If you are a man over 40 looking to get abs you have come to the right place!
My entire business is based on how to lose belly fat, get lean and even get abs for men over 40.
The wonderful thing about Lean Over 40 for Men is it will help you lose belly fat no matter what your age and do so without resorting to boring diets or killing yourself in the gym.
There is so much information for men over 40 who want to get abs, but the missing link is a plan that’s sustainable.
When you break it all down the bottom line is reducing your over all body fat percentage so you flatten your stomach and finally see your abs, men will need to get to 12% body fat to see their top ab lines and under 10% body fat to see a full six pack.
Let us say your scale weight is 210 pounds and you have measured your body fat percentage at 17%.
To get down to 12% body fat you would need to lose just shy of 12 pounds of fat.
Fat loss is a gradual process, you need to give your body the time it needs to lose fat slowly. So, by losing one pound per week, you could realistically lose this fat in 12 weeks.
Now here is where it starts to get tricky and a lot of men over forty mess up…don’t make these mistakes along the way:
Excessive amounts of cardio
So, you want to get abs over 40 and the first thing you do is eat less and start doing lots of cardio…
While some cardio is a promising idea, it is not the best strategy for us men over 40. Firstly, we become dependent on it and the body quickly adapts…
Secondly, too much cardio lowers testosterone and can strip away lean muscle tissue.
As men over 40 we want to build and preserve lean muscle tissue whilst keeping our testosterone levels as high as possible.
When we do too much cardio, we are effectively killing the metabolism as we strip away lean muscle tissue and increase cortisol (the stress hormone) in our bodies.
The less muscle we have, the less fat we burn and so the cycle continues!
Not only that, but excessive cardio is boring and downright not sustainable…
And on top of this it makes you ravenous! Not the best thing if you are trying to get lean and reveal your abs.
Now, I am not saying to avoid cardio altogether, coupled with a decent abs diet plan, a few moderate cardio sessions, 30-40 minutes in duration can be beneficial, especially for heart health.
But I would not rely on cardio purely for fat loss.
A better strategy
The bottom line for losing fat as a man over 40 is eating slightly LESS calories than what your body burns per day (energy deficit) and being in this energy deficit long enough to measure progress gradually.
You need to know your starting point i.e., scale weight and body fat percentage and then actually see gradual progress happening from week to week.
This means knowing how many calories to eat and recording, measuring your progress…
A lot of men over 40 mess up when it comes to diet, they either eat far too few calories which can trigger binge eating and hating every minute of the diet, or they don’t know how many calories they should be eating to lose fat.
And a lot of men think they are eating the right amount, when the number is way off!
Worse still, a weekend of binge eating, and drinking can mess up a whole 5 days of paying attention to what you are eating.
Going drastically low in calories when trying to see your abs is NOT the answer. When I reached 7% body fat, aged forty-one, I never went below 2200 calories per day.
Too drastic calorie reductions can slow fat loss or even bring it to a halt.
Strength training
Strength training is one of the most important keys to getting abs for men over 40, namely because lean muscle tissue permanently elevates the rate at which our bodies can burn calories.
And you do not need to go crazy with weight training, in fact I never strength train more than 3 times per week, with 2 x per week being my go-to routine these days.
The bottom line for holding onto and building lean muscle is using compound movements that train 2-3 large muscle groups at the same time.
The bench press for example trains the muscles of the chest, shoulders, and triceps in one movement. Not only are compound movements the most effective movements for men over 40, but they boost testosterone and are the safest.
Lots of isolation exercises such as concentration curls and triceps kickbacks are useless for boosting testosterone and they irritate the joints making it harder to keep training as we get older.
Intermittent fasting
In my popular course Ripped Abs Over 40, I outline one of the most effective fat loss strategies for men over 40, intermittent fasting.
By staving off appetite in the morning, eating a piece of fruit and a black coffee, we create a bigger buffer of calories we can eat later in the day.
At lunch I recommend eating a moderate number of calories, 500 or so and then saving your biggest and most satisfying meal for evening, 5-6 pm at around 1200 calories.
This strategy keeps you feeling full, makes fat loss a breeze and works like crazy!
As an additional benefit, intermittent fasting has health benefits, cell rejuvenation, healthier skin, improved concentration and testosterone boosting benefits.
You just need to know, exactly how many calories you should be targeting and there’s a formula inside Ripped Abs Over 40 that breaks everything down for you depending on your height, scale weight and body fat percentage.
Once you know how many calories you should be targeting, it is just a matter of breaking those calories up into the correct amount of protein, carbohydrates, and fat.
You should be eating quality foods, lean protein sources such as chicken breast, beef, fish, and complex carb sources such as whole grain pasta.
Fats are important, in fact healthy sources such as avocado and virgin olive oil have been shown to increase testosterone in males and contribute to keeping you feeling full and aiding fat loss.
The power of walking
The bottom line in losing fat and seeing your abs is finding an easy to implement diet strategy that has you consistently eating the right number of calories to aid fat loss.
It’s possible to do lots of exercises and still gain fat if your calorie requirements are still too high. That is why the saying “you can’t out train a bad diet” holds true.
And it’s possible to lose fat without doing any cardio whatsoever.
One of the best strategies for losing belly fat and getting lean once you have the diet and strength training in place is simply walking.
If you aim to get 10,000 steps per day, not only will this help you to burn more fat, but walking has a neural effect on appetite making it one of the best forms of exercise to encourage more fat loss.
Walking is also very enjoyable, listen to a podcast, an audio book or simply enjoy the scenery.
Keeping things simple
As men over 40 we only have so much willpower when it comes to losing belly fat.
So, make your diet easy to stick to by implementing the power of intermittent fasting, strength train no more than 3 times per week and go out for a walk daily.
By implementing the above strategy, I would like to bet you’ll get your best body ever without resorting to crazy workout sessions or bland diets that never work out over the long term.
I hope you enjoyed this article, let me know what you think in the comment below.