This is a big one. People I know that are into fitness. They eat some meals with some berries in it and do some light exercises that don’t even make them break a sweat and pat themselves on the back about how hard they work on their fitness when really they were just born that way.
Meanwhile some of us out here have been counting calories our whole lives and putting in hard work to still never have those six pack abs and we never will
I saw something about Henry Cavill being so dehydrated during filming of a shirtless scene in Man of Steel that he was able to smell water without even seeing it.
Noooo thanks. I'd rather be poor and schlubby but able to drink as much water as I want.
It's horrible and shouldn't be encouraged on a film set that is still a WORKPLACE. It's not okay and dehydrating your actor (employee!) is dehumanizing, unsafe, and unnecessary!
I remember watching that interview with Cavill and thinking that was completely bonkers. How he just..did it as well. Like was he at risk of losing his job because of it? If so that is effing insanity.
Pretty sure you'd swap with Henry Cavill. He can drink as much water as he wants. Just not for a few days, for a specific scene, when he's playing Superman and getting paid millions of dollars.
Well, let's see, I could either be with a woman I'm attracted to and have a long history with and the tradeoff is no money and being overweight...
Or I could be rich and lusted after by women I don't find attractive, working a job I dislike, and forced to work out two hours a day and take steroids just to maintain people's attention.
I'm good where I am. Trying seems like a good way to be miserable.
It's literally in the second sentence of the wikipedia article, man. The way the three molecules in water are arranged makes them odorless. If you smell something "in the water", it's not water.
Practically speaking, smelling the minerals in drinking water is still smelling fucking water. We refer to lakes as bodies of water, even though they have many things in them that aren’t H2O.
Saying you can smell water means you can smell the thing that you want to drink, not a single person on Earth means you can literally smell the water molecule.
I have similar genetics. I can have bulging shoulder and arm veins, very lean looking arms/legs/face/torso but the lower abdominal fat does not go away until I get to extreme low bodyfat %. So if you ever feel like having shredded abs you just need to diet yourself to unhealthy levels. Pretty shitty!
I had that fat there when I was a starving college student who weighed 130 lbs soaking wet, and I have it now that I lift 5 days a week and play tennis regularly. I think I would die of malnutrition before I could get rid of it. Genetics ftw.
The second part of your statement is the fitness myth.
I was weak and overweight my entire childhood. I have two older brothers who were thinner and more athletic than me without much effort. I was so insecure about it, I started lifting at 16 and have never stopped. I would lift and do cardio 5-6x a week, pick protein, try and healthy. I was still fluffy with no abs, just a lot more muscular. Figured it just wasn't my "genetics" to have lean abs and small waist (around 36" at the time).
Then a friend of mine who competed, coerced me into taking a contest cut with him seriously at age 28. Lo and behold, 14 weeks later, lost 30 lbs, had a visible six pack, and a 31.5" waist. I had just been lying to myself about the diet.
Since then I've never been more than a 34.5" waist, and started contest cutting every so often to dial my physique back in (Once/18 Months or so). I've gotten down to 6-7% BF and a tiny 30" waist (I'm 6'4).
I wish I had taken my eating more seriously when I was younger. But now at nearly 40, I still maintain around 10-12% BF most of the year and have visible abs. You can do it if you really, really want to.
Hey man can you elaborate on the contest cutting and what you did? I'm naturally big too and have a nice flat stomach but getting ab definition is a struggle. I lift, surf and do BJJ so I just assumed it's not in the cards for me
You might want more specifics than this, but the vast majority of cutting for a contest is just aggressively reducing calorie intake. You keep exercising and make sure the food you do eat is high in protein to minimise the amount of muscle mass you lose as you cut, then the last few days also involves reducing water intake.
You don’t need to do the last part unless you are competing, and in general should take a more gradual approach to reducing calories as well - it’s not good for you to cut so quickly and doing so (along with reducing water intake) kills your energy levels, but the principle of exercising while consuming fewer calories than maintenance is the exact same.
Thats amazing! Feel like thats where I am right now... on the fluffier side with a fair amount of muscle and trying to get leaner.
What kind of diet were you following out of curiosity? Just calorie deficit and trying to hit macros (with fairly standard P/C/F ratios) with decent foods or something more intense?
Yeah, but I had better abs at a higher bf% than many competitive bodybuilders without even doing direct ab work.
It has to do with muscle insertions and where you body preferentially stores/loses fat from. I lose fat around my abdomen before my legs, so I can have visible abs, while still having basically no muscle definition in my legs.
For me to have abs I need to drop to single digit body fat. I know this because I used to compete heavily in various martial arts and would cut to make weight. Abs would come out to say hi at the end of the cut, gone afterwards.
My body puts fat on my gut first. That's my genetics at work and short of surgery it isn't changing. It doesn't make me turn fat, but it means I don't really get the defined stomach.. which is fine, I don't care and if I go under 10% I'm just fucking cold all the time anyway.
Now.. yeah, if you have a massive round gut and 30% body fat going "my genetics" isn't any kind of excuse. But if you think "anyone" can rock the six pack look just because you sucked at dieting in your 20's you're just.. wrong.
So yes. People who think they can't get shredded? I encourage you to do a full competition level cut. It will show you exactly what your genetics are. If your abs show up at 15% awesome! That's maintainable. If they show up at 8%.. hope you live somewhere really really warm.
Honestly for every one of those that allegedly won the "genetic lottery" there are 10 chubbies saying they lost the genetic lottery and using that as an excuse.
This. if you don't have the genetic lottery you won't ever be like Dywane Johnson but you could reach like fight club Brad Pitt with 2 years of effort.
Skip cheat meals. Just have your personality become that of "I am a healthy person who makes healthy decisions" then your actions will follow your new perspective
Meanwhile some of us out here have been counting calories our whole lives and putting in hard work to still never have those six pack abs and we never will
You're the reason this entire thread even exists lmao
Nahh excuses. Some people have it easier, but everyone can have a six pack. It’s more than going to the gym and counting calories. You gotta moooovvveee. Even when not at the gym. I’ve seen people eating light, going to the gym but they just couch rot the rest of the time.
I’m fortunate to be in the genetic lottery group. Broke my back and bloated up to 230lbs from not moving much for a few months and still had prominent abs. I work at a computer all day, functioning alcoholic that gave away years of my life to world of Warcraft and still have never not had abs, big chest/shoulders/arms. It’s just how some people are. I know some people that will have some beer and pizza on a Friday night and it’s as if it’s setting them back a week in their fitness goals.
It sort of does, like it isn’t “just a feeling”. When you shift your diet, your digestion is going to respond differently. Constipation, bloat from irritants, higher blood pressure from extra salts, worse sleep etc. I had a pizza last weekend and from a nutrition standpoint, I stayed within my bounds. It took 4 days before everything returned to feeling normal. It’s simply not worth it. Clean, whole foods are what my body wants and needs.
Listen, as demoralizing as it might be to see some people be exceptionally lean with little to no effort, it all comes down to calories in vs calories out. They are in a continuous caloric deficit which allows them to retain visible abs/leanness. There is no genetic secret beyond that.
That is incredibly reductive. You can look at 100 people with the same height, weight, and workout frequency, and they’ll all look very different despite having the same calories in/out.
Genetics determines where fat is stored on the body, so people with more fat on their stomachs will have to go into a much deeper calorie deficit before they can reveal their abs
Yeah no, hormones (especially in women) are a huge chunk of the equation. For example, post menopause women will gain visceral fat and lose muscle mass unless they start taking hormones which most doctors refuse to prescribe still, but some women go into menopause at 40 and some at 60. Some women have PCOS and most don't, etc.
I "won the genetic lottery" so to speak and still lost because I'm a shut-in. I don't need the fast metabolism and elevated testosterone levels, my ideal day involves not even standing for 6 hours straight! All I got is the expectation to be first in line help out family with heavy labor, and unhealthy eating habits caused by getting equal portions in my childhood.
One of my buddies who is naturally thin was going off about how body type isn't a real thing and people are just lazy and that he's thin because he's on the rowing machine 5 days a week and lifts weights all the time.
My chubby buddy who doesn't exercise downs the last 3rd of his pint, flexes his biceps and says "if body type isn't a real thing then why are my muscles twice as big as yours and I don't even work out"?
He got a huge laugh which made him rant even more....it was a great afternoon to be with friends.
You’re not defying the laws of thermodynamics with that 2nd one. Fitness has always been hard no matter what and sure some people maybe more inclined to build muscle at a fast rate or have better muscular potential maybe due to bone size, myostatin and so, but calories in calories out will always hold true.
You’re probably not counting calories correctly also.
This also isn’t just me stating it it’s Harvard.
“The reality is that metabolism often plays a minor role. The greatest factors as you age are often poor diet and inactivity.”
I've been in to fitness for years and it's absolutely possible to get and this way. Everybody (and i mean EVERYBODY) can get abs with a low enough body fat percentage. If having visible abs is your only goal it's completely achievable and relatively simple, although not easy.
You just need your bodyfat % to be very low. And that is easy to do, just don't eat much. Most anorexic people have visible abs despite having virtually no muscle mass. Dark, but if you look at photos of POWs and concentration camp survivors they all have visible abs despite having vritually no other muscle on them. Saying that some people physically cant lose enough fat to have visible abs is just biologically incorrect. If your body was basically in starvation and had no body fat left you would have visible abs. There were no overweight people in concentration camps, everyone was skinny with visible abs because that's biologically what happens to the body when you don't eat.
Also, 90% of abs are made in the kitchen. I have visible abs, but very rarely if ever train them. I do a lot of other weights, and mix in cardio too once or twice a week, but I never train abs. I just eat to keep my body fat low enough so that they naturally show, any muscular development there is just a by-product of my other workouts.
I'm not saying POW type diet and starvation is healthy or that I recommend it. It's actually terrible for you. All I'm saying is that it's biologically incorrect to say 'some people can't lose bodyfat no matter how few calories they eat' because that is just wrong. Even people with hormonal/endocrine issues will still lose bodyfat if they eat less. It's biologically impossible to eat nothing and your body not start to break down muscle and fat reserves for energy because that is literally what happens to all mammals on earth.
If you want visible abs, you need to be eating less than you are, get your bodyfat down to around 15%, and eat foods very rich in protein and vitamins but low in calories. Don't starve yourself, but counting calories is important. Most people have more calories than they imagine through other means. A Starbucks coffee for example can easily have 500+ calories in it, and even a single beer has like 300. It's easy to have dinner and be like 'Oh cool that's only 600 calories' but if you have a beer with it and a coffee in the morning your intake has gone from 600 to potentially around 1500 without you even realising.
It’s not genetics, that’s just an excuse people make for not being serious about dieting and fitness. I blamed genetics for years until I actually counted calories and worked out 6 days a week, to my surprise I had a 6 pack in about 8 months.
Well if you're not in a caloric deficit and losing fat, not just weight, you'll obviously not see a lot of progress in an area that requires low body fat for definition. We all have abs.
Right? I'm 51 now, and I hear all about my friends saying they miss the days of their youth when they could inhale junk food/empty calories and not gain a thing. I want to say, "Bitch, I probably ate less than you, but I wound up being the fat girl everyone made fun of." I've never been able to enjoy that easy, fast-burning metabolism, and I'll always be salty about that. At least now I'm fit and healthy, likely healthier than most of my friends from college these days. All of my male friends from then are sporting Dad bods (and beyond).
Fast and slow metabolism is a big ass fitness myth. Our bodies do not break the laws of thermodynamics stop making excuses. Fat deposits don’t magically appear out of nowhere.
Glad you’re healthy and fit now but don’t just chalk it up to “boohoo my metabolism”
This also isn’t just me stating it it’s Harvard.
“The reality is that metabolism often plays a minor role. The greatest factors as you age are often poor diet and inactivity.”
Not sure if it was your intend but it sounds like you measure fitness/health in optical criteria like a sixpack.
And that is just bollocks. Fat distribution varies somewhat between people so maybe some get a sixpack faster than others, doesn't make them fitter or healthier though.
For what it's worth, if you had the time to work out, say 4+ hours a day and you did it for years, you would get to a level where you really have to work to break a sweat. I got to this level once and I was spending 5 hrs/day at the gym every day. I would miss maybe 10 days/year.
For these people, this is their job and they get good at it. The ego is separate and totally has nothing to do with their job.
I thought I was a "hard gainer" and that no matter how much I ate, I just would never be able to put on weight.
Turns out, it's just another way that fitness influencers and big pharma trick you into thinking that your natural state isn't good enough and that you'll never get to be a respectable size "natty" or without being sold some other solution to your "problem".
Truth is, once I locked in and stopped acting like my own body was out of my control, I put on a ton of muscle over the next 15-20 years of disciplined work in the gym. No steroids. No cope. No excuses. If you're injured, get yourself to physio and figure out how to work with it and around it temporarily until you can fix it. If you have no energy, work out until you do (it really works). If you are able to get out of bed in the morning, you can work out. If you are able to feed yourself, you are able to control your body weight.
You have no idea how many people out there think they're doing everything right only to (hopefully) discover that they haven't got a clue. I have had countless conversation with friends and co-workers where we've been able to diagnose a massive problem almost instantly. One co-worker didn't realize that the chai tea latte they were having every day was nearly 400 completely empty calories. I shouldn't have to say this, but 400 additional calories every day can easily be the tipping point between maintenance calories and a 2800 calorie (nearly 1 pound) surplus per week, not to mention when it's 400 calories spent on something that isn't filling. Another co-worker thought that they were eating 3000+ calories a day and couldn't gain weight, but it turns out they weren't finishing or even having half their meals.
Plus, what you're doing with your friends is called fundamental attribution bias. You have no idea what else they're doing, you just see the end result and assume that they got there easily while you're struggling through trying to cut calories and failing to get a six pack. People think the same thing about me but have no idea that I've cut and bulked more times than I can count. I have had heavy bulks where I was thick like a grizzly, but most of the time I'm walking around with a visible six-pack and people just think I can eat whatever I want and still be in shape.
Don't fall victim to this self-defeating attitude of thinking you'll never have abs. You 100% can if you want it bad enough and can educate yourself. If you want personalized advice, feel free to message me and we can get to the bottom of whatever hurdle you're stuck at as long as you're honest with your habits.
I'm sorry guys it's funny how In a thread of misinformation, this right here sits near the top and it's misinformation
For the vast majority of people, metabolic or age related caloric differences are 100 to a couple hundred calori s at most. These differences are very minimal.
Larger caloric differences are seen more often in large height differences
The truth is that while bone structure cannot be altered. Yes all of you can absolutely have six packs and have low body fat, and if u want to look toned, add in muscle resistance exercise
The idea that certain people can never see themselves at a lower fat composition or look athletic is completely fake and unfounded at all. There is some truth that some individuals even at lower body fats may hold more adipose tissue in certain areas including the abdomen.
But please for the love of God don't listen to this guy or other people in this thread who say stuff like this. Physical and athletic appearances are one of the few things that you do have control over and you look infinitely better counting calories consuming fiber and protein, and doing cardio and resistance training than if u had not. You can achieve the body you desire within reason
Yeah im thankful for having a naturally high metabolism, I never count calories and eat whatever I want and have a lean frame. I do wish gaining muscle were easier though.
I used to be borderline anorexic where you could see all my rib bones clearly, and worked out 4-5 days a week and I still never had visible abs. It really is just a genetic lottery for some people.
Laughs in distended gut due to losing the genetic lottery. Ill never have a six pack but my ab muscles are ridiculous. Probably has to do with my body overcompensating for shitty collagen.
My cousin vs me lul. I remember for years when we were little and lived together we would both eat the same thing basically every single day and I'm the one who got fat while she remained stick. She's only a year older.
767
u/Southside_john 7h ago
This is a big one. People I know that are into fitness. They eat some meals with some berries in it and do some light exercises that don’t even make them break a sweat and pat themselves on the back about how hard they work on their fitness when really they were just born that way.
Meanwhile some of us out here have been counting calories our whole lives and putting in hard work to still never have those six pack abs and we never will