Washboard Abs on a High-Fat Diet, No Ab Workouts and No Cardio?
Apologies in advance for the self-serving nature of this post, but I felt that it was time to answer more specifically many of your questions about my own program and to use myself as an example of how the Primal Blueprint works if you integrate all the elements.
As many of you know, I am coming off a three month rehab from knee surgery. I’m about 95% healed now and can even do my “Indigenous Peoples Stretch” (a full unloaded squat) – a sure sign that all is well. Throughout this time, I have maintained my usual diet and have done whatever upper-body lifting I could manage that didn’t also require substantial leg involvement (pushups, pull-ups, dips, cable-work, etc). Despite my (or should I say “because of my”) high-fat diet and doing pretty much zero cardio over the past four months (including a fair amount of down time before the knee surgery) my weight, my lean mass and my body fat have all remained steady.
I went on FitDay.com a few days ago (great site to reveal the truth about what you eat) and entered what was a typical full day of eating for me. The results were pretty much as I expected: 2,458 calories, 58% of which was from fat; 165 grams of protein (1 gram per pound of body weight) and 114 grams of carbs. Now some might say that eating less than 2500 calories is too low for a moderately active man, but there are two points to make here. First, I am never really hungry. On this Primal Blueprint eating style, I eat when I want to and stop when I no longer feel hungry. Pretty simple. If I skip meals, I don’t get light-headed or famished. I don’t ever feel like I need more calories or that I am missing out on anything or “sacrificing” some guilty pleasure. I get plenty of protein to spare muscle and add to protein turnover. I get plenty of fat for fuel – sometimes 65% of daily calories. Second – and this goes to the heart of the Primal concept – when you eat fewer carbs, your body readily accesses dietary and stored fat for fuel. Even at 8% body fat, I still have 46,000 calories of stored fat, at least 25,000 of which is available to use as fuel at any time. Theoretically, you could walk 250 miles on that. It’s a beautiful thing when you direct gene expression to “want” to burn fat instead of always storing it. You certainly don’t need cardio to produce the full effect (you can if you want, within guidelines). As we often say here “80% of your results come from how you eat.” Conversely, eating more carbs drives up insulin, drives carbs towards fat storage, decreases fat-burning by prompting fat cells to hold on to stored fat and makes you hungrier for more carbs. I could burn some or most of all that off again by doing tons of cardio, but that only makes me hungrier for more carbs and perpetuates the cycle. It’s like digging a hole to put the ladder in to wash the basement windows.
The other point I want to make is that I don’t do abs. By that I mean I don’t specifically do an ab routine or ab classes as any part of my workouts. On the other hand, I pretty much work my abs all day long without specifically focusing on them. And that’s an important distinction. Grok probably had a wicked set of abs. He had to. Abs are the center of the human movement universe. They are part of today’s “core”, the fulcrum, the key in Chi. But you don’t necessarily need to do endless crunches, sit-ups, roman chairs, leg raises or other isolation moves to strengthen them. Sure, you can if you want, but I think the best way to work your abs is involve them in almost every other movement you do. Every time you do it. When you do pushups, you should tighten your abs hard, likewise when you do pull-ups, squats, lunges, curls – you name it. And working your abs doesn’t stop in the gym. When you sit at your desk, you should take that opportunity to tighten your abs (and by abs, we mean the whole complex: rectis and transverse abdominus, internal and external obliques, and pyrimidalis).
Tighten that belly as if you are going to be punched in the gut while blowing out the candles on your birthday cake. Hold it for 10, 20 or more seconds a few times every hour. Now do it while slightly tilted to one side. Now the other. For even better results and a stronger core, you would simultaneously contract your buttock muscles like you are trying to hold in the bean dinner you had at Barry’s last night. Do these short exercise bursts while you are driving to pick up the kids or when stuck in traffic. Hell, I do some of my best ab work bent over doing sprint work on the stationary bike. It’s really all about squeezing, tightening and trying to shorten the distance between your sternum and you pubic bone. This is all considered isometric work, but the abs respond extremely well to it. Eat right and those well-worked abs will show!
High-fat diet, no cardio, no ab workouts. Talk about thumbing your nose at Conventional Wisdom!
Further Reading:
My Knee is Killing Me… No, Really.
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Tagged: abdominals , easy abs , exercise , high fat diet , isometrics , low carb , muscle , ripped , washboard abs , workout
Posted By: Mark Sisson
You ought to be congratulated on possessing the wisdom to apply isometric contractions and a high-fat, high-protein diet towards slimming down to washboard abs.
I take inspiration from you and nowadays have cut the carbs drastically!
I love isometric workouts.I spend all day trying to get patients to do isometrics to sort out back ache.Well done on promoting true ‘core’ exercise by keeping it simple.
tks for the effort you put in here I appreciate it!
Abs get involved in almost every other movement anyways. Another way to fire your abs is to take whatever exercise you do sitting down (curls, should press, raises etc) and do them standing up.
That’ll get your abs going.
However, sugar avoidance (i.e., Atkins diet) is not the solution. In a 2005 study by Beisswenger, patients were put on the Atkins diet, and it was found that the rate of AGE formation was actually doubled. (The patients were proven to be following the diet and appropriately “in ketosis” by the presence of ketones in their urine.) It seems that ketosis doubles the presence of methylglyoxal (see 3 above) in the body, which react with Amadori products, forming twice the AGE products that would normally be present. It is further notable that methylglyoxal is 40000 times more reactive than blood sugar itself, so it seems that avoiding sugar in hopes of decreasing AGE formation is incredibly counterproductive. It thereby seems to be the best advice to eat a well-balanced diet, with sugars in moderation, but certainly not restricted as in the Atkins diet.
I’ve understood that it’s 1 gram of protein per KILOGRAM of body weight. Are you sure it’s per pound of body weight?
Yes. Per pound of body weight.
You are definitely an inspiration. Nutrition is the key to everything, especially great abs. I have seen guys in the gym do hundreds of sit ups and have nowhere near the results you have. Keep up the good work!
I dont think u have put yourself in the shoes of someone who hasn’t done chronic cardio most their lives, or somebody with a body composition that gains fat easily. I used to be alot chubbier but in the past 4 years ive been intensly weight training and changed my diet to high protein, moderate carbs and low fat (That has worked).. I used to eat high fat and low carbs and i did not have abs of steel!!!!! Because you have increased your metabolism through cardio your whole life you can do this, but it is NOT for everyone. If i went and started eating 58% fat i would gain a huge gut in a week. What to speak of coronary heart disease and other diseases!
This explains it perfectly. I have been telling my friends to go on this kind of diet for quite some time now. They go on it, lose a lot of weight and then they get off it.
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mrk, lookin’ good!
i’ve been engaging my abs conciously in daily acivities and by bed i fell my abs are way more tore up than they ever were back when i was doing crunches with my nifty inversion boots i can only assume it’s got something to do with constant work ammounting to more than one workout a day ever could… keep ‘em comin’
Hmmm, i love this site, im 18 years and i started at low carb and my intake was 50 and less every day, i think you have a different way of measureing carbs in america, but here in norway fiber and carbs are seperated, hence my intake daily is around 50 carbs, little to zero sugar and alot of fat and proteins, and i do workout 4 days a week, so now im gonna start going primal, all organic, less nuts, cus i eat to much nuts each day, even do i maintain my 2:1:1 ratio, but what amount of carbs ( including fiber ) do you recommend each day ?
Does foods like cheese, double cream or yogurt halts getting a 6-pack?
Hey Mark,
Great post!! I am loving the information you provide, hard to believe its all free sometimes!
Anyway, obviously from what you are saying, we should use our abs during everything we do including all of our workouts. But, I was wondering if their are any negative effects from that? We don’t do the same workout every day, but is it okay to work your Abs every day? I am coming from a P90X point of view of where Tony Horton has said you shouldn’t work your Abs every day… So just trying to get the best info out there. Trying very hard to get rid of that fat around the stomach so very interested to hear a response!
Best Regards,
Andrew