Abs Will Help You Live Longer
Study after study shows that the people with
the largest waist sizes have the most risk of life-threatening disease.
The evidence couldn't be more convincing. According to the National
Institutes of Health, a waistline larger than 40 inches for men signals
significant risk of heart disease and diabetes. The Canadian Heart
Health Surveys, published in 2001, looked at 9,913 people ages 18 to 74
and concluded that for maximum health, a guy needs to keep his waist
size at no more than 35 inches (a little less for younger guys, a little
more for older ones). When your waist grows larger than 35 inches,
you're at higher risk of developing two or more risk factors for heart
disease. And when researchers examined data from the Physicians' Health
Study that has tracked 22,701 male physicians since 1982, they found
that men whose waists measured more than 36.8 inches had a significantly
elevated risk for myocardial infarction, or heart attack, in which an
area of the heart muscle dies or is permanently damaged by a lack of bloodflow. Men with the biggest bellies were at 60 percent higher risk.
Now the real scary part: The average American man's waist size is a
ponderous 38.8 inches, up from 37.5 in 1988, according to the journal
Obesity Research. The same sad truth holds for women, too: A woman with
a flabby midsection is at increased risk for the same health problems.
And American women have seen their weight rise just as men have.
Of course, abs don't guarantee you a get-out-of-the-hospital-free card,
but studies show that by developing a strong abdominal section, you'll
reduce body fat and significantly cut the risk factors associated with
many diseases, not just heart disease. For example, the incidence of
cancer among obese patients is 33 percent higher than among lean ones,
according to a Swedish study. The World Health Organization estimates
that up to one-third of cancers of the colon, kidney, and digestive
tract are caused by being overweight and inactive. And having an excess
of fat around your gut is especially dangerous. See, cancer is caused by
mutations that occur in cells as they divide. Fat tissue in your abdomen
spurs your body to produce hormones that prompt your cells to divide.
More cell division means more opportunities for cell mutations, which
means more cancer risk.
A lean waistline also heads off another of our most pressing health
problems-diabetes. Currently, 13 million Americans have been diagnosed
with adult-onset diabetes, and many more go undiagnosed. Fat, especially
belly fat, bears the blame.
There's a misconception that diabetes comes only from eating too much
refined sugar, like the kind in chocolate and ice cream. But people
contract diabetes after years of eating high-carbohydrate foods that are
easily converted into sugar-foods like white bread, pasta, and mashed
potatoes. Scarfing down a basket of bread and a bowl of pasta can do the
same thing to your body that a carton of ice cream does: flood it with
sugar calories. The calories you can't burn are what converts into fat
cells that pad your gut and leaves you with a disease that, if
untreated, can lead to impotence, blindness, heart attacks, strokes,
amputation, and death. And that, my friend, can really ruin your day.
Upper-body obesity is also the most significant risk factor for
obstructive sleep apnea, a condition in which the soft tissue in the
back of your throat collapses during sleep, blocking your airway. When
that happens, your brain signals you to wake up and to start breathing
again. As you nod off once more, the same thing happens, and it can
continue hundreds of times during the night-making you chronically
groggy and unable to get the rest your body needs. (You won't remember
waking up over and over again; you'll just wonder why 8 hours of sleep
left you dragging.)
Fat's role is that it can impede muscles that inflate and ventilate the
lungs, forcing you to work harder to get enough air. When Australian
researchers studied 313 patients with severe obesity, they found that 62
percent of them with a waist circumference of 49 inches or more had a
serious sleep disturbance and that 28 percent of obese patients with
smaller waists (35 to 49 inches) had sleep problems. Being overweight
also puts you at risk for a lot of other conditions that rob you of a
good night's rest, including asthma and gastroesophageal reflux.
When Dutch researchers studied nearly 6,000 men, they found that even
those whose waistlines measured a relatively modest 37 to 40 inches had
a significantly increased risk of respiratory problems, such as
wheezing, chronic coughing, and shortness of breath. All of this can
create an ugly cycle: Abdominal fat leads to poor sleep. Poor sleep
means you drag through your day. Sluggish and tired, your body craves
some quick energy, so you snack on some high-calorie junk food. That
extra junk food leads to more abdominal fat, which leads to . . . well,
you get the picture.
I'm going to boil it down to one sentence: A smaller waist equals fewer
health risks. |
Abs Will Improve Your Sex Life
Women claim the greatest sex organ is the
brain; men say it's approximately 3 feet due south. So let's say we
split the geographic difference and focus on what's really central to a
good sex life.
You know the old phrase "It's not the size of the ship; it's the motion
of the ocean"? Well, take that to heart. We can't improve upon what God
gave you (though the Abs Diet may actually somewhat increase the size of
a guy's manhood-more on that in a bit), but we can rebuild your body to
maximize the rocking and rolling that goes on below deck. Consider how
the following side benefits can help you pull that ship into harbor.
Increased stamina. The thrusting power you generate during sex
doesn't come from your legs; it comes from your core. Strong abdominal
and lower-back muscles give you the stamina and strength to try new
positions, stay steady in old ones, and maintain the motion control
that's important for your staying power-and your partner's pleasure.
Better erections. It's no secret that upwards of 30 million
American men have some kind of erectile dysfunction. Though many things
can cause it, one of the major causes is purely a matter of traffic
control. Artery-clogging cheeseburgers don't discriminate, so when
you're overweight, the gunk that gums up the blood vessels leading to
your heart and brain also gums up the vessels that lead to your
genitals. Plaque forms on the inside of your arteries, narrowing the
passageways that blood must follow. Think of 12 lanes of traffic
bottlenecking into one. Your blood vessels can become so clogged in your
pelvic area that a sufficient supply of blood can't get through to form
an erection. You don't need to have aced calculus to understand this
equation: Increased fat equals decreased bloodflow. Decreased bloodflow
equals softer (or no) erections. Softer (or no) erections equals "This
stinks" squared. (By the way, clogged blood vessels have the same effect
on women, leading to decreased lubrication, sensitivity, and sexual
pleasure.)
Increased length. When it comes to a man and his privates, fat is
his body's side-view mirror: Objects appear smaller than actual size.
The length of the average man's penis is about 3 inches flaccid, but the
fatter he is, the smaller he'll look. That's because the fat at the base
of a man's abdomen covers up the base of his penis. Losing just 15
pounds of fat will add up to half an inch to the length of a man's
member. No, Little Elvis is not technically growing, but decreasing the
fat that surrounds it will allow all a guy's got to actually show.
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Abs Will Keep You Safe from Harm
In school, you were taught the story of Mrs.
O'Leary's cow and how, with one awkward misstep, the lumbering bovine
knocked over an oil lamp that started the Great Chicago Fire and burned
much of that toddlin' town to the ground. That tragedy happened at a
time when most urban housing was still built with wood. Today, such a
disaster is unthinkable-and not just because we don't let cows into the
living room anymore. It's unthinkable because the infrastructure of
today's cities is built with steel-steel that stands up to fire, to
earthquakes, to hurricanes.
Think of your midsection as your body's infrastructure. You don't want a
core made of dry, brittle wood or straw. You want one made of solid
steel, one that will give you a layer of protection that belly fat never
could.
Consider a U.S. Army study that linked powerful abdominal muscles to
injury prevention. After giving 120 artillery soldiers the standard army
fitness test of situps, pushups, and a 2-mile run, researchers tracked
their lower-body injuries (such as lower-back pain and Achilles
tendonitis) during a year of field training. The 29 men who cranked out
the most situps (73 in 2 minutes) were five times less likely to suffer
lower-body injuries than the 31 who barely notched 50. But that's not
the most striking element.
The men who performed well in the pushups and 2-mile run enjoyed no such
protection-suggesting that upper-body strength and cardiovascular
endurance had little effect on keeping bodies sound. It was abdominal
strength that offered the protection.
Unlike any other muscles in your body, a strong core affects the
functioning of the entire body. Whether you ski, sail, wrestle with the
kids, or fool around with a partner, your abs are the most essential
muscles for keeping you from injury. The stronger they are, the
stronger-and safer-you are. |
Abs Will Strengthen Your Back
I had a friend who threw out his back maybe
two or three times a year. He always did it in the simplest way-sleeping
a little awkwardly or getting out of a chair too quickly. One time, he
pulled it out reaching into the back seat of his car to get something
his young daughter had dropped. The pain once stabbed him so badly that
he collapsed to the ground while he was standing at a urinal. (Go ahead.
Imagine that.) His problem wasn't that he had a bad back; it was that he
had weak abs. If he had trained them regularly, he could've kept himself
from being one of the millions of men who suffer from back pain every
year. (And yes, he started the Abs Diet Workout a year ago, and within
weeks his back pain virtually disappeared.)
Since most back pain is related to weak muscles in your trunk,
maintaining a strong midsection can help resolve many back issues. The
muscles that crisscross your midsection don't function in isolation;
they weave through your torso like a spider web, even attaching to your
spine. When your abdominal muscles are weak, the muscles in your butt
(your glutes) and along the backs of your legs (your hamstrings) have to
compensate for the work your abs should be doing. The effect, besides
promoting bad company morale for the muscles picking up the slack, is
that it destabilizes the spine and eventually leads to back pain and
strain-or even more serious back problems. |
Abs Will Limit Your Aches and Pains
As you age, it's common to experience some
joint pain-most likely in your knees, but maybe around your feet and
ankles, too. But the source of that pain might not be weak joints; it
might be weak abs-especially if you're any kind of athlete, from the
serious golfer to the I-pull-my-groin-every-time Thanksgiving Day
football player.
When you're playing sports, your abdominal muscles help stabilize your
body during start-and-stop movements, like changing direction on the
football field or tennis court. If you have weak abdominal muscles, your
joints absorb all the force from those movements. It's kind of like
trampoline physics. Jump in the center, and the mat will absorb your
weight and bounce you back in the air. Jump toward the side of the
trampoline, where the mat meets the frame, and you'll bust the springs.
Your body is sort of like a trampoline, with your abs as the center of
the mat and your joints as the supports that hold the mat to the frame.
If your abs are strong enough to absorb some shock, you'll function
well. If they're not, the force puts far more pressure on your joints
than they were built to withstand.
Similar protection benefits extend to people who aren't athletes, too.
That Dutch study of nearly 6,000 men found that those with waist
circumferences above 40 inches were more likely to have a condition
called Sever's disease, which causes heel pain, and to develop carpal
tunnel syndrome, a painful hand and wrist condition. One study even
found that 70 percent of people with carpal tunnel syndrome were either
overweight or obese. |
Abs Will Help You Win
If you play golf, basketball, naked Twister,
or any sport that requires movement, your essential muscle group isn't
your chest, biceps, or legs. It's your core-the muscles in your torso
and hips. Developing core strength gives you power. It fortifies the
muscles around your whole midsection and trains them to provide the
right amount of support when you need it. So if you're weak off the tee,
stron
g abs will improve your distance. But if you also play
stop-and-start sports like tennis or basketball, abs can improve your
game tremendously.
Though speed is the buzzword TV analysts like to use to differentiate
between Hall of Famers and practice-squad players, athletic success
isn't really about speed. It's really about accelerating and
decelerating. How fast can you go from a stopped position at point A to
stopping at point B? Your legs don't control that; your abs do. When
researchers studied what muscles were the first to engage in these types
of sports movements, they found that the abs fired first. The stronger
they are, the faster you'll get to the ball. |
One More Thing...
These are all great reasons to pursue the Abs
Diet. But the best reason is this: The program is an easy,
sacrifice-free plan that will let you eat the foods you want and keep
you looking and feeling better day after day. It's designed to help you
lose weight in the easiest possible ways: by recalibrating your body's
internal fat-burning furnace, by focusing on the foods that trigger your
body to start shedding flab, and by rebuilding you into a lean, mean,
fat-burning machine. |
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