How hard is it to get abs?

The fitness industry is incredibly fake.  You have people who look like Greek gods trying to sell an “easy” way to lose weight.  Many are very young.  Many have great genes.  And many are taking performance enhancing drugs.

They offer supplements that don’t work.  And 10 minute ab programs that don’t work.  This won’t be that kind of article.  If there’s an easy way to get abs, I don’t know it.

And I would know. I’ve collected over a dozen fitness and nutrition certifications including a 12-month long nutrition coaching mentorship program with Precision Nutrition.  I can tell you that no one in the evidence-based nutrition space knows a short cut.  

An easy way to abs simply doesn’t exist.  

And it’s safe to assume that the first person to discover a truly “easy” way to get super lean will become the world’s first trillionaire.  The news of it will be everywhere, and you certainly won’t have to go looking for it.

So for now, for most people, getting six-pack lean is just plain hard, which is something I know from first hand experience.  At the ripe old age of 31, I  became determined to lose some weight and get fit.  I’d never been an athlete.  I’d never had visible abs, and I thought it was my genes.  

It wasn’t my genes.  

Fast forward to today.  I am a lean and muscular 43 year old, and I maintain visible abs year round.  No part of it was easy. There’s no gimmick here.  No overnight success or 30-day ab bullshit.   I struggled.  Abs are made in the kitchen, not the gym, and I had to completely change my diet.

But it most definitely was worth it.  It’s not just the aesthetics.  I feel amazing, have more energy, feel younger, recover faster and most likely will live longer.  

So if you want the cold hard truth, here’s 3 diet rules I follow religiously to maintain year round abs. 

But first...

Who can get abs?

Ok first things first, who can even get abs?  Well technically, just about anyone can get visible abs with the right diet and lifestyle.  In fact, it’s probably our genetic normal or average.

That may sound strange, but if you look at traditional hunter gathers, most have visible abs.  In fact, for most of human history, being overweight was actually quite rare. In our great great grandparents' day, visible abs were far more common.  And if you look at pictures of people at the beach from even just the 1970’s, you’ll notice far more people had lean physiques.  

Let me put it another way.  The vast majority of your ancestors could see their abs, and it’s highly likely you can as well.  That sounds nuts, because for the past 100 years modern Western society has been conditioning us to a new normal.  We are in the midst of adapting to a super-abundance of highly processed food, and as a result we are creating new standards with regards to weight.

Rule 1: You’ll need to eat clean 95% of the time  

Junk food is a diet killer.  To get lean you’ve got to eat clean.  Everyone knows it.  Everyone hates it.  And I’m here to say you don’t really have a choice.  If you want visible abs, say goodbye to pancakes, breakfast cereal and pizza.  

To earn and maintain my abs, I religiously avoid junk food.  In fact, I religiously avoid most ultra-processed food.  You can think of food processing as a spectrum.  On one end of the spectrum you have completely unprocessed, whole foods.  This would include cuts of meat, eggs, fruit, veggies etc.  Whole foods are usually found at the perimeter of the grocery store.  Whole foods rot quickly, and their food label is easy to pronounce and understand.  This is the stuff our great, great grandparents would have eaten on the farm.  This is back when there was no such thing as Spam, Twinkies or obesity.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have highly processed foods (junk food).  This includes foods like white bread, cake, hot dogs, pasta, candy, breakfast cereal, soda etc.  These foods have been highly refined and processed.  They are calorically denser than whole foods.  Micronutrients and fiber have been pulled out of them while preservatives, food dyes and artificial flavors have been added.  Without industrial food processing our great grandparents would probably have starved to death.  It’s what allowed modern humans to make food super-abundant, cheap, storable and addictive.  But if you want that six pack, you’ll need to say goodbye.

Here’s why it works.

First, a whole food diet massively reduces your hunger.  Processing and refining food increases its caloric density.  A plate of minimally processed food has way fewer calories than a plate of highly processed food.  To eat the same number of calories on a whole food diet means your stomach will always feel on the verge of rupturing.  You have to eat until it hurts.

Here’s an example.  Two scoops of vanilla ice cream (does anyone eat just one scoop?) has 290 calories.  If instead you reached for a bowl of strawberries, you would need to eat around 50 medium sized strawberries to eat the same number of calories.  That’s about 2 full trays of strawberries from the store.  Good luck eating all of that for dessert.

Second, whole food will help you feel full for longer.  Processing food typically involves removing fiber.  Fiber is an insanely healthy carb that takes a long time to leave your stomach.  Thus, meals rich in fiber leave you feeling fuller for longer.

And it actually makes a pretty big difference.  For instance, research has found that eating 14 more grams of fiber reduces your caloric intake by 10%.  Again, this is because a high fiber meal will leave you feeling full and satisfied for longer than a low fiber meal.  

Third, processed food (think junk food) is specifically engineered to be hyperpalatable making it really easy to overeat.  I think most people are aware of their “trigger” foods.  Foods they can’t stop eating, even if they’re full.  In most cases, those foods are highly processed.  

Fortunately, whole foods don’t necessarily taste worse.  Whole food, real food, is like jazz.  It entails more nuance and a broader range of tastes.  Real food includes bitter flavors.  Picture a perfectly cooked Salmon filet with braised veggies and rice pilaf.   

In contrast, processed food is like that catchy but embarrassing pop song you hate yourself for loving.  It’s a Doritos chip.

Interestingly there’s a bunch of evidence raging from brain scans to psychological studies that show that your tastes and cravings change with your diet.  In other words, if you switch to a whole foods diet you will grow to love all the nuances.  You’ll enjoy the touch of bitter flavors.  Your cravings will go away.  

If you struggle with junk food and want to learn more, check out this article, HERE.

How clean is clean enough to get abs?  

There are a few factors that will decide just how clean you need to eat.  First, how’s your appetite?  Appetite varies genetically.  If someone offers you your favorite junk food, is it easy to take a small portion, or is it a struggle to stop?  Are you overweight or have you always been on the skinny side?  The majority of people have relatively normal appetites.  It’s a normal distribution with most people varying only a little.  A small minority of people will have extremely low or extremely high appetites.  Many (though not all!) fitness influencers probably have very low appetites.

All of this matters because one of the biggest challenges with maintaining visible abs is hunger.  This is because as you lower your bodyfat percentage you inevitably get hungrier.  Those ancestors that ran around with washboard stomachs were probably hungry all-the-time!

If you’d like to learn more about hunger management, check out my article HERE.

Second, what is your lifestyle and training routine?  Micheal Phelps ate tons of junk food while training for the olympics.  But he was training all day everyday.  Similarly, when I’m training for an Ironman or Spartan Ultra, I can be a little more relaxed than when I’m training normally.  Are you on your feet all day?  Do you work a desk job?

Third, would you rather count calories and deal with some extra hunger or would you prefer to eat until satisfied and not have to track calories?  Calorie counting gives most people the option for some extra junk food.  

I don’t like counting calories any more, so you’ll rarely (almost never) catch me eating pizza, fast food, pasta, icecream, cake or candy.  And even when I’m training for an Ironman, my “cheat” foods amount to some granola on my high protein Greek yogurt or a couple slices of Danish rye bread with lunch.  During high training periods, instead of “cheat” foods, I just eat a ton of fruit.  Religiously eating very clean is one price I pay to maintain visible abs in my 40’s.

Now all of this isn’t just my personal experience or merely my experience as a coach.  It’s also backed up by science.  In fact, a recent study had two groups of people eat as much food as they wanted.  One group ate highly processed food.  Think burgers, pizza, pasta, fries & pancakes.  The second group ate less processed food.  Think steak, sauteed veggies, salmon salads & fruit. 

The second group ate 500 fewer calories per day.  Enough to lose weight.  Pretty cool!  To put that in perspective, 500 calories per day is 14,000 calories every 4 weeks.  That’s about 1.5 pounds of fat loss per month.

Imagine losing 1.5 pounds per month by accident.  No hunger.  No deprivation. 

Cutting out the junk food doesn’t just help you get a six pack.  It will help you get healthy and live longer.  For example, a 2019 study found that eating 10% more ultra-processed food led to a 14% higher risk of all-cause mortality. 

Rule 2: 80% of my meals include a pile of non-starchy veggies

To get lean, you’re going to have to eat your veggies, and I’m not talking about potatoes either.  I’m talking about non-starchy veggies.  Things like green leafy vegetables, broccoli, cucumber, mushrooms, artichokes, etc.

Like whole foods generally, non-starchy veggies are low calorie.  In fact they’re VERY low calorie, and they’re loaded with fiber.  So for all the reasons mentioned above, eating loads of veggies is key to getting and staying lean. 

How many veggies are enough?

I aim for veggies to take up around half of my plate at every meal.  And if I’m going to eat a meal that doesn’t include veggies (for instance a bowl of yogurt for breakfast), I’ll eat a pile of raw veggies (carrots, cucumber, sweet bell pepper etc) first as a snack.   

You want to eat around 800 grams of veggies per day, and that corresponds to around 3 normal plates filled halfway with veggies. For most people with a healthy BMI, it’s around 20-25% of their daily calories. 

If you eat more or less than three meals a day, the principle remains the same.  You can still just stick to the goal of covering half of your plate with veggies, and the portions should average out.  For example, if you eat two larger meals per day, you’ll probably eat two larger portions of veggies.  And if you eat 4 or 5 smaller meals, you’ll eat 4-5 smaller portions.

800 grams of veggies is around 500 kcal, 100 grams of carbs and 30 g fiber on average.  If you can manage this, it will dramatically reduce your appetite and help you lose loads of weight.  You can also include some low calorie fruit, if it helps.  I eat tons of fruit, but it’s usually in addition to my veggies goal.

• Veggies under 25kcal per 100 grams: pickles, cucumber, cabbage, lettuce, asparagus, turnip, spinach, summer squash, celery, radishes, cauliflower, swish chard, pumpkin, arugula

• Veggies under 50kcal per 100 grams: broccoli, collard greens, onions, mushrooms, okra, carrots, beet greens, kale, sweet bell peppers, fennel, leeks, eggplants, jalapenos, Brussel sprouts, artichokes

• Fruit under 45 kcal per 100 grams: peaches, strawberries, cantaloupe, honeydew melon, blackberries, papaya, grapefruit

Not only does eating veggies help me stay lean, research suggests it’s extremely healthy.  For instance, in 2018, researchers reviewed 95 nutrition studies and found that eating 800 grams of fruits & veggies provided a

• 31% reduction in risk of death

• 24% reduction in risk of heart disease

• 33% reduction in risk of stroke

• 28% reduction in risk of cardiovascular disease

• and a 13% reduction in risk of cancer

If you’d like to learn more about optimizing your fruit and veggie intake, check out my guide HERE.

Rule 3: Every single meal includes high quality lean protein

No set of diet recommendations would be complete without mentioning protein.  Protein is every fitness influencer and nutrition coach’s favorite macro.  There are two reasons for this.  First, protein is very satiating, and the effect can be substantial.  

In one study, overweight women ate 441 fewer calories per day by moving from a low protein to a high protein diet.  They weren't tracking their calories.  They weren’t trying to diet.  They were just less hungry.  

Take a moment and let that sink in. By increasing their protein, they spontaneously ate 441 fewer calories per day. That’s about the equivalent of two slices of cheese pizza per day.

That’s an effective diet!  

But there’s a limit.  It seems that once your body is getting enough protein, more protein isn’t any more satiating than carbs or fats.

So, what’s the maximum effective dose?  Recent research suggests that the benefits seem to top out at around 1.8 g/kg/day.  

Protein also matters because it helps preserve your muscle mass.  The more muscle mass you have, the higher your metabolism.  A lot of people like to claim that their metabolism slowed as they aged.  Most of that slowing is probably the result of a less active lifestyle and an age-related loss of muscle mass.  After about 30, we start losing muscle mass.  Fortunately, if you lift weights and consume enough protein, you can keep your muscle or even build more, and thus keep your metabolism up.

How much protein is enough?

For most people, I recommend 1.8 g/kg/day.  That’s based on research done by Menno Henselmans.  For example, a 68 kg person would aim for 123 grams of protein per day (68 kg x 1.8 = 122.4).  

That corresponds to a moderately high protein diet with roughly 20-25% of your daily calories coming from protein.  In practice, this means protein will take up something like 20-25% of your plate at dinner.  You can eat more than that, but it won’t increase your gains.  

I spent years counting out my grams of protein.  It gave me an incredible feel for how much protein is in a meal.  As a result, I rarely track my protein, and I’m sure I routinely error on the higher side of 1.8  g/kg/day.  I recommend you spend some time tracking your protein, if only to get a feel for it.  Most Westerners eat a lower protein diet, so it can take some getting used to.  Here are some protein rich foods to get you started.

• Dairy: Quark 75 kcal per 100 grams, Greek yogurt 100 kcal per 100 grams, cottage cheese 100kcal per 100 grams

• Seafood: Cod 85kcal per 100grams ; Tuna 130kcal per 100 grams; Mackerel 205kcal per 100 grams, Salmon 208kcal per 100 grams

• Eggs & Poultry: Chicken 240kcal per 100 grams, eggs 155kcal per 100 grams, egg whites 52kcal per 100 grams

If you’d like to learn more about optimizing your protein intake, check out my guide HERE.

Final thoughts

I hope that helps motivate some of you to get six-pack lean.  Even though there’s nothing easy about it, it’s completely worth it.  You’ll look and feel great.  You’ll know you’ve dramatically improved your health and longevity.  And it actually gets easier with time and practice.  You learn to love healthy whole food.  You build healthy habits and routines that make it all effortless and natural.  And you end up becoming one of those people who is known for always eating healthy.