All About Abs, Belly Fat, and Bloating

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Hey, it is Mike from muscle for life. And I’m here with another episode of the podcast. I’m sorry I missed last week. I actually recorded one with someone that then he asked me not to post it because, he has the product launch that’s coming up. So I’m waiting, maybe it’s next week anyways.

On this podcast, I want to talk about abs and belly fat and bloating, those three subjects. Because I get asked quite often about, how to get rid of belly fat, how to have better abs, how to have make your abs show how to deal with bloating, how to know if it’s bloating or just fat, and so on and so forth.

So I thought it would make for a good podcast. So I’m just gonna it’s going to be a bit of freewheeling stream of consciousness. I’m just going to go because so we’ll start with, let’s just start with a couple of myths. So one of the, one of the common myths out there regarding just having good abs is that if you do a lot of heavy compound weightlifting, like a lot of squatting and [00:04:00] deadlifting overhead pressing, stuff like that, that you don’t need to train your abs.

And that’s not necessarily true. It may be true. If you have good ab genetics like there are some people that we’ve all known them that basically I’ve always had like a six pack their entire life. And yes, those people, they don’t have to do anything. You see the muscles that you think of as abs, right?

The rectus abdominus, right? Yes. They are involved. They are activated. Obviously, you can feel them tensing when you’re squatting or deadlifting overhead pressing, but EMG research, which is not necessarily the, yes, there are flaws to EMG research and it’s not the final word on trying to determine which exercises are best for one thing or another, but there’s a pretty big disparity between the amount of muscle activation in the rectus abdominis between something like a squat And versus a hanging leg raise or a captain’s chair, leg raise or a cable crunch or something like that.

So where the heavy compound lifting is great though, is more in the other core muscles which you also will see guys, sometimes guys that just do a bunch of crunches or a bunch of [00:05:00] leg raises, although leg races do also, obviously these exercises do. Do involve other muscles in the core, but you’ll, you can find pictures of guys, maybe you’ve known guys or girls that have decent rectus abdominis development, but they’re missing the rest of the development.

So maybe their obliques are very small, so they don’t have that V taper that that guys like. Or going up now, they don’t really have much in terms of serratus. They don’t have the, little fingers that are go down the side here. And especially as you put your arm up here, you’ll see them in this area.

And the heavy compound weightlifting is great for developing those muscles, but not so great for developing the rectus abdominis. So there’s a good example of this. There’s a guy, nice guy that works out in the morning same slot as me. And he, right now he’s pretty lean and he’s lacking in rectus abdominis development.

So it doesn’t make sense when you look at his arms, like he’s very vascular he’s on drugs as well which he’s open about and he talks about it and interesting to talk to cause he has, he’s been doing it for a long time, so he [00:06:00] has some interesting stories. But so he’s very lean in his arms, very, vascularity in his arms.

And it doesn’t really have much fat to grab anywhere on his body right now, but because his abs are very underdeveloped it just, he has an underwhelming, core. It just, there’s not, there’s his abs don’t have the, clear defined, almost like blocky type of look and which is what most guys want.

And in terms of girls, most, I guess it varies. I know girls that really don’t want the horizontal lines. They would, they’ll take, the, they like the line down the middle and the lines down the side, maybe a little bit of horizontal, but nothing much. Whereas other girls want something a bit more like what guys want, where you have clear abs that show.

But getting there though requires that, yes, you have to be lean. Obviously if your body fat percentage is too high, you’re never going to see your abs. If you’re a guy and your body fat percentage, once you get around 10 percent is when you would start when you have abs. That’s when you’d say, when somebody would look at you and be like, oh, you have a six [00:07:00] pack.

And as every percent that you get under 10%, it becomes more and more prominent. And once you get down to 7%, give or take, you get in that range and then you have, there’s just not much fat to pinch. Anywhere really. And your abs are very clear. Like when you flex them, that’s when you have that kind of like shredded type of look.

And you can see your abs even when you’re not flexing. Flexed when you’re just breathing or whatever, you’ll see them through shirts like this and stuff. If the shirts are tight. And for girls it’s probably about 20% is when the stomach, when they start getting that look, the line start showing every percent they go below that it becomes more and more, the abs just become more and more prominent.

So those are two like key things is you have to have a low body fat percentage and you have to have good muscle development in your abs. And the, again. Even if you are doing a lot of heavy compound weightlifting, which is great. If you are lacking in rectus abdominis development, then you are not going to have [00:08:00] a great looking core.

Even when you get lean you’ll have, what you’ll commonly see is guys and girls that have, it’s an underdeveloped, it almost like It reminds me of a, how a teenager’s stomach might look, where it’s just small abs and not very developed yet. And it takes time.

Like any muscle group. I naturally genetically my abs I didn’t really have abs growing up. I was never fat. I just was, I always played sports and so I wasn’t really into weightlifting when I was a teenager. I was playing hockey and so I stayed, I was like, I don’t know, maybe 14 percent body fat or something like that and didn’t care. I just ate whatever and just played a lot of sports basically. But when I got into working out, actually did a lot of ab training for many years and, but I was always too fat to really see the fruits of my labor. So I was always like for my first six or seven years of weightlifting, I was probably around 16, 15, 14 to I would say like 16, 17 percent body fat.

I don’t think I ever really went as high as 20%, but again, I didn’t really know what I was doing and I didn’t really [00:09:00] even think I could get really lean. I thought that was more, I don’t know. I just didn’t, I didn’t put any importance on it until several years ago when I started to, when I decided to really inform myself and learn what does it take to have the type of body that I really wanted.

So when I did finally get lean, I actually had good ab development. But I, I did, I had been training my abs for years at that point. And I didn’t really get a chance. I never saw what my stomach looked like when I was lean up until that point. I don’t think I really had genetics much on my side in that regard though, because growing up, I never had, I never had outstanding ab development at all.

But the point is even from that time, several years ago, when I got maybe down to the, seven, 8 percent body fat range for the first time and saw abs and look pretty good. I still wanted them to be a bit more developed, just a bit bigger. And for just the kind of look that I like.

And it clearly, where each is just more clearly defined. So I, I did quite a bit of. Weighted cable crunches. The kind of, this is [00:10:00] stuff that I talk about in my books, bigger than your stronger and thinner, linear, stronger. You only need to do a handful of exercises to train your abs.

It’s not like you need to be doing a ton of different exercises. Like every muscle group, really. If you want to build a great chest You’re going to want to do a lot of heavy barbell and dumbbell pressing. You’re going to be emphasizing incline pressing dips, weighted dips are great and fly movements are okay.

They’d be more for the end of the workout, higher rep type stuff, but that’s really all you need. You don’t need to be doing a bunch of fancy type of exercises. You stick to the basics and you get stronger and you make sure you’re progressing and you build a chest. Same thing with abs. You have a handful of exercises that have been shown to train the muscles effectively and more effectively than other exercises.

So you just stick to the handful that are, that you, that do well. And or do you get the job done and you just stick to it and make sure that you are progressing. And then, in time you get where you get to where you want to be in terms of those exercises. My favorites are cable weighted, cable crunches, and doing some weighted training is important.

Remember [00:11:00] that if you have, if you are lacking development, you’re Especially with the rectus abdominis, like any muscle group, it’s going to respond best to progressive overload. And if you don’t add any weight, if you just do a bajillion reps, high reps, just burnout, you’re not going to see as rapid of development of the muscles themselves as if you were doing something with a bit more weight.

1. If you’re familiar with my work, you know that I’m a bit big advocate of heavy weightlifting. If you’re going to be squatting and dead lifting and bench pressing and overhead pressing every week, then, I highly recommend that you be doing, at least a handful of sets that are with 80 to 85 percent of your one rep max or more depending on what you’re doing with your program.

I don’t do that with abs. I stick to higher rep stuff with abs 10 to 12 rep, which would be more like 70 percent of one rep max. Just because I find it more comfortable, like it’s uncomfortable to do four to six rep weighted cable crunches. And it’s just not necessary. I think it’s much harder to build a great chest or build great shoulders or [00:12:00] build a build any other muscle group than to build what you need in your abs.

So it’s important though, that you do some weighted app training. I always do whenever I’m doing my circuits my ab circuits, they’re always, I’m always starting with three or sometimes even six sets of weighted ab work. I remember hearing this, I don’t remember where or whatever, but that Ronnie Coleman, for instance that his weighted cable crunch might’ve been like.

the only exercise he did for abs. If that’s not the case, it was that was like his favorite exercise. He did a ton of weighted cable crunches. And it’s a good exercise. Also hanging leg raises are good. Any sort of leg raise movement is good. I like captain, captain’s chair, leg raises.

You can add weight to the hanging leg raise or the captain’s chair by snatching a dumbbell in between your feet. And if you get to a point where like you’re just doing, 50 and you can go forever, then it makes sense to add weight. Air bicycles are good. Planks are okay. Air bicycles are also good for getting the obliques.

And I, I don’t recommend that [00:13:00] you do side bends or any sort of weighted. I’ll say that unless you’re really lacking in oblique development, I don’t recommend you do them if I’ve done very little oblique work, even over the course of all the years I’ve been weightlifting and I have done absolutely none in the last four or five years or let’s say three or four years because.

The bigger your obliques are, the worse you’re going to look if you’re not really lean, basically, you’re gonna look fatter, you’re gonna have that wide waist. It’s going to look almost like a muffin top. So you want your obliques and you want them to, you need oblique development to have that kind of V taper and to have, the.

The type of core that you know, is that that you see on fitness models, for instance does require a bit of oblique development, but you really don’t want to go too far with your oblique development because then you’re going to just it just can make you look fatter basically. Unless you stay really lean and that’s tough to do.

So don’t do side bends, don’t do, especially on two weighted side bends or people sometimes do it on the [00:14:00] hyper extension. bench. Instead what I’ve found works well for obliques is just relying on the heavy compound weightlifting because that does though like heavy squats, heavy deadlifts, heavy overhead press is definitely involving the obliques more so than the rectus abdominis and something like an air bicycle type of movement is good.

It does involve the obliques, but you’re not adding weight. And you just want to obliques or something you do want to see developing, but you don’t want to see developing too quickly and getting too big at basically. So yeah, those are like really my primary exercises. Ab wheel rollouts are good.

Reverse crunches are good. I’ll link an article down below that you can go and check out if you want to. See how to do all these exercises and how to put them together into a workout. But generally what I like to do is three to six sets of weighted, like I, I’ll do nine sets basically in a circuit.

And I’m going to be doing, starting with usually it’s three sets of weighted and then three sets of one exercise, like weighted cable crunch or maybe a weighted hang, leg raise or a weighted captain’s chair, leg [00:15:00] raise. And then going into three sets of, I’ll do is I’ll do a weighted set and then I’ll go directly into an unweighted set to failure and then directly, or it’s going to be weighted and then followed by a a set of unweighted.

So I’m doing three sets back to back super set type of. And I’m generally against supersetting. Like I don’t superset anything else when I train, because if you’re, when, why are we lifting weights, we’re lifting weights to get stronger. That’s the, that’s our biggest goal. Really as a natural weightlifter, you need to be getting stronger over time.

Supersetting gets in the way of that. You’re just, you’re going to be more fatigued. You’re not gonna be able to push as much weight. It’s counterproductive. A lot of people they think that super setting type, the super set type of workouts where you’re going, very low rest. One exercise into another is better for losing fat.

That’s generally why people, at least that, that I thought I talk with why they’re doing those types of workouts. And research shows that those types of workouts, you might burn a little bit more calories doing a low rest kind of high intensity, super set type of [00:16:00] workout versus a heavier weightlifting type of workout where you’re resting a few minutes in between sets.

But it’s really not that big of a difference actually, like in terms of a one hour workout, you might be looking at a 30 calorie difference. And then when you look at the afterburn effect of exercise, which is basically the calories burned. After the workout, which is because your body has to, there’s various things that have to occur for your body to recover from the workout and come go back to a normal resting state.

And I’ll link an article down below if you want to check that out anyway, that the afterburn calories are a bit higher in the weightlifting and the heavy weightlifting type of workouts than in the lower weight workouts. So it all just balances out. So it’s not, super set workouts are not better for losing fat basically.

But. What you are sacrificing when you’re doing a super superset type of workout is you’re sacrificing strength. You’re going to be weaker. When you go from one exercise into a next into another exercise, that second exercise, you’re, you are going to move less weight than if you would have just, you Did your first exercise rested, let’s say a [00:17:00] couple minutes and then did a set of your second exercise.

Or if you are even, just doing like low rest type of training with one exercise alone. So you do your first set, rest one minute, do your second set and so forth. If you’re rested, especially if you’re trying to push heavyweight. So if you’re trying to work, let’s say in I don’t know, four to six, five to seven, even 68 rep range, and you’re only resting one minute in between sets.

You are going, you are not going to be able to get as many reps. You might even have to drop the weight as if you had been resting, let’s say three minutes in between those sets, especially as you get into heavier weights. So generally super setting, not worth it, but. With abs I found that it works well and there’s I guess there’s just no reason not to with abs again, you comparatively speaking, a little bit of ab training goes a long way you, because it’s a small muscle group, it does recover quickly, so you can train it a few times a week, you could do like I try to go for about six to nine of those circuits I was talking about.

So that triple set type of super set circuit. So I’m doing six to nine of them. I do them in while I’m wall. [00:18:00] Basically I’ll do them like while I’m resting on my major muscle group. So let’s say I just did a, let’s say I’m doing chest and I just did some heavy, I just did a heavy set of bench press.

Then go, I’m going to go do my abs and then I’m going to probably rest another, I don’t know, 60, 90 seconds, just let my heart rate come down and then go back to the bench and just do it that way. So I’ll do six to nine of those circuits. You can do those six to nine, two to three times a week, and that’s all you need.

And if you just stick to it, it doesn’t take that long. Like I saw a pretty dramatic change in my abs over the course of six months of doing that. And I still do abs now, but I do them a bit less because I don’t want. I don’t want them to overdevelop, especially with my obliques. So I just want to keep things the way they are basically.

So I’m doing abs, I’m doing abs twice a week right now, but I’m only doing four to five sets total sets twice a week. So that’s basically like the general overview of how you develop. A good core and how you have good abs and and a six pack. And the same thing, what I’ve been [00:19:00] saying is slant towards guys, but it really applies to girls as well.

It’s just most of the girls that I’ve spoken with and worked with, again, they’re not looking for the same level of ab development as guys are. But I’ve also found that it, There aren’t it’s, it takes a lot like how girls just in general build muscle a lot slower than guys, primarily because testosterone levels are so much lower in girls and guys.

Girls have on average a 10th to a 15th of the testosterone as guys. And that really is the, in terms of hormones, that’s the primary driver of muscle growth. It’s not just like anything it’s really hard for a girl to get bulky anywhere on her body. And the same thing applies to abs.

So it’s not if you’re listening to this and you’re worried that if you start doing some weighted ab stuff or start doing this routine I’m talking about, you’re going to end up with, bulky blocky abs that you’re not, that you’re not going to like. It’s not going to happen like that. You would have to work very hard for that basically, and you have to be very lean for that.

In my experience when girls do this [00:20:00] type of routine they get lean and then instead they just have the type of stomach they like, which is generally it’s that it’s the line down the middle and it’s the lines in the side with a little bit of horizontal. It’s not, it doesn’t look like a six pack, but it just looks like a washboard type of, stomach or whatever.

All right. So now let’s talk about bloating. Cause it’s goes hand in hand. People ask me, basically they just, they don’t know, is it belly fat they’re dealing with, or is it bloat? And some people, or they know that they’re just bloated, but how do you, how do, what do you do about it?

So you can tell if you’re just bloated or dealing with belly fat pretty easily bloating, it comes and goes. So you might wake up and you’re like, With relatively flat stomach, thin skin at whatever weight. And then by the end of the night, you weigh two to five pounds more and your stomach is distended, put, pushed out.

Maybe you have some gas and discomfort, your skin might, be noticeably thicker. And then you wake up again. You might be a little bit. Maybe a lot less, a little bit less. So there’s a lot of fluctuations. If you were to measure your stomach at at the navel, you would [00:21:00] see let’s say morning and middle of the day and night, if you have bloating issues, you would see it’d be all over the place.

And there’d be like large fluctuations. If it’s belly fat, one belly fat, you can’t grab like bloating, it increases. You’re the amount of the water under your skin can increase a bit. So gives you that soft, puffy look, but you can’t grab it. It’s not like fat bloat doesn’t jiggle fat jiggles.

So if you have if you can grab fat and if in, in jiggle it, that’s fat, that’s not blow. You may be dealing with bloat on top of that, but the problem is more that belly fat. not bloating. Now, if you are having trouble with bloating or if you have been having trouble with bloating, there are a few likely reasons why this is happening.

Of course there are different diseases and things that can cause that, but that’s probably not the problem. The problem is most likely down. Basically you have the foods you’re eating which we’ll talk about in a second, or there could be some hormonal things going on. So on the foods a lot of people are lactose intolerant and don’t really realize it.

You have lactose, which is the sugar and dairy. [00:22:00] A lot of people’s bodies, they lack the enzyme lactase to break it down. So it goes through the small intestine unabsorbed, hits the large intestine, gets for bacteria, start eating it, causes gas bloating. Now there are other ways. other types of foods that can cause these indigestion issues as well.

A lot of people, lactose intolerance is pretty pretty well known. A lot of people have figured out on their own, they eat some dairy and then realize that an hour later they’re just bloated. Stomach doesn’t feel good. But there are a type of carbohydrate called a FODMAP, F O D M A P.

And basically it’s what happens in the body is very similar. A lot of people’s, I wouldn’t say a lot. I actually don’t remember the, I don’t know if I’ve seen an exact percentage, but in terms of just wide population that whose bodies, they don’t deal with these types of carbohydrates well, but I know that it’s fairly prevalent.

It’s not super low, like a gluten allergy or something like that. In fact, what a lot of people think is a gluten allergy or sensitivity is actually sensitivity FODMAPs. And the FODMAP, [00:23:00] it’s F O D M A P and it’s short for fermentable oligo di monosaccharides and polyols is the long name.

complicated, fancy talk. So then it just shortened to the acronym FODMAP. And basically it’s similar in that so these types of carbohydrates, they are not digested and they’re not broken down and absorbed in the in from the stomach through the small intestine, they make it to the large intestine bacteria.

Get on them and it causes gas and bloating and ingestion. And another, and what we talked more about, like in terms of what those foods are unfortunately there are quite a few of these foods. So like you have grains like wheat, barley and rye. You have this. Beans, dairy, onion, garlic, artichoke, asparagus, broccoli, Brussels sprout, cabbage, chocolate, apple, apricot, avocado, blackberry, cherry, nectarine, peach, pear, plum, prune, watermelon, cauliflower, mushroom, and sugar alcohols is actually a, those are just more of the common FODMAP type of foods that, that people have issues with.

There are quite a few more. And if you are having issues with [00:24:00] FODMAPS I’ll link an article down below where you can go see a bit more on this and a guide on, cause there’s basically you have to eliminate all the potential foods that are causing issues and see how things are.

If it improves your situation, then you know that was obviously that was a cause. And then you start introducing foods back in. You start challenging. That’s what it’s called is a chat. It’s a diet challenge of okay, so you’re going to bring back in, let’s say you really like. I don’t know, wheat or something like that.

So you’ve eliminated it as with all these other foods and then you bring wheat back in and see, does it cause the bloating and the indigestion and the problems? If it does, then you have to leave it out of your diet. And then, you run down the list of the foods that you like to eat.

If you really like dairy, you really like Greek yogurt or something like that, then okay. Then you introduce Greek yogurt again. Only one food at a time, of course, anyways, I’ll link to me. I’ll link an article down below where you can go just a guide on how to do it. But there’s, so there’s that you have the lactose issue.

A lot of people eat too much dairy and upsets their stomach and it just makes them bloated. Eating different, these certain type of [00:25:00] carbohydrates that the, that your body can’t process well cause the same issues. And then there’s sodium potassium imbalance. So if you’re, and this is very common, actually, I’d say this is probably the most common reason why.

When people that I hear from that are having problems with bloating and water retention they’re surprised to when they look at the, their sodium potassium intake, they usually find that their sodium intake is really high. Their potassium intake is really low and which is just not good for health.

You want, the Institute of Medicine recommends the opposite, that your sodium intake should be anywhere from like a 1. 5 to 2. 3 grams a day, which I know I ran across something on this. I don’t remember some research basically showing that that, that might be conservative. It actually, it looks like you could go even as high as six grams a day of sodium and be totally fine that the, basically the link between Sodium intake and high blood pressure isn’t as sound as we thought it was like the link between eating eggs and bad cholesterol.

Now we know that’s not true. However, [00:26:00] I still stick to the Institute of Medicine’s recommendations because, saturated fat yeah, saturated fat may not be as bad as we once thought. But I don’t think we know enough yet to just say, Oh, we can just eat all saturated fat we want.

And really, how much sodium and salt do you really need to two and a half grams of sodium a day is probably like close to four grams of table salt a day. That’s a lot. A teaspoon of salt contains, I believe about a little bit over two grams of sodium. So if you’re doing, anywhere from a teaspoon to two, two teaspoons of salt a day, it’s quite a bit.

Anyways and potassium, by the reason why a lot of people’s testing levels are low is because, you get potassium primarily from fruits and vegetables. A lot of people aren’t eating enough fruits and vegetables. So what coming back to the point here is if your sodium intake is fluctuating, which it does where people, it depends on, cause a lot of people, they don’t eat the same foods every day.

So one day they might go out to lunch at some restaurant and if you’re eating out, your sodium levels are gonna be fluctuating a lot if you’re eating out a lot because you make free, like salt [00:27:00] brings out the flavor and food. A general rule of cooking is. Your food, you want it to be basically salted as you’re going to have as much salt as you can as you can, as your palate will allow, essentially, like if you want it, you want to err on the side of maybe even over salting a little bit than under salting because it under salted the less salt.

It’s in a dish or in food, the less flavor there’s going to be. So when you go to a restaurant, the rules of course of making food taste good is a lot of salt and a lot of fat. So a lot of, you have butter, dairy, oil. Cause fat also brings out flavors. So that’s why eating out a lot is a nightmare for for dieting because you don’t know in terms of calories, like a dish could easily have an, have 500 more calories than it really should have just because, by adding those that didn’t, maybe that’s a bit much, let’s say a couple hundred calories more than it should because adding that butter, adding that cream, it does add a bit to the dish, but let’s say it adds like It improves mouthfeel and taste by [00:28:00] 20%, but it increases calories by 80%.

Is that worth it? I don’t think so. But that’s restaurant food. Salt as well. Restaurant food is going to be very, depending on what you order. Now, of course, if you just go order a salad with some chicken on top or something like that with a vinegar based dressing, that’s on the side and you do it, you can be smart about it, of course, but if you’re just going and ordering things off the menu and whatever.

Just know it’s going to be very salty or very high sodium food, generally speaking. So when you have your, when you increase your sodium or potassium intake above the normal, so in either one if you have a, if you have a noticeable fluctuation up, Then you’re going to hold more water. And that’s right.

Even with potassium as well. If you, if your potassium levels are fluctuating a lot, you’re going to see fluctuations in the amount of water that you’re holding. And if you reduce sodium intake, of course, then you’re going to see a reduction in the amount of water that you hold. So what I find with a lot of people that deal with water retention issues is it just follows their sodium potassium intake.

Potassium tends to be a bit more static because [00:29:00] again, it’s You’re not adding potassium to food. You’re getting your potassium from your food or you’re supplementing with it and that’s it. But the amount of salt that you can, a person’s eating or that you’re eating can change wildly depending on the foods.

So then what I find is when people look at it and they’re surprised to see they’re eating, six grams of sodium in a day. a day, but it can fluctuate anywhere from, it could be two grams one day and then six grams the next day and then three grams, then four and then one.

And then when they level it out, when they start getting it a bit more, let’s say just keeping it in the two to three grams a day range then voila their bloating problems go away. Or, they’re, they find that their skin is a lot thinner and they’re not holding nearly as much water as they were before.

So those are the major things. Oh, there’s hormonal disturbances as well. So basically the long story short on the hormones is the hormone cortisol. But if the higher cortisol levels are the more water and the more bloated, more watering a hole, the more bloated you’re going to look. I, if you’re familiar with my work, I don’t talk much about hormones [00:30:00] because they’re just a scapegoat, it’s very popular right now to just blame stuff on hormones.

And a lot of people use it to sell bullshit books and bullshit pills and powders and stuff. The bottom line is if you’re having any issue with losing weight, gaining weight if you’re having issues with bloating, if you’re having really any sort of unwanted body condition, it’s unlikely that it’s a hormone problem.

If you’re not able to lose weight. It’s probably because you’re eating too much food or you’re not moving your body enough. You’re not, you’re not in a negative energy balance. If you’re having trouble gaining weight, it’s probably because you’re not eating enough food. And there might be some training things, but it’s really like the majority, you’re gonna get the majority of results from just following the fundamentals and your hormones are probably fine.

But when it comes to bloating and water retention, the hormone cortisol, particularly. Can really screw with you. And the reason why people that are generally in a fitness will run into this issue is because when you’re in a calorie deficit, your cortisol levels are naturally [00:31:00] higher. If you are, let’s say, skimping on your sleep to get up to work out if you’re restricting your sleep, your cortisol levels are going to be higher.

If you are following a low carb diet, your cortisol levels are going to be higher. If you have any sort of life stress and stuff that’s going on. All these things add up. And especially when you go into a calorie deficit and if you’re over training, doing a ton of exercise and a calorie deficit with a low carb diet, your cortisol levels are going to be very high and you’re very likely to have struggle with bloating issues just because of that alone.

So the, what you want to do is you want to bring your cortisol levels down and you can do that in different ways. One, don’t do it. Low carb is really for people that are sedentary or who don’t do well with carbohydrates. Some people, even though they’re relatively lean and they’re active they just, if they eat any more than let’s say 50 grams of carbs in a meal, they get sleepy, they get tired.

Okay, fine. That’s knowing your body. That doesn’t mean though that you necessarily have to follow a low carb diet. You just have to restrict the amount of carbs you’re eating in one [00:32:00] sitting. A lot of that just comes down to insulin response, insulin sensitivity. For instance, I have a very good insulin sensitivity, because I can eat a huge amount of carbs and just be totally fine.

I can eat 250 grams, 300 grams of carbs in one meal and really not even get tired and just, yeah, I might be full. But I’m not going to go pass out unless, I, for me to get the pass out and I’ve done it before the last time I really passed out, I guess it was like Thanksgiving last year, I ate six plates of food, full plates.

And that was stuffing mashed potatoes. Sweet potatoes. Protein. Yeah. Six plates of that. I ate until I actually was in pain. I couldn’t even move. I was laying there in pain and then once the pain subsided, passed out. So that’s what it 000 calories in one meal. If I, so if I go eat 1500 calories in a meal, it’s, I don’t even get full from that.

Like it. I [00:33:00] don’t get hungry really. So it doesn’t matter, but I’ll, it’s funny, like my best friend and business partner, Jeremy will go out and eat sometimes, or you just to be there if I’m eating a lot of food. And he’s always just amazed at like how much food I’ll eat and then just be. Like at six, I’ll be like, ah, he asked me to be like, so what do you, where are you at?

I’m like, I don’t know. Maybe I’m like 60%, maybe 70 percent capacity is that’s ridiculous. Anyways, so low carb dieting sucks. And I would say it’s good for people that are very overweight or it’s good for people that don’t move their bodies, but it doesn’t really make sense if you are physically active.

And especially if you’re weightlifting. Because your workouts are going to be much better on higher carb diet. You’re going to build muscle faster. You’re going to get stronger faster. And when it comes to weight loss you’re going to find generally your people find a higher carb diet, more satiating, more psychologically enjoyable because carbs are awesome.

The carby foods taste good, right? A lot of different great tasty ways to eat carbs. And also it keeps cortisol levels lower. So another way [00:34:00] to reduce cortisol levels is to have a refeed meal or day where basically you are, it’s one day and it’s not really important until you get leaner.

I’d say as guys, once you start getting to the 10 percent range and you’re going under, then refeeding once a week definitely makes sense. Some guys even refeed twice a week as they start to get very lean. These are usually guys that are competing though. They’re getting down to four or 5%. So once they get to the 8 percent range, they start doing two refeeds a week.

And what a refeed is where you’re basically eating a ton of carbohydrates. Essentially, you’re eating, let’s say two grams of carbs per pound of body weight. One gram or 0. 8 grams protein per pound and as little fat as possible for the day. Obviously that wouldn’t, it’s not a good, that’s not a healthy way to eat as a lifestyle, but doing one day doesn’t matter.

When I refeed, I keep my fats around 10 grams. It’s real low. So I’m eating like pasta. I’m eating, I haven’t done it in a little while, but white potatoes, sweet potato. Sometimes I’ll make like pancakes because I just leave out the egg and use water. Maple syrups, a ton of carbs, [00:35:00] obviously, anyways, fruit is okay.

And what that does is one, it helps with leptin. Which I’ll link an article down below on refeeding so you can go check it out if you want to learn more, but it helps with leptin, which is a hormone related to it’s it’s related to quite a few things. It’s related to metabolic speed and it’s related to testosterone production.

It’s related to satiety, feeling full. Whereas ghrelin, which is its counterpart, or it’s, I wouldn’t say it’s counterparts. Actually, it’s like an antagonist, which stimulates hunger. It helps spike leptin levels, which cause quite a few beneficial changes in the body, but also just the huge increase in insulin reduces cortisol levels.

Cause there’s a relationship there. Whereas insulin levels rise, cortisol levels drop. Drop. So having a refeed day is a good way to drop cortisol levels. Maybe taking a deload week in the gym, which I’ll link an article down below if you’re not familiar with the deload is basically where you’re dramatically reducing the intensity and the volume of your workouts.

If you haven’t done that in a while, there is a point where your body does need a bit of a break. Deloading is a [00:36:00] great way to do that. Even maybe increasing your food intake. If you’ve been in a calorie deficit for. Let’s say eight, 10 weeks or so, maybe 12 weeks and you’ve been refeeding and your body, you’re just, your workouts are dragging and you just, you get this rundown kind of feeling increasing your food intake for a week.

Maybe jumping up by, you’re jumping your daily calorie intake up by a few hundred calories, three, four, even 500 calories a day. And I would do a lot of that in carbs. That can help just give your body a break. So there’s a lot of things you can do to reduce your cortisol levels.

Make sure you’re sleeping enough, make sure that’s a priority. And if you do that, if you bring your cortisol levels down into a more normal range you’ll find that you will, the bloat just goes away. Like you’re just not going to be holding nearly as much water. I think that’s about everything just to recap.

So if you want great abs first and foremost, You have to be lean. You’re never going to have it. If you’re a guy, if you’re over 10 percent body fat, you’re probably never. Depending on the look you want, if you want that like real, cut tight shredded type [00:37:00] of look that’s anywhere from, 6 percent body fat on guys is really shredded.

That’s like your paper, almost paper thin skin. I would say, 7%, 8%, all in that range is where generally the kind of look that most guys want. If you follow me on Instagram and see my pictures, whatever, I’m about 8% body fat. Just to have that as a reference point. For girls, it’s about 20% is where it, where the magic kind of starts.

And then I’d say the look that most girls want where you’re athletic. You’re not like super shredded. You still have curves is probably about 17, 18 percent is where most of the girls that I’ve spoken with and work with, that’s where they they get to that point and then they’re happy and they just stay there.

So that’s the first thing, be lean enough. Another thing is make sure you’re training your abs. Make sure you’re doing weighted training. Make sure you’re training them several times a week. Just doing heavy compound weightlifting is not enough. And remember, don’t go crazy with the oblique training.

Don’t do a bunch of weighted side bends and stuff like that, or you will regret it. At some point you’re going to realize that your obliques are overdeveloped. And [00:38:00] if you don’t stay really lean, it’s just going to look like a muffin top. So don’t make that mistake. And it’s probably also just worth saying that on those weighted ab exercises, make sure that you’re progressing like any other exercise.

You want to be getting stronger. You want to be moving up on those weights. So if you start your cable crunches with a hundred pounds and you can do 10, let’s say six months later, you’d be good if you’re at 180 pounds or 170 pounds and you can do 10. Don’t just go through the motions, treat it like any other exercise in any other muscle group.

You really want to make progress. And on the bloating side of things, If you’re, if you’ve been dealing with bloating issues if you suspect you might be lactose intolerant, kill dairy from your diet see how that plays out. Look into FODMAPs the, I gave a long list of foods.

Again, I’ll link an article down below or a guide down below, so you can learn more about that, but that could be the issue. What you know, you might think that it’s a gluten thing. So you stop eating gluten containing foods, but then you find that you still have bloating issues because there are other carbohydrates in that.

Yes. Wheat is one of them that, that [00:39:00] contains this type of carbohydrate that, that Some people’s bodies don’t process well, but there are a lot of other foods as you heard that you would never suspect that you think avocado, for instance, you think avocados are great. Avocados are healthy.

Yes, that’s true. But certain people’s bodies do not deal with the carbohydrates in avocados well, and it causes IBS. I can’t avocados don’t themselves cause IBS like symptoms, but there are, you can, if you’re eating too much of these FODMAP carbs and your body doesn’t do well with them, you will develop IBS like symptoms.

It can be pretty uncomfortable and it can be very annoying and very mysterious as well because you can be eating all these quote unquote clean foods and, having and having all these issues. And then last but not least, there is the it’s not the last actually.

So you have the sodium potassium getting those leveled out and getting them, making sure that you’re not way too high on your sodium and way too low on your potassium and making sure that your levels don’t fluctuate all over the place. And then last is is the hormone issue. If you’ve been dieting to lose weight.

Then, and you’re dealing with water retention [00:40:00] or bloating, it’s, there’s a good chance that it’s, that, there’s something that you’re doing or you’re doing too much in the, your cortisol levels are just too high and you need to bring them down. So that’s about everything. I hope you find this helpful.

You can ask questions if you’re watching this on YouTube, ask questions down below and I’m able to answer pretty much all of them. Maybe I can’t get to everyone cause YouTube’s comment management system sucks, but I try my best. And if you’re listening to this in the podcast, you know how to reach me, social media, email and so forth.

And I will see you next week.