A common theme you will see when an individual is striving for 6 pack abs is steady fat loss up until about 12-15% body fat. This is where most of the fit crowd ends up through a regular workout routine and healthy diet. Unfortunately, continued fat loss at this point becomes a futile endeavour leading to frustration and in many cases insanity (doing the same thing over and over again but expecting a different result). Now don’t get me wrong, you can definitely look good at 12-15% body fat, but by no means will you blow anyone away. To acquire that chiseled and angular look, you need to drop into the single digit body fat levels, somewhere between 6-10%.

Now getting to very low levels of body fat isn’t exactly as simple as people make it out to be. You see, the game changes when you’re cutting to 15% vs 8% body fat. In the first scenario your are bringing your body to it’s natural set point. In the other case you are brining your body to an extremely lean state. One which wouldn’t survive all to well in a time of famine and hardship. Now if you’re reading this article, that is probably of very little concern to you. Just by having access to a computer and internet I can almost guarantee you never have to worry about where your next meal will come from. That being said, we still have the same genetic code as our hunter-gatherer ancestors, many of whom faced harsh conditions like starvation. So consequently, when our brain recognizes our body fat levels getting too low, it will down regulate metabolism while up regulating appetite.

This is a survival mechanism in place to ensure maximum chance of survival during periods of food shortages. By slowing down your metabolism you increase your chance of survival for when food stocks reemerge. As well, the significant drop in leptin, coupled with heightened insulin sensitivity, allows you to gain back the lost weight very quickly when food is available. This is one of the reasons why many people who lose a bunch of weight on crash diets are able to gain all of it back in record time. The same phenomenon is seen with actors who starve themselves to become emaciated for roles.

Michael Fassbender – Hunger

Michael Fassbender dropped a large amount of weight for the film Hunger, where he played an Irish Republican who leads the prisoners of a Northern Irish prison on a hunger strike. Fassbender went on an extreme diet to lose 40 lbs in 10 weeks. After filming, Fassbender was able to gain nearly all of it back within 2 weeks. It was 34 lbs in 2 weeks to be exact. This type of weight gain seems next to impossible, especially considering how much of what he gained in two weeks was lost muscle. What we must understand is that during extreme calorie restriction, various anabolic receptors and hormones become unregulated. This allows you to regain weight and muscle at an extremely fast rate once you start eating normally again.

Christian Bale – Machinist to Batman Begins

An even more extreme example can be seen with Christian Bale! After getting into incredible shape for American Psycho, Bale wanted to erase his image of being that fit guy. What better way than to starve himself to a deathly state, sacrificing his health and sanity in the process. It took 4 months to take his bodyweight from 184 to under 125 lbs. Then, within 6 months he was filming Bat Man Begins at a very muscular 190 lbs. The human body, believe it or not, has incredible potential and is geared for maximum survival. Weight and muscle can be regained obscenely fast.

What does this have to do with getting 6 pack abs? 

I apologize if you felt that I side tracked a bit there but it’s all for good reason. You see, the same processes that allow us to regain weight and muscle extremely fast, also keep us from getting super ripped. Michael Fassbender and Christian Bale had no easy time getting to there emaciated state. Their bodies were literally starving, hunger overburdening and their ability to enjoy life deeply suppressed. They relied on sheer will power alone to get the job done. As they were losing weight and dipping below their natural set point it was as if they were pulling a rubber band. The more weight they lost the harder it was to keep pulling that rubber band back and the greater rebound effect they were setting themselves up for. Finally, when filming was complete, they created so much tension that the rubber band sprung right back up. This, of course, represents their obscenely fast weight gain. When we’re dieting below set point the same effect occurs, but to a lesser extent.

Wrong Assumptions

People start dieting and lose 1-2 lbs per week. They then think that if they continue this for long enough they’ll reach 6-8% body fat. This is rarely ever the case! Sure, some people are predisposed to being very lean. It’s likely that these individuals have dominant genes from ancestors that never had to worry much about food shortages. Therefore these individuals can get practically ripped without much trouble. However, most of us aren’t so lucky. When we try and dip below 12% body fat, it’s almost like our body is trying to fight back. We get extremely hungry, our gym motivation declines and next thing we know we’re raiding the kitchen undoing all of our positive progress. This is the rubber band effect I mentioned earlier. Getting into the single digits becomes an art. You need to learn to embrace patience and coax your body there with regular refeeds and a strategic approach.

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Key Points 

1. Gaining 1-2 lbs per week will inevitably lead to fat gain

It is common for people to try and gain 1 pound of muscle per week! Therefore they consume approximately 500 calories over maintenance in hopes to store all of those calories into their muscles. Short of a heavy supply of anabolic steroids this rate of muscle gain is completely futile.

If you were to gain 1 lbs per week over the course of 6 months that would equate to a massive 26 lbs increase in scale weight. Best case scenario half of that would be muscle. That would mean 13 lbs of muscle and 13 lbs of fat. Let’s say you started off at 10% body fat and 150 lbs, well that would put you at 16% body fat and 176 lbs. That’s a huge 6% increase in fat composition. Now you would have to undergo a 3 month long cutting phase to get rid of the fat and hope you don’t lose any of that precious muscle gain.

Alternatively, if you would have aimed to gain 0.5 lbs per week and set the calorie surplus to reflect that then you would have gained almost entirely muscle without any fat gain. After 6 months you would have an additional 13 lbs of muscle without the extra fat. For the next 3 months instead of having to diet off the fat you could continue building muscle.

The best part is that you wouldn’t ever have to walk around with all of that unpleasant fat ruining your physique and face. You get to look lean and great all year round. As well, since you aren’t gaining much fat at all you never have to undergo long dieting phases.

2. Aim to gain 0.5 lbs per week

As I explained above, if your goal is to gain muscle you should aim to gain about 0.5 lbs per week. This means consuming about 250 calories over your calorie maintenance. You have a couple options here. You can eat 250 over maintenance everyday or you can fluctuate calories up or down depending on the day. For example if you are lifting 3x per week you might consume 500 calories over maintenance on lift days and you might eat a small 100 calorie surplus on non lifting days. If you prefer to keep calorie intake constant then you can do that. Both options work.

3. Track your body composition

I recommend tracking your body composition by measuring your waist circumference on a weekly basis. During a muscle gaining program you never want your waist to go up by more than one inch. A one inch increase on your waist circumference usually reflects about 5 lbs of fat gain. If your waist is staying the same and your gaining strength and gaining weight slowly then you’re doing everything right. If your waist goes up by one inch then you should lower the calories by about 10-20%.

4. For advanced lifters you should only be gaining 1 lbs per month 

If you have been training for several years and have already built an appreciable amount of muscle mass then you will not be able to gain muscle at the rate of 0.5 lbs per week. Simply as you get closer to your genetic limit the rate of muscle gain slows down considerably. For that reason I recommend eating only about 100-200 calories over maintenance and aiming for about 1 lbs of weight gain per month. For truly advanced lifters you may only be able to gain 5-6 lbs of muscle over the course of an entire year.

Final Comments

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