From One Of My Favorite Books

Flat Abs

Getting six-pack abs has been one of the most difficult goals for me to achieve. I am not there yet, but I believe i'm slowly (very slowly) getting there. According to my research, there are three things that we must work at in order to get the flat abdomen and definition we regularly see in magazines and television.

1) Get rid of the fat on top of the muscles

This is the fat just under the skin on top of the rectus abdominus and obliques. Most people know this, what some people do not know is that it abdominal exercises do not get rid of the fat on top of your ab muscles. To get rid of this layer of fat you have to get to a single digit body fat percentage. The only way that I know how to do this is trough dieting.

2) Definition

According to some experts including Frank Zane, the only way to get defined abs is to work them out as much as 6 days a week starting with 100 leg raises and 100 crunches. After you can do these two exercises easily, then you need to do them for a month. After a month, you can add more advanced exercises.

3) Flatten your belly

In order to get a truly flat belly you also need to workout a muscle that is beneath the obliques and rectus abdominus. This muscle is called the transversus abdominis muscle. The TVA muscle runs horizontal around your mid-section. The TVA muscle also has the effect of pulling in what would otherwise be a protruding abdomen (hence its nickname, the “corset muscle”). The most well known method of strengthening the TVA is the vacuum exercise.

Transversus abdominis and stomach vacums

High Intensity Training Explained by Drew Baye

Adding Lean Gains to My Simple Diet

A few weeks ago I posted My Simple Diet Guidelines. About a week ago I added intermittent fasting to the diet and I have been able to see faster results. I still follow a once a week weightlifting protocol, but I added a little walking everyday. I made these modifications to slowly move to Martin Berhkan's LeanGains Protocol. The supplements stay the same but I take them with my first meal of the day instead of breakfast like I used to.

Additions (Non-Workout Day):

• Eat my last meal of the day between 6:00PM  and 8:00PM.
• The next day take 10g of BCAA 15min before I go for a 30 to 60 minute walk at around 11:30AM.
• Eat my first meal of the day after my walk with about 50% of the calories calculated in My Simple Diet Guidelines.
• Have a snack in the middle of the afternoon if I have something available.
• And start over by eating my last meal of the day between 6:00PM  and 8:00PM.

Additions (Workout Day):

• Eat my last meal of the day between 6:00PM  and 8:00PM the day before the workout.
• The next day take 10g of BCAA 15min before I go for a 30 to 60 minute walk at around 11:30AM.
• Eat my first meal of the day after my walk with about 25% of the calories calculated in My Simple Diet Guidelines.
• Have a snack at around 3:00PM if I have something available. A very small snack.
• Take 10g of BCAA 20min before my workout.
• Take 10g of BCAA after my workout.
• Eat a large meal high in carbohydrates such as rice. Even tough I add more carbs on this day I still do not go over the total calories calculated in my guidelines.
• Take 10g of BCAA before going to sleep.
• And start over by eating my last meal of the day between 6:00PM  and 8:00PM.

I added 1 to 3 glasses of red wine and one low-fat ice-cream cone on Saturday and like Martin Berkhan says:

The Minimalist's Guide to Fitness: IF, HIT, and Much More

Book Review

The Minimalist's Guide to Fitness: Intermittent Fasting, High Intensity Training, and Much More
By Thomas Hilmersen


The author has done his research. I have read most of the material presented here in other books and some of the books referenced in this book and it is all accurate. Save yourself some time and just read this book to learn the most effective way to workout and to eat healthy.

I have been doing high intensity workouts for the past three months while following a slightly different version of the slow carb diet (mine does not include cheat days and alcohol) and I have gotten great results. I have been looking for somebody that explains IF (intermittent fasting) and HIT (High Intensity Training) and this is it.

The book even has a chapters about optimizing sleep and how to dress well. These chapters are short, but do not underestimate the power of the advice given there.

I have been able to double my strength in 13 twenty minute workouts following the advice on this book and have lost almost 4 inches from my waist eating in a similar way. I cant wait to see the results in another 3 months now that i will be adding IF.

I am very thankful to the author for taking the time to write this book.

Very Low Carb Performance

Here is an interesting video I found for those interested in running, swimming, biking, etc.

Body Fat Measuring with a DXA (DEXA) Scan

About a year ago I got a body fat test using a DEXA scan machine. I was able to get very accurate measurements and It helped me looked for other cheaper but just as accurate way to measure body fat. Check out my post on tracking progress to find out the methods that I currently use.

DXA scans are used primarily to evaluate bone mineral density. DXA scans can also be used to measure total body composition and fat content with a high degree of accuracy comparable to hydrostatic weighing with a few important caveats.

In the first picture below you can see one of the scans that shows my bones in blue, muscle in red and fat in orange. It is easy to tell that most of my body fat is in my mid-section. This comes at no surprise since, my legs and arms have always been pretty lean and most men have a predisposition to store fat in the mid-section easily and it is hard to get rid of once is there. The body fat result shown here is about 22% (I am currently around 13%).

In the second picture you can see my bone structure and a little bit of my muscles and fat.

During this time, the doctor calculated my maintenance calories to be 1,830 a day. It was close, but now I know that it is actually 2,600 calories a day on a low-carb diet.