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Recently, Jeff Cavaliere appeared on The Drive podcast with Dr Peter Attia to discuss the role of nutrition and exercise when it comes to being lean and having six pack abs.
To get to a point where you show visible, defined abs year round, your body fat needs to be at around 10 percent or less. Getting to this level is obviously more attainable if you are starting with a bodyfat in the mid-teens versus trying to get there when you are sitting in the 30 to 40 percent range right now.
That said, there is a simple way to actually get six pack abs that doesn’t require starvation diets or crazy fads.
It takes consistency.
More important than any other component of training or eating is the need for nutritional consistency and the reality that the leaner you want to get the more sacrifices you are going to have to make to get there. Now this doesn’t mean that you have to resign yourself to eating boiled chicken breasts, tofu and steamed broccoli.
Instead, think of your nutrition as a scorecard. You want to try and aim for a 90 percent accuracy. If you eat 5 meals a day for 7 days a week that gives you a total of 35 meals per week. Ninety percent of this would mean that even 4 meals could be far less than perfect and you would still be well on your way to single digit body fat levels and a leaner body year round.
The consistency of eating right on a regular basis makes these random one off less than perfect meals almost irrelevant when it comes to the pursuit of a lean six pack. Now keep in mind, even though you can be incredibly lean eating this way there is a trade off. Depending on how many sacrifices you want to make it will determine how strict you need to be. That said, even when 7 percent body fat is the goal, 90 percent consistency will work.
Getting to even lower levels of body fat would require more sacrifices, but those are the ones that seem to make whatever you’re doing very hard to stick to for the long term. So while you may be able to get lean, you won’t be able to stay that way because the regimen being used to get there is to restrictive and not forgiving enough to find the consistency you’ll ultimately need to make it a successful long term strategy.
If you are looking for step-by-step programs and simplified meal plans to get you lean that also include how-to guides on every exercise you do, you can find them over at athleanx.com
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Jeff Cavaliere MSPT, CSCS served as both the head physical therapist and assistant strength coach for the New York Mets. Jeff earned his Masters of Physical Therapy and Bachelor’s of Physioneurobiology from the College of Health Sciences University of Connecticut Storrs. He is a certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist by the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA).
