fitness trainer.

Picking her was no accident. As she put it:

Guys like to focus on the upper body and then they end up with chicken legs. Female trainers give you a more balanced workout because we train you for what we like to see. The full package, calves, thighs, butt, abs and all.

Internal translation: Train with me and you’ll bring sexy back.

SOLD!

So, she crafted me a personal program based on my desire to “get ripped” & “get stronger” without “getting super bulky”. It looked like this:

For the uninitiated, this is a strength training style program where “according to popular theory, sets of six to twelve repetitions develop a balance of strength, muscle size and endurance.”

If I pulled this off I just knew I’d be “strong like bull!”

Each exercise had sets (a group of repetitions) with decreasing repetitions (reps) while increasing the weight with each smaller set.

Example: Bench Press
Set 1 = 12 reps * 90 lbs.
Set 2 = 10 reps * 110 lbs.
Set 3 = 8 reps * 130 lbs.
Set 4 = 4 reps * 150 lbs.

I’d usually give myself one week before increasing the weights by increments of 5-10 lbs. (5 for minor muscle groups and 10 for major muscle groups).

Also, the first half of the sheet would be done let’s say on Monday, then the next half on Tuesday, then first half on Wednesday for a Upper Body, Lower Body + Core (Abs) split.

We used so many machines that she included a legend at the top to help me identify which was what based on the manufacturer and color set of the machines.

Yeah, it was that serious.

It took me a full week of working out and cycling through each exercise at least twice before I figured out all the machines.

 

Results:

Pros:

After 3 months of just strength training, I went from 15-20% to 10-12% (via visual estimation).

Drastic improvement.

Side note:
I wasn’t interested much in weight.

Keeping track of weight is very important and can be a great tool to track workout gains/results if you have more than 20% body fat.

However, once below 20%, weight tends to be a much less reliable indicator especially when building muscle.

Since muscle weighs more than fat, you can easily be ‘thrown’ off and feel like you’re not making as much gain. BMI is equally bogus (puts me at overweight for my height and weight despite a current athletic body fat percentage).

To keep track of body recomposition, always track body fat %. Always.

Thanks to the strength workout, my shoulders, chest, arms and abs were more clearly defined.

While in a non-flexed state, you can still see some of my 6 pack and more noticeably, the iliac crest ‘cut’ that trails into the pants.

Definite progress.

 

Cons:

My workout time lasted between 90 – 120 mins.

While I could afford the time in grad school, it’s not sustainable for most people and have no desire to spend 10 hours per week in the gym.

That’s a part-time job you’re not being paid for.

Plus, resentment can set in if you do this for too long and stop making gains.

While I definitely improved, I wanted more. Depending on the lighting it may or may not look like I had a 6 pack. I wanted it to be unmistakable.

Strength training definitely helped but I felt like something was missing. How exactly does one engineer a rock solid abs?

To answer that question, I consulted an engineer.

 

2. The Abs Diet | Engineering a 6 Pack

Yeah. Now that’s an unmistakable 6 pack. No guessing games here.

Like Jerry Maguire I’m the “Show Me The Money!!!” type. I am an emotional buyer and I’ll be the first to admit it.

It goes a little something like this: “I want that! Now let me think of logical reasons to back it up so when my friends and family ask me I’ll sound like I made an intelligent decision…”

Hmm.

So when my roommate Charles, an electrical and computer engineering major, told me about the Abs Diet and told me he was getting results (plus all the logical reasons to do it) I was in.

Sounds AWESOME to me.

On April 19, 2008, I signed over $44.95 in the hopes of finally getting that ripped 6 pack. While I overcame my 4-pack dilemma in college, I never had that Calvin Klein look.

Instead, I had that bodybuilder set of abs. They’re there but covered by extra weight and muscle for a nice round bulge instead of a flat stomach.

If anything, I looked a little bloated.

With the Abs Diet, you put what your weight loss goals were and the program created a custom meal plan and workout regime for you to reach those goals.

I was hooked.

It sang siren songs to my obsessive compulsive tendencies.

Fascinated by the ‘newness’ and all the ‘scientific’ data about myself I’d have access to, I decided to give it a go for 3 months.

 

 

Results:

Pros:

I went from approximately 10-12% to 8-10% body fat (visual estimation method).

At first glance, the difference may be slight. I had the appearance of being less ‘puffy’ (not the rapper, ‘take that, take that’).

If you look at my arms, chest and abs, it’s less bulky, less ‘smooth’ and more defined.

Here’s why:

While you could have a strength training program out this world and do 100 sit ups a day, it won’t mean a thing if you’ve got fat covering up all your hard work.

Even though the Abs Diet had a strength training component to it, it was way less intense than my ‘Rasta’ workout and yet a I still had an improvement in results.

Less is more.

The difference maker?

Diet.

Even 2 months after cancelling I still received benefits from the Abs Diet. Here’s some insider info on exactly what about the diet made it continue to work even 2 months afterwards without working out:

 

No Grain = Plenty Gain

Cons:

While the $44.95 for 3 months was an awesome learning experience that got me the best results up to this point, I felt like I’d learnt the most crucial part of the diet to continue seeing results when renewal time came around.

By far the most agonizing, annoying, time consuming barrier to continuing was the tedious process of punching in the exact meals that I ate into the Abs Diet Online system.

It was cool at first but shortly afterwards it became a chore with every click to change portion size, meal type and time requiring a full refresh of the page.

Ugh.

Kill me with a spoon.

It’d have been so much easier to just write it down or take pictures of it.

 

Bottom-Line:

After strength training, all the muscle was already in place. The only thing left was left was to lower my body fat percentage.

All in all, I couldn’t be disappointed. After all, I got what I was after.

I went from not wanting to show my face to the best shape of my life at the time. I felt great.

Sadly, it wasn’t to last.

Stay tuned for Part Deux: P90X & The $1,000 Bet.

 

Hack Your Own 6 Pack in 90 Days Instead of 6 months

Assuming a start of 15-20% body fat for men or 25-30% for women, it’s very possible to lose 5-12% body fat in 90 days rather than 6 months.

The nice thing about lowering your BF % is that the more you have is the quicker you can lose it (until you get to lower percentages). For men to show abs they’ve got to get to 10% and below while women need 15-20% range.

How can you do that?

Combine strength training with the Abs Diet.

All you have to do is use the ‘diet’ portion of the Abs Diet while on the “Rasta” workout plan.

 

How To Hack The Rasta Strength Training:

You’ll need 4 things:

1. A camera to take your before, during and after pictures with. I recommend 30 day intervals. There’s nothing more motivating than seeing your own progress.
   
2. A way reliably consistent method of measuring body fat percentage change.

   First, the only way to accurately measure body fat is to grind yourself up into itty bitty pieces and in blender and separate out the fat. That being said, every other method has some kind of error.

   For most, the most economical and accessible will be bioelectrical impedance via an electric scale. Sadly, I’ve found it the Health-O-Meter scale available at Wal-Mart to be consistently off by about +10%.

   This is both a gift and a curse.

   The gift is that you can subtract 10% from the value it gives and your actual bodyfat percentage will be within +/- 1% of the value you’ve got.

   The curse is that you’ve got to take measurements at the same time everyday.

   Health Hack Tip #1: The best way to get consistent measurements is upon waking up after you urinate since hydration levels affect its reading. Knowing this, you’ll want to track your hydration level as well.

   Health Hack Tip #2: I keep a book and pen in the bathroom next to the toilet as a visual mental trigger to do it each morning. It’s never failed me yet.
   

3. Access to some basic gym equipment. Ideally, you want to be able to do at least two exercises:

   The Bench Press and The Deadlift (good form but he goes too fast, I’ll cover how fast you should go in a second).

   These are both compound exercises that will save you time by working multiple muscle groups.

   The deadlift will work your back and entire lower body while the bench press targets your chest and biceps (practically the only muscle groups not worked by the deadlift).

   In most gyms, even crappy apartment complex wanna-be ‘weight rooms’, you can find something to bench with even if it’s a horizontal forward motion chest press.

   The deadlift, however, involves a barbell with weights that you can stack. Any real gym will have this.

   If you’re bootstrapped for cash or can’t ‘hack’ your way into a gym via free trials, then you’ll need to swap out the deadlift for the squats or leg presses. While inferior compound exercises (as far as maximizing time and muscle groups worked) go, they’ll still get the lower body portion of the job done.

   Health Hack Tip #3: As with your weight, bodyfat % and hydration levels, you’ll want to meticulously track the weight you use, your reps, sets and time to complete one repetition. 

   This will allow you to to increase at a pace that works for you. I’m crazy fanatic when it comes to this and depending on the muscle group I’ll increase weight every 2 days to a week.

   Health Hack Tip #4: As far as sets and repetitions go, you’ll want to do at the bare minimum 2 sets for each workout with 3-5 repetitions at 80-90% of your max effort you can muster for 1 repetition. Each rep should last 3-5 seconds going up and 3-5 coming down.

   So if my 1-rep max for benching is 100 lbs. for convenience, then I’ll want to bench 3-5 reps in 2 sets at 80-90 lbs. with a 3-5 second cadence.

   Lower reps and sets allow you to grow strength with minimal increase in size/muscle mass.

   Higher reps up to 8-9 per set will build mass. Higher than 10 will send your body into endurance/lean mode (think marathon runner type body).

   Finally, throw in this 6 minute abs routine by Tim Ferriss, author of the 4 Hour Body. It’s seriously all you need for your abs.

   Do your workout 2-3 times per week.
   

4. Motivation.

   If you’ve never stuck to a workout before, get a friend to hold you accountable. Pay them $1 for every workout you miss and make sure you get ‘em to agree to this (shouldn’t be too hard).

   Since we’re wired psychologically to be risk averse, losing $1 will be more motivating than getting the 6 pack you’ve always dreamed about on the days you’ll inevitably not feel like doing crap.

   Trust me, it works.

   Again, I’m fanatical and instead of $1, I made it a $1,000 bet for 90 days.

 

How To Hack The Abs Diet:

The easiest way to pull this off is to pull a friend in on the bet to hold you accountable with one caveat. You’ve got to send them a picture of every meal you eat except on cheat days. If you’re not eating like you should, you pony up $1 each time.

That being said, the Abs Diet foods can be grouped into 3 categories. To keep this simple, fill your plate if you like and pig out but under this rule of ratio:

1 : 2 : 1

Divide your plate into 4 quarters.

If your meat takes up one quarter, let your Veggies/Beans take up 2 quarters and everything else take up 1 quarter. Adjust for your appetite but keep the ratio.

That’s it.

Mix and match from the “Abs Diet Super foods” below:

Group 1: (Meat / Protein)

Dairy (low-fat)
Instant Oatmeal
Eggs
Turkey, Chicken and other lean meats

Group 2: (Beans / Veggies)

Beans and other legumes
Spinach and other green vegetables

Group 3: (Everything else)

Peanut Butter (unsweetened is better)
Almonds and other nuts (peanuts don’t qualify)
Olive oil
Extra-protein (whey) powder)
Raspberries and other berries
Whole-grain breads and cereals (skip this entirely for faster results)

It’ll take you about a week of adjusting to start getting into the habit of this.

Expect this and don’t be surprised if things feel awkward. Most new things do.

By 4 weeks in, it’ll feel second nature and the time will fly especially since you’ll see results in just 30 days to keep you motivated and moving forward.

Happy 6-Packing!

Drop a line below if you’re embarking on this, have tried it or something similar and have useful tips to share with others. As always, questions are welcome.

Liked this article? Share it with a friend on Facebook, or Twitter. Also, stay Tuned for Part 2: P90X & The $1,000 Bet.