Diet for Abs has a larger impact on your weight compared to what your activities are so let’s focus on it. Here are a few tips that you can do to achieve that flat stomach and abs.
Developing abs is not impossible. A lot of people would think it’s hopeless and just exclusive for celebrities and other people who “have time to look good”, but trust me, it’s not.
It’s a balance of a well-kept diet and an active lifestyle. Think of it as a working motor- the balanced diet to lessen the fats while the exercise is there to tone the muscle.
Table of Contents
Lower Your Empty Calories
Empty-calorie is a nutrition term that is used to identify foods that are far less nutritious than other food groups.
These are those dishes and processed foods that contain a lot of sugar, fats, and salt.
Think of it this way, every calorie that we put in our body becomes energy, no matter from what source.
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A gram of carbohydrate and protein would produce four kCals each, while a gram of fat produces nine kCals.
All the food stuff that we know have these macronutrients, with varying amounts of vitamins and minerals.
So in choosing what to eat and drink, it would be ideal to pick those foods that can offer more.
The foods don’t have to be fancy or expensive, and I encourage you to try other food stuff to appreciate them.
For instance, pick the sliced vegetables and fruits instead of the chips or nachos, fruit juice instead of soda, water instead of powdered juice or whole grain variant instead of white bread.
Concentrate Your Diet on Protein While Concentrating Your Carbohydrates on Vegetables and Fruits
Increase your protein intake by at least 5-10% to build your muscles and to further condition yourself to refuse foods that are heavy in sugar and bad fat.
Although ideal, you don’t have to measure everything you eat. You just have to know consciously what they are and how much.
For example, say for breakfast, you are consuming an egg, sausage, and rice.
You can then increase the egg whites in your plate or the sausage and then a few spoonfuls less on your rice intake.
For lunch, you can increase the protein by getting a few more servings of your braised tofu or chicken breasts and then lower your mash potato or buttered corn serving.
For your carbohydrates, try to stay away from the simple and refined sugar. The simple act of skipping a few teaspoonfuls of white or brown sugar in your coffee, juice or milk would go a long way for your body.
Learn to consume vegetables and fruits as well. They are your friends that contain natural sugars with more fiber, vitamins, and minerals.
If you are sensitive, especially to vegetables, remember that broccoli, spinach and those other vegetables that you hate are not the only ones there- there are others that you can try and can give the same nutrients.
Switch to Whole Grains
A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2008 concluded that consuming whole grains helped with developing a flat stomach.
It seems like whole grains stabilized the insulin and glucose response of the body that mobilized fat stores around the stomach area.
Try Including oats, wheat, barley, and other whole grain foods in your diet. They are mostly great to have for breakfast and even snacks.
Not to mention, they’re packed with antioxidants to protect ourselves from Cancer.
Time Your Meals
It is better to have 6-8 smaller meals spread throughout the day than having three big meals and two smaller ones.
Small frequent meals would help condition your body and avoid overconsumption once you missed one meal and tried to make up for it.
You can divide your day by including the most important meal- breakfast- just a few minutes after you wake up, a mid-morning snack at around 10:30 in the morning and then lunch at 12nn. Then another mid-afternoon snack at 4:00 and then dinner at 7:30.
If needed, a light snack can be consumed to get you through 10 pm before going to bed.
Increase your servings on your breakfast and focus on high fiber/ high protein dishes to get you through the morning.
Decrease this by lunch and decrease more servings for dinner. Think of an inverted triangle, where your breakfast is on the top of it and the dinner is on the bottom.
This would very be challenging for people who frequently eat out with friends as there’s always a smorgasbord of food ready and sometimes, even free at the table.
Just to remind you that there’s nothing wrong to indulge but keep in mind that you want those abs and that next piece of the burger will not stop you from having a very nice six-pack abs or a toned stomach.
You have to learn how to control yourself around food.
Exercise At Least An Hour Every Day
Exercise is the other part of the plan when developing your abs. The diet with a high protein and low carbs profile should complement the activity that would tone our muscles.
Doing push-ups, commandos and planks are necessary to bring out the sharp, sexy curves of our stomach.
Here are a few exercises that you can do to strengthen your core:
Read more: Top 5 Best Recumbent Exercise Bike Reviews
For Ladies: 10 Min Abs Workout – At Home Abdominal and Oblique Exercises
For Guys: 8 Min Abs with Jamie Alberton
Looking good and being healthy offer a lot of benefits. Not only that for the most part, being inside our ideal body weight range with more muscles than fat is great, but the way that we feel about ourselves can also be affected for the better.
We can wear bikinis or go topless on beaches, exude more confidence because our clothes fit better than before, and get some praises on how we look today. It takes discipline and time to achieve that.
With food, try to consume the good stuff most of the time. Make time to exercise even with the simple yoga, pilates or the videos that I linked above and of course, enjoy the process to your flat stomach and toned abs!