I’m going to try and give you all the information you need to get ripped abs right on this page, but before I do, I want to recommend a book that will give you detailed information on exercises and nutrition that I can’t get into here. It’s well worth the cost, which is less than one session with most personal trainers and you’ll be able to refer to it over and over again.

The Truth About Six Pack Abs
by Mike Geary

This book has become the top selling abs program on the Internet for good reason. Top fitness expert Mike Geary makes it easy to understand what you need to do to get six pack abs. The book has detailed workout plans with photos that demonstrate the actual exercises. Perhaps what's more importantly, he helps you understand why you need to do the exercises and how your body works.

A good portion of the book is devoted to nutrition. You'll learn:

• which foods to eat and which foods to avoid
• how much you need to eat each day
• how often you need to eat
• sample meal plans

This book changed my way of thinking about fitness and I highly recommend it. You need a realistic program that you can stick with and that's what you'll get here.

Stomach Exercises and Belly Fat

A common misconception is that by focusing on stomach exercises, you can burn off your belly fat and expose your ab muscles. This doesn’t work, because you can’t burn fat from specific parts of your body. This has become known as “the myth of spot reduction”.

Fat is all over your body and all you can do is burn fat and reduce your overall body fat percentage. When the overall percentage comes down far enough, you’ll see the ripped abs that have been hiding beneath the fat.

Watch this video that talks about ripped abs and spot reduction.

Body Fat Percentage and Ripped Abs

Instead of asking which stomach exercises you should be doing, your number one  priority should be burning off fat as efficiently as possible.

You don’t burn fat by doing ab work alone. Instead, you need to concentrate your efforts on working your whole body and striving for overall health and fitness.

If you’re wondering about body fat percentage and how low you’ll have to go to expose your ripped abs, then read this post by Tom Venuto, author of Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle about body fat percentages in men and women.

Total Body Fitness

Ripped abs are a visible manifestation of total body fitness. If you focus on getting strong, improving your stamina and getting lean, then the shape of your entire body will change for the better.

Not only will get ripped abs, but you’ll look toned and muscular all over. Fitness is reflected in your abs, but it’s part of a total package that includes your mind and your body.

You’ll find exercises here that work large groups of muscles, not just your abdominal muscles. The reason for this is that so called “multi-joint” exercises make you work harder and burn more calories both during and after your workout.

Fat Loss vs. Weight Loss

In your quest to get ripped abs, you will need to lose fat, but you won’t necessarily need to lose weight. Depending on where you’re at now, you might even end up gaining weight by the time you get ripped abs, but the reason for this will be that you’ve added lean muscle to your frame.

The body burns more calories to maintain muscle, so gaining muscle will be an essential part of your burning fat process. Don’t worry, though, this doesn’t mean that you’re going to end up looking big and bulky.

Understand Your Resting Metabolic Rate to get Ripped Abs

Having a slow metabolism means that your body burns fewer calories to keep itself functioning.

When you have more muscle, your metabolism speeds up and you burn more calories and more fat, even while you’re resting.

Understanding your Resting Metabolic Rate can help you lose fat and get ripped abs. Your Resting Metabolic Rate tells you the number of calories you need on a daily basis to maintain your present weight.

Read this post to understand more about Resting Metabolic Rate.

How to Use the Resting Metabolic Rate Calculator

A Resting Metabolic Rate Calculator looks at a number of factors including your height, weight, age and activity level to give you the approximate number of calories you need to consume each day to maintain your present weight.

Consume more than this number and you’ll gain weight. If you consume less than this number, you’ll lose weight.

Here’s a free Resting Metabolic Rate Calculator.

Create a Calorie Deficit to Get Ripped Abs

In addition to burning fat through exercise, which we’ll get to in a minute, you need to make sure you’re not over-eating. When you eat more than you need, your body stores the excess calories as fat.

You create a “calorie deficit” when you consume fewer calories than your Resting Metabolic Rate.

A calorie deficit of around 3,500 calories will result in the loss of one pound of weight from your body. So if you can cut out 500 calories per day, you'll lose one pound per week, which is considered a safe amount.

Why You Should Count Your Calories if You Want to Get Ripped Abs

Do you know how many calories you’re consuming daily? If not, then you may have uncovered the answer to why you don’t have ripped abs at the moment.

Although it takes a bit of time and may seem like an inconvenience, counting your calories can really open your eyes to the reason you don’t have ripped abs.

Counting calories can be done very simply. Just make a list of everything you eat and drink during the day and find out the number of calories each item represents.

Add up your totals at the end of the day and see if you’re exceeding your Resting Metabolic Rate. If you are, you need to find some ways of cutting down on your total calories.

I recommend using the free Body Transformation Tracker for counting calories. It has a large database of caloric values for a wide range of foods, which can save you a lot of time.

Click here for the free download

Beyond Calorie Counting

To speed up the fat burning process, start on an exercise program. You burn calories while you exercise and some forms of exercise give you a metabolic boost that keeps you burning fat up to a day or two after you exercise.

The key is to spend your time doing the right kind of exercises. If you do the wrong kind of exercises, you might even slow down your metabolism, which will cause you to get fat if you don’t eat properly.

The Wrong Kind of Exercises to Get Ripped Abs

Contrary to popular belief, the best way to raise your metabolism and burn fat is NOT spending lots of time doing cardio or aerobic exercises like jogging, walking, swimming, etc., at least not when you do them at a steady pace where you rarely get your heart beating quickly.

In the supermarket the other day, I read the cover of a magazine while standing in line and one of the headlines read “I lost 120 pounds by walking.”

Really? That’s hard to believe.

It’s hard to believe because walking is an exercise performed at a fairly low level of intensity, burning somewhere between 200-300 calories per hour, depending on your weight and how fast you walk. I'm guessing there were more changes her lifestyle than just the addition of walking.

Are you spending hours and hours doing cardio workouts and not seeing results? You'd be better off to spend all that time (or even less time) on different forms of exercise.

The Right Kind of Exercises to Get Ripped Abs

Now that you've learned that the only way to get ripped abs is by lowering your body fat percentage to expose your abdominal muscles, you’ll want to concentrate the bulk of your efforts on burning fat.

The best exercises for burning fat are strength-training exercises that make your work large groups of muscles.

Some examples of great fat-burning exercises are things like front or back squats, clean and press, bench press and barbell or dumbbell rowing, chin-ups, pull-ups, dips, deadlift.etc.

When you do this type of exercise, you not only move the weight a greater distance than with more familiar exercises like bicep curls, but you use many more muscles when you move the weight and you use your core muscles to stabilize the weight.

Note: I'll be adding video examples of these exercises shortly, along with some sample workouts.

The Equipment You Need to Get Ripped Abs

You don’t need a lot expensive equipment to follow a strength-training program. While it may be convenient to do your workouts at the gym, or at home with a set of barbells and dumbbells, you can actually do a lot of the work with minimal equipment, either doing bodyweight exercises or using objects that are easy to find.

You can easily train at home with a limited set of weights. You should have a barbell, some dumbbells and a stability ball. Another useful piece of equipment is a chinup bar. If you don’t own weights now, try to find some used ones.

If your space is limited, you might want to think about buying a set adjustable dumbbells like either of these. They cost a bit more, but they’re convenient and easy to store.

Bowflex Adjustable Dumbbells

Powerblock Adjustable Dumbbells

If you want to try something different, take a look at training with sandbags.

You can also do strength training with bodyweight exercises.

Abdominal Exercises for Ripped Abs

So the hard part of getting ripped abs is lowering your body fat percentage to the point where your ab muscles show through. The relatively easy part of it all is the actual development of your ab muscles themselves.

The good news about all this is that you only need to do your abdominal work three or four times a week. There’s no need to do thousands of situps and crunches every day. In fact, by overdoing it with the abdominal work, you’ll probably be doing more harm than good.

Note: I'll be including some videos shortly of example abdominal exercises. For now, try things like crunches while lying on the stability ball, the plank, hanging leg raises and ab bicycles.

What to Eat to Get Ripped Abs

Lots of fresh fruits and vegetables

Foods made with whole grain flour, such as whole grain bread and whole wheat pasta.

Lean meat, including chicken breast, turkey breast, lean red meat.

Fish and other seafood (but be careful what you top it with)

What Not to Eat if you want Ripped Abs

Here’s a list of common foods to avoid if you’re trying to get lean and expose those ripped abs. These tips don’t just apply to people looking to get ripped abs.

Refined sugar. You should avoid refined sugar whether you’re trying to get ripped abs or not. Numerous studies have shown that excess sugar is related to a variety of health problems. Unfortunately, it’s pretty hard to avoid these days because it’s in nearly every kind of processed food you buy, not to mention soft drinks, desserts and candy.

Anything made with refined flour. This includes everything from white bread to cookies, pies, pastries and most “white” noodles.

Processed Foods. The less processing your food goes through before you eat it, the closer it is to its natural state and therefore better for you.

Foods that are high in trans fat or saturated fat.

Salty foods (high sodium content)

When to Eat to Get Ripped Abs

It’s better to eat 5-6 smaller meals per day instead of 2 or 3 big meals.

Eating more frequently keeps your blood sugar stable, so your energy level will stay consistently high throughout the day.

You should stop eating at least 2 hours before bedtime.

Some experts advocate fasting on a regular basis. Fasting has been shown to have numerous health benefits, including boosting your metabolism.

If you’re interested in learning more about fasting, I recommend this plan: eat stop eat. The idea behind it is that if you time your fasting properly, you can fast for 24 hours without going a full day without eating.

Fasting seems difficult the first time you try it, but then it gets easier once you accept the idea of it.

The Psychology Behind Getting Ripped Abs

If you’ve read this far, then you understand that there’s no magic solution to get ripped abs.

The first step is deciding that you want a lean, healthy, sexy-looking body. Once you make that decision and commit to it, the rest will fall in place. You’ll need to make some changes to your lifestyle, making your fat-burning workouts a priority and only eating foods that promote good health.

Keep track of your progress by measuring your weight and body fat percentage on a regular basis. You need benchmarks in order to track your progress.

Once you get started, it won’t be long before you see and feel some results. The strength training will help you in your day-to-day activities.  You’ll have more energy by eating the proper foods and getting a metabolic boost from your high-intensity workouts. Your belly fat will start to disappear.

All these positive signs will help you stay motivated and increase your desire to achieve your goal.

Tell other people about what you’re trying to do. This will make it real and you’ll get positive external reinforcement.

Here are some other tips on what it really take to get ripped abs (notice that there’s no mention here of equipment, pills, or magic formulas):

Desire – you won’t get ripped abs just by saying it’s something you’d like. You have to really want it, because you’ll need to make some changes to your lifestyle. Keep doing the same things and you’ll look the same as you do now. Are you willing to change?

Commitment – accept the fact that you won’t get ripped abs overnight. It will take some time to transform your body from whatever state it’s in now to the lean, sexy machine you’ve always dreamed about. As you start working towards your goal, you’ll make small improvements which will give you motivation to continue on towards your goal. If you think you’ll do it all in a week, you’ll only get disappointed and give up.

Belief – if you believe you can do it, then you can. The nice thing is that anyone can get ripped abs as long as they go about it the right way.

The right information – you can waste a lot of time and money trying to get ripped abs when you don’t know how to get there. Use the information on this site as a guide and you’ll reach your final destination.

Why I created this web site

I’ve spent my own money and time learning how to get fit and now I want to help others. Why am I doing this?

First of all, let me just say that while I admire people who have achieved the level of fitness required to have a lean body and six pack abs, I personally think that ripped abs should just be one of the benefits that come along with total body fitness and should not be seen as the ultimate goal (which in my opinion should be long term health).

In any case, it doesn’t really matter if you agree or disagree because whether your goal is to get six pack abs or just to achieve your highest level of fitness, you’ll basically be doing the same thing.

Billions of dollars are spent each year on weight loss pills, fad diets, ab machines, gym memberships, treadmills, clothing that covers our fat bodies and all kinds of money-wasting products that promise fast, effortless ways of burning fat.

The main reason I’ve put up this site for free is that instead of just cashing in on the obesity epidemic, I believe we should do whatever we can to spread the word about what you can do to lose weight and get fit and healthy.  If we have the information, then why should we keep it a secret or only reveal it those who are willing to pay.

I don’t mean to take anything away from all the great personal trainers out there who charge a fee for designing a customized program that fits your particular needs. The money you spend working with a trainer is money well-spent and the fact that you have a real person monitoring your efforts will provide big-time motivation.

However, if you can’t afford a personal trainer, then spend some time reading the information on this site, watching the videos and you should find everything you need to start on your own fitness plan that will lead you to ripped abs.

If you feel like you need more, then take a look at one of the recommended programs. You’ll have to pay for them, but I’ve checked them out and feel they’re all worth the money.