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Trim Down for the Fall With These 5 Tips for Sleeker Abs

Check out these five steps that will help get your core looking great. Remember, it takes more than just exercises to get a set of six pack abs. These tips cover all that needs to be included.

Abs are something that just about everyone covets going to the gym but yet something that only a few people ever actually obtain.

What gives? How come abs are so hard to come by?

Often, it’s not that you are lacking the effort to get a set of flat, firm abs, it’s that your approach isn’t quite right.

Let’s look at five steps that you should take if you want to get sleeker abs in a hurry.

Stagger Your Carb Intake

One big mistake that many people who desire abs make is cutting their carb intake entirely. They go from eating a high carb diet to eating just about no carbs at all, hoping this will lead to fast results.

And it does – for a couple of weeks. But soon, those results slow as their body hits the dreaded progress plateau. You need carbs to function optimally and to maintain good metabolic health. When you don’t have sufficient carbs in your diet, certain hormones begin to shift, slowing down your resting metabolic rate. As this happens, fat loss becomes slower and slower.

Instead, stagger your carb intake. It’s definitely a good thing to have low carb days in your diet plan, but not all your days should be low carb. Having a few higher carb days will help keep your metabolic rate up while also giving you the energy you need to exercise intensely as well.

Think Intensity, Not Duration

Which brings us to the next point: think intensity, not duration. It’s important to get to the gym on a regular basis, but if you really want abs, you need to ensure your workout is designed in a manner that will help you reach that goal.

When you exercise at a higher intensity level, you’ll not only burn plenty of calories while you exercise, but you’ll continue to burn calories for hours after the exercise is over as well.

This ‘post-workout calorie burn’, so to speak, is what really prompts dramatic fat loss results, which then helps you get leaner. Remember that seeing sleek abs is all about getting your total body fat levels down, so anything that helps you get leaner will serve you well.

Tend To Your Lifestyle

It’s also important that you tend to your lifestyle as well. Take a good look at what you are doing outside of the gym. Are you sleeping enough at night? Do you suffer from high stress levels? Are you consuming alcoholic beverages on a regular basis?

All of these are things that can factor into how lean you are able to get – and how quickly you reach six-pack ab status.

Focus On Building Muscle Mass

While your initial response to the desire to get abs might be to try and burn fat as quickly as possible, why not try another approach? Consider adding lean muscle mass instead.

Sometimes this works better for some people because not only will larger ab muscles ‘pop’ more, but the extra muscle mass can also help increase one’s resting metabolic rate, which then means more fat burning in the long run.

While it does take time to build lean muscle mass, if you are on the thinner side where you don’t have much muscle to begin with, this can be the smarter route to take.

Mind Your Sodium And Fiber

Finally, last but not least, be sure that you are mindful of your sodium and fiber intake. While there’s nothing wrong with having both of these in your diet plan (and in fact, fiber can help you lose weight!), the problem comes with eating too much of either of them.

While it won’t cause you to actually gain body fat, it can result in bloating and water retention, which will look like you’ve gained additional body fat.

So for optimal results, keep both your sodium as well as your dietary fiber in check.

If you follow these steps, you can feel confident you are that much closer to walking away with a set of your own flat, firm, and sleek abs. It does take hard work to achieve, but with the right approach, it’s definitely possible to get the midsection you desire.

[Image via AbsWorkoutInfo]

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