How To Get Ripped Abs - My Personal Journey

Do you want to learn how to get eye-popping six pack abs, but without spending money on expensive programs, exercise contraptions, DVDs, or personal trainers? Then you are in the right place. As of writing this hub, I am 43 years old, of average build and average height. I have determined to get a beach body with ripped abs (like my 19-year-old son) by summer time. If I am successful, you will have a real-world example of how a regular middle-aged guy gets ripped and shredded without spending a single dime. I'm sure there are millions of guys (and gals) out there just like me, so this should be a fun project. I will even sacrifice my privacy and post pictures to update you on my progress.

I am a regular person who craves donuts, pizza, McDonald's breakfast biscuits, and restaurant cheeseburgers. I'm not some health nut who has extraordinary control over his appetite. My goal is to help the regular people of the world to figure out this whole fitness thing in a way that doesn't cramp our lifestyle or make us work too hard. I will be as open and honest as I can, and share with you all of my poor eating habits and my exercise activity. By the time I am done, I hope to provide a workable pathway for regular people to looking fit and trim, with an eye-popping midsection of cutting ab muscles. Welcome to my journey!

The first and most obvious thing you need to know about developing abs is that your diet will have a huge impact. You can have all the rock-hard ripped abs you want... but if they are buried under a 3" layer of flab, it's not gonna look pretty on the beach. As I mentioned before, I am not the healthiest individual when it comes to food choices. But my first order of business was to modify my eating habits to maximize the work I am doing to develop my abdomen.

One big key that I can tell you from my own experience is this: find out what foods trigger your weight gain the most. Of course you have the obvious foods like pizza, donuts, sugared pop, chili dogs, and french fries that will fatten you up as much as you could ever want. But certain foods will trigger weight gain for me more than others. When I am eating healthy, I have found that nuts & peanut butter are the worst things for me to eat. My body very efficiently converts that to fat. I can get away with an occasional donut or sausage & egg biscuit more than I can hack chowing down on peanut butter from the jar. So find out what foods trigger the most weight gain for your body, and stay the heck away from them as much as possible.

One thing that I do to monitor what foods stick to my body the most is to weigh myself every day. Most people will tell you not to be obsessive and weigh yourself constantly. I disagree. If you are like me and you enjoy eating junk food, weighing yourself daily is a must. When I jump on the scale, I can gain or lose as much as 4 pounds in a single day. Some will argue that it is mostly water weight. But when your belly is hanging over your belt and you see love handlebars sticking out of your sides when you look in the mirror, you can't tell me it's 100% water weight. That's nonsense. After I pig out on a pizza buffet and weigh in the next morning 3 or 4 pounds heavier, it will take me days on end to remove that "water weight". Actually, it's grease and carbohydrates added together with too much salt and sodium that makes for the highest daily weight gain. But the overall point is, find your trigger weight gain foods by weighing yourself every day.

Your eating habits will make a big difference. I have noticed that I will lose weight much easier when I eat several small meals throughout the day instead of 3 large meals. It gives your body a better chance to metabolize what you eat. I never skip breakfast. So many people I know don't eat breakfast, but complain that they can't lose weight. When you skip breakfast, your body will not turn on the calorie burning switch, and instead, it will save as much food as it can for fat storage. Eat a sensible small breakfast, preferably of fruits & whole grains, and you will kick your metabolism in gear for maximum fat burning throughout the day.

An honest note about junk food - I don't abide by a strict diet. Yes, I eat donuts, cake, candy, chocolate, and snack foods. The key here is to reward yourself with a small amount of junk food every now-and-then. That way, you won't end up having cravings and going on a binge. The days that I break down and eat a fattening donut, I will try to cut back on my overall intake. Plus, I will try to match the donut with a vegetable later on. I don't have the willpower to cut out all of my good junk foods. But the more that I cut out, the quicker I realize weight loss. It just depends on how fast you want to get to your end result. In my experience, the people who starve themselves with fad diets or all healthy food are the ones who later binge and gain the weight back plus more. It's better to reward yourself every so often than to crash and burn.

Find a method of losing weight that works for you. The first time I lost a considerable amount of weight, I did the Adkins diet. It was not fun. It was 6 weeks of pure hell. I was exhausted, cranky, and depressed the entire time. The only thing that kept me going  was watching the weight fall off of my body in rapid fashion. After I quit the Adkins diet, I slowly increased my carbohydrate intake over the next year.

It is very important to focus on changing your lifestyle more than doing extreme diets like Adkins. If you make a total lifestyle change, you will get to enjoy your ripped abs for a long time instead of bouncing back and gaining weight right after your target point. I am 5' 9-3/4" and I weighed 225 pounds at my high point. I had lost down to 172, then gained back to 200 pounds. I'm sitting at 180 pounds right now, at the start of my trek to develop my ripped abdomen.

In this section, I am going to share with you everything that I am doing that gets results, and everything that does not work. These will be things that you should be able to duplicate with ease, being that I am an average guy who wasn't born with muscles popping my shirt seams like Terrell Owens. Regular every-day pudgy to fat guys, this is just for us. Before I get into the details, I can say that consistency is the key. You have to find a way to keep yourself motivated and check your progress. Don't ever give up. Believe that you can do this, and you will. I'll have several paragraphs below that start out with a bold heading describing each tactic. With that, let's get started!

Visualization

Don't sigh. This is the most important step. It is scientific. I'm not going to go all "The Secret" on you here. But it is a proven fact that if you don't have the ability to visualize where you want your body to be, it will never get there.

Want to know what makes me get in shape faster, and see results like crazy? It's by reading health magazines. Go get a subscription to "Men's Health", "Women's Fitness", "Muscle Magazine", or something similar. Read it every day. Read the articles, and most of all, look at the pictures. Brainwash yourself. Inundate your mind with pictures of physical fitness. Then picture in your mind what you want to look like, and keep it on your mind every single day.

"Become" the ripped ab monster before you ever get there. I can't stress this enough. If you are doing this step right, you should be disgusted (to a degree) when you look at your fat belly in the mirror. But then keep it positive, and tell yourself that you are returning to your perfect body, the way God intended it to be. Attitude is an absolute prerequisite to success in this journey. Ask me how I know, and I will tell you that I have been there. Twice. I lost significant weight twice in my life, and got lazy and gained it back. This time, it has become a life-long decision. Make your decision now, and don't look back.

If you stare at pictures of fitness for 30 days straight without fail, you will notice a difference. You will feel better, and you will notice yourself acting like you are already there. One thing I love to see is a fat guy in the gym who is super confident and happy, because he knows what he is going to look like in 6 months. I'm not saying be cocky and act like a pompous fool, but start thinking of yourself as a physically fit individual. Then add patience. Know that you have turned the direction of your body towards a ripped beach body model, and feel it.

I promise you, if you get this step right, you will succeed. No more whining and complaining. If you are the type of person who mopes around saying things like, "I just can't lose weight, and I am meant to be fat", pull your pants up and tighten your jock strap and stop being a whiny baby. Grow up. Take charge of this, and command your body by saying positive things to yourself, and start visualizing and believing that you are going to be the model of physical fitness. Now sit up straight in your chair, and take note of how you feel better already. That's a real feeling, and it is there because you have just made a significant change. You are on your way!

So we have talked truthfully about diet. Now we need to talk about the most important part of getting ripped and shredded in your midsection. That would be an exercise regimen. The truth is, you don't need any contraptions, gadgets, magic pills, or expensive gym memberships. What you need is an exercise regimen that works for you, and a commitment to stick with it.

A lot of people will tell you that you've got to do hundreds of situps and fancy crunches to get ripped abs. That's not entirely true. If you focus on doing these things alone, you will end up with super-strong abdominal muscles that hide beneath a layer of fat. What I have found, from personal experience, is that you have to mix it up. I'm not going to tell you that you don't need to do specific ab exercises that target your abdominal muscles, because you do, but if you don't have a complete workout regimen you won't see the results you are looking for.

Cardio Exercise - Your Foundation

My formula for slimming down that mid section is to combine floor exercises with weight lifting and a cardio program. Of the many books and magazines that I have read, I will tell you that I have found more evidence that power walking or running will get your flabby gut trimmed down faster than anything else. I do several different forms of cardio exercise, because that is the key to losing the lard. Start with reducing your body fat first, then move on to honing and shaping the muscles.

When I started, I could not run. I could barely power walk. If you are not a runner, start walking. Start slow and build from there. I have a friend who started walking with me at work on breaks, and he told me that he could not do any rigorous exercise because it hurt his back so much. We would only walk about a mile at a time, and this was at a leisurely pace. This same gentleman now runs 3 miles at a fast pace, and is experiencing very little back pain whatsoever. When I reminded him of where we had begun, he hardly even realized how far he had come. But his key to success was starting, and putting a plan into action. He's lost 30 pounds since last spring, and after losing the weight, his aching back and leg pain went right out the door with the fat that he lost.

You've got to take your time, and keep a long-range goal in mind. I started power walking after getting my joints in shape. I didn't think I could run because I suffered from extreme foot pain. It's a condition called "planters fasciitus". I pushed through the pain, and now I am running. It wasn't easy. But I noticed that as I continued pushing myself farther and farther, my circulation and flexibility greatly reduced my foot pain. I graduated from walking to running a mile at a time on a treadmill. I never thought I would become a real runner, but I was soon able to push my distance to 2 miles, and then 3. My time was slow. I certainly wasn't breaking any speed records with an average rate of 10 minutes per mile, but the results were well worth the effort.

I am now running 4 miles at a time, and walking an extra mile. Believe me, I am not the type of person who ever thought this would even be possible. But I can see myself getting to the 5 mile mark soon. I get on a treadmill and run at least 3 times per week. It only takes me 30 to 45 minutes of time, and now it has become my routine. Sometimes I will run outside if the weather is nice, but I prefer the ease of running on a treadmill and tracking my speed and distance. Though I haven't seen extreme results during the winter, I am keeping myself in shape. I find it hardest to trim down during the winter months because my appetite is higher, and my metabolism is at its lowest. It's a natural thing. But when the weather gets warm, I start to see much quicker results.

I combine my running with doing "fun" cardio group exercise. I enjoy kickboxing aerobics, hip hop dance aerobics, and Zumba. I get a thrill from being in a group of people and working out, and I feed off the energy of others. If that's not your thing, grab a copy of a fun aerobic workout on DVD and commit to doing something 3 to 5 times per week. Consistency is the key. You have to make this a part of your life, your daily routine, and it has to be something you enjoy. If you aren't having fun, you're not going to stick with it. Find something that puts a smile on your face and an extra step in your walk. You will start to look forward to it, and you'll be a fish out of water when you miss.

If you are like me, find a companion or running buddy. Share your goal with your partner or your group, and help each other to remain committed to exercising. There is no excuse not to exercise. It doesn't matter how much you weigh, or how much fat you've got to lose. I am 43 years old, and I feel better now than I have my entire life. I've seen people in their 60's in my group exercise classes that could barely walk, and they have seen their flexibility increase and their stamina develop. Get the cardio into your plan, and get on track. This is your most important step in your exercise regimen. Once you are in good cardio shape,