Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Exercise or Diet for 6 Pack Abs?
Oy, you guys. I recently read an article in the WSJ about fitness myths and I wanted to find out who their so-called "fitness expert" was so I could punch him in the face. I can't get into every nitty gritty detail, but he tried to debunk ten "myths", and he was wrong on nearly every point. One of his claims was that you can get visible 6 pack abs by simply cutting calories and not working your core at all. (IS THIS PERSON ON CRACK?) Why do you think you see so many semi-starved, emaciated women on the runway and in Hollywood and they have perfectly flat, taut tummies but absolutely NO definition? Because they starve themselves and don't do the work. Yes, you can cut your calories way down to the point where you will have a flat stomach, but if you don't develop the muscles, they aren't going to just pop out of nowhere. Conversely, if you work your abs for hours a day every day and you eat a bunch of garbage and have a calorie surplus, you will never see your abs either--though if you are really working that hard they do exist, but under a layer of fat. In order to have defined, "washboard" abs you NEED to do abdominal work AND eat a clean diet. What's also not discussed is different body types. People who are very short-waisted will have a much more difficult time than someone with a very long waist because of the way the fat is dispersed along the front of the belly. At the end of the day, there is no way around hard work when it comes to having a visible 6 pack. You have to eat an extremely clean diet and work your ass off. That's it. You can't pick one or the other, you can't take a magic pill...if you do the work, you'll get the results. It's that simple, and yet that difficult!
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Ahhh - I am short waisted - that must be the problem :)
ReplyDeleteAlso - can you post the link to this WSJ article? Curious as to what other stupid things it says!
Deletei'm hesitant to even put this link up! it's such crap. but here it is: https://apps.facebook.com/wpsocialreader/me/channels/75845/content/Tl8k8?fb_action_ids=10101352074329069&fb_action_types=news.reads&fb_source=other_multiline#access_token=AAADNVm9BkVYBAInsdApfkk0P0m6rWDizhHMwHML1wnpoVBdugM8ZBSiUZAF6IQ1sVPZBLwlqoNyieWipQ7eLmmgWTUvd30dPLGR3VqKDAZDZD&expires_in=3910&code=AQCRdgHkGzsv6dHgu2RlSQ7ZExzsGfIoKIVwa-xX_dUdaIR-MOY_VKut_jD4KTQtLOu81NW9-jpvnzXBv54b1zZ7E_1kzxUyTcI1Fmvou--B0oJHbXmyRVr_u3sCbjlv8cHA6VjCMOdrSmwrsn-p16iv8eCR7J7nBbAma1MdSd5zP41INVp7xOpvShRBWbg5yCQ
Deletemy mistake--it was from the washington post, not the wsj. and it seems like the original article was actually from men's health magazine, and the WP just reposted it. either way, any of these publications should be fact checking. mostly, i think the article is just misleading and lacking in real facts. for instance, the author claims that exercise shouldn't make you eat more. that's the dumbest statement I've ever heard. obviously if you exercise for an hour a day it doesn't mean you can go to the all you can eat buffet, but compared to a sedentary person, of course you are going to need more food to fuel your workout and help with muscle recovery. He also claims that a low carb diet is a "lazy" approach to weight loss. "Low-carb diet" is so broad...you can't lump all of those diets into one category and accuse it of being lazy. I eat Paleo which is low carb and it's anything but lazy. I cook more than ever, and spend more money on higher quality food. Not really my definition of lazy. Anyway, I digress. The article clearly pissed me off ;)