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Feature
Absolute Fitness: The Abs Diet Reviewed

Looking to get rid of that turkey tummy you’ve been cultivating over Christmas? In a bid to lose the fat and achieve the body beautiful Andrew Howard took up the challenge of completing the ‘abs diet,’ which promises to give you a six-pack in just six weeks. Below he offers his opinion on the popular fitness regime and diet.

First off, the major difference between the abs diet and many other diets is that it is primarily geared towards fat loss, as opposed to weight loss. Weight loss means to lose both muscle and fat, the abs diet makes a good point to achieve muscle and burn fat.

Also unlike other diets, such as the South Beach or Atkins’ Diet, the abs diet offers both a diet and an exercise programme to follow. The diet plan requires you to limit your intake of certain carbohydrates, have six small meals throughout the day and focus on main fat burning foods that will help you lose fat.

In addition, the exercise programme requires you to do three strength training sessions per week and two optional days of brisk walking followed by various abdominal exercises, all of which should be done throughout the six week course.

Instead of doing the heavy weights that the book suggests, I instead decided to do Bodypump sessions at my local gym, where you can burn off even more fat (around 900 calories per hour). If like me you find working out at the gym a bit of chore, doing Bodypump could be more rewarding for you as it is a group session and much more interesting than going into the weights room all by yourself. As a further benefit of the Bodypump sessions there are also extra abdominal exercises at the end which alternate the different muscle groups in your core which are all vital to train.

And, since I walk to work everyday, I found it easy to fit in the brisk walking the program requires. A good tip if you don’t walk to work you could always get off the bus a stop early and walk the remaining distance home, or instead of driving, why not walk to the local shops?

The eating plan, I have to admit, was difficult to follow at times. You might have had a hard day at work and be tempted to have some chocolate for example but for the best result and for all your hard work to pay-off I believe that it is extremely important to keep a ‘spotless record’ in terms of snacking.

Although tempted by the usual snack temptations such as pizza, chocolate and chips, I did not find the diet quite as hard to follow as I thought it was going to be. I found the best way to combat food cravings was to snack on an apple, or some Brazil nuts or seeds. I found this lessened the urge to pig out on ice cream or doughnuts.

I’ve completed the 6 week plan now following the book to the T. In terms of results, I haven’t quite got the six-pack I had hoped for, although I can most definitely see and feel the benefits.

In conclusion then, the abs diet certainly does trim down the amount of fat around the belly and the fitness and diet program outlined is based on a commonsense approach to losing weight that will undoubtedly improve your health.

I think in order to achieve a full six-pack however, six weeks is too short a time, even for someone such as myself who was relatively fit and slim prior to taking up the diet. Realistically, I think you would need to keep it going for a further two weeks, or possibly even more, depending on the level of fat you have to lose, in order to have the full six-pack the abs diet promises. But on saying that, it offers an excellent guide on how to lose the tum: anyone who does this plan should take a ‘before’ and ‘after’ shot just to see the results, you will be surprised!

The Abs Diet: The 6-week Plan to Flatten Your Stomach and Keep You Lean for Life- £4.47 from Amazon.co.uk


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