“Coach, today I just want to do abs” is something I hear all too often.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against doing a good couple of sit-ups and a few leg raises - but for very different reasons. As it happens, doing ridiculous amounts of ab crunches won’t necessarily give you a six pack, but getting rid of your belly via better nutrition is going to give you a much better chance. The same goes for love handles: doing side bends until you feel like someone has stolen your kidneys is not going to help your cause much. Your body stores and burns fat in a certain order depending on your genetics (damn you Mom and Dad!). So, if your love handles were the first place you started putting on fat, start accepting that they will also be the last place you lose it.

The best way to get rid of body fat is always going to be putting yourself into an energy deficit. You can get somewhere with exercise but nutrition is where real progress is made! There are realistically no gadgets, short cuts or magical pills that can spot reduce fat on any particular jiggly part of your body effectively. There does seem to be some effect of higher cortisol levels and belly fat, but since I cannot measure it I don’t have a definitive formula for you. What I can say is that getting enough sleep and lowering stress will do wonders for bringing down cortisol levels in your body. 

Losing fat is also not going to happen overnight, watch our Vlog about how to get a beach body in 10 days to get an idea of what can be done in short periods of time. Realistically, you will need to a longer time frame in order to truly make much difference. 

Another gripe that I often get confronted with is eating ridiculous amounts of food to try help with bulking. Even though this is a lot more fun than following a clean eating regime it’s by far not an efficient method. You shouldn’t need to up your calories by much more than 300-400cal above your maintenance. This increase in calories would be better spent on getting in a few more protein doses rather than a double happy meal with a chocolate sundae. Getting fat and then trying to lean up again seems like a dumb way to gain muscle as opposed to just gaining muscle. Sure, posting short video clips on your instastory of you wolfing down 4000 calories for dinner is fun to watch and I’m sure there is a small Japanese lady that can eat more than you, but it by far falls in the category of fancy-not-functional.