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A Flat Stomach ASAP

A Flat Stomach ASAP
By Ellington Darden

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A GREAT BODY BEGINS WITH A FLAT STOMACH

The secret to losing waistline pounds and inches quickly is ASAP, an acronym for Awareness, Science, Application, and Persistence. This successful method for achieving a lean body and a flat stomach includes a powerful new concept called superhydration. It's a fact: drinking large amounts of water daily synergizes your eating and exercising, accelerating fat loss and stomach flattening. Now nationally renowned fitness expert Ellington Darden brings you the program that tells you how to reshape, tighten, and shrink your stomach the way top competitors do -- and to do it faster than you dreamed possible. With step-by-step instructions, Dr. Darden details a method that can help you lose from 7 to 11 pounds of fat and 2 1/2 inches from your midsection in as little as two weeks -- and see even more dramatic results in six weeks. Discover:

  • The no-fad eating plan based around five daily "minimeals"
  • Exactly how to superhydrate to accelerate weight loss
  • The super-slow style of strength training that brings super-fast results -- in less than thirty minutes a session.

    Designed specifically for busy people, A FLAT STOMACH ASAP is your daily plan of action -- whether at the gym or at home, with or without equipment -- to get the look you want as soon as possible.

    • Product Details

    • Amazon Sales Rank: #200591 in Books
    • Published on: 1998-01-01
    • Original language: English
    • Number of items: 1
    • Binding: Paperback
    • 240 pages

    Editorial Reviews

    Amazon.com Review
    Ellington Darden tells the truth about his subject: you can't get a tight, muscular waistline from doing just a few minutes of abdominal exercise a day. (This from a guy who has actually hawked an ab-training device on infomercials.) In Darden's book, ASAP stands for "awareness, science, application, and persistence," and his program promises that, if you work really hard, you'll see results in six weeks. That doesn't sound like much of a promise, but considering how many people work out for months--if not years--and don't see any results, Darden's book is a dash of welcome hope and reality.

    About the Author
    Ellington Darden has a goal: to help people live leaner and stronger longer. For the lost thirty years he has worked with thousands of men and women who wanted to feel better physically, look more attractive, and improve overall health through a disciplined approach to nutrition and exercise.

    He holds bachelor's and master's degrees in physical education from Baylor University and a doctorate in exercise science from Florida State University. Two years of postdoctoral study in food and nutrition set him on the trail that led to the ASAP program.

    Dr. Darden was director of research for Nautilus Sports/Medical Industries for seventeen years. There he helped develop and popularize the highly acclaimed Nautilus exercise machines. Today, Dr. Darden is the founder and chairman of Living Longer Stronger, a corporation devoted to science and education.

    His outstanding research, which is applied in his books, is one reason he was recently honored by the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports as one of the top ten health leaders in the United States. A Flat Stomach ASAP is Dr. Darden's forty-fourth book.

    Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

    Chapter One

    ANSWER: SOLVE YOUR BULGING BELLY

    Absolutely fabulous: The craving for chiseled stomach muscles," blazed the front-page headline in USA Today (May 21, 1996). Placed throughout this article were pictures of the rippling midsections of Sylvester Stallone, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Janet Jackson, and a Calvin Klein underwear model.

    "It used to be enough just to be thin," wrote Joe Urshel, the author of this cover story. "No more. Now you must have great abs."

    Understanding the Obsession

    Why are Americans so obsessed with flat stomachs and muscular waists?

    Much of this obsession has to do with the law of supply and demand. What is scarce and difficult to achieve is valuable -- not only valuable but attractive.

    Twenty years ago, according to Ann Scott Beller, Americans were the third fattest people in the world -- ranking behind the Russians and Germans. Not so today. In 1995, we were elevated to the number one position.

    As if this number one position isn't secure enough, we're trying to run up the score.

    A study released by the Harris poll in February of 1996 shows that 74 percent of Americans twenty-five years of age and older are overweight. Similar Harris surveys found that 58 percent were overweight in 1983, 64 percent in 1990, 69 percent in 1994, and 71 percent in 1995.

    If this rate of increase -- approximately 1.1 percent per year -- continues unabated, then by the year 2021 every adult in the United States over twenty-five will be overweight.

    Obviously, we're becoming more and more obsessed with flat stomachs, great abdominals, and leanness in general -- because we're seeing fewer and fewer of what we find attractive. Remember the law of supply and demand? It applies not only to economics but also to body parts.

    The opposite of a flat stomach is a protruding or bulging belly. The opposite of leanness is fatness.

    Research reveals a direct relationship between flat and lean, and between protrusion and fatness. A person with a protruding belly has too much overall body fat.

    Thus, one important step in getting a flat stomach is to reduce overall fat. Other than surgery, which I don't recommend, there's no way to remove only belly fat. But most people do have the genetics to lose the majority of fat from their thickest storage spots, which is often the stomach area.

    Before getting into the cure or answer for a bulging belly, it's important to understand briefly some of the causes.

    Why Americans Are Getting Fatter

    Here are the primary reasons why Americans are gaining fat pounds and inches:

    The leisure-time activities of most people increasingly revolve around television, movies, and other passive activities. As a consequence, most adults lose one-half pound of muscle mass per year, which causes a onehalf percent decline in metabolic rate.

  • Even with all the media emphasis on the physical fitness boom in the last two decades, the end result has been a bust. Millions of people have been injured from exercise, and even more have received no results. Statistics show that fewer than 10 percent of adults do anything classified as vigorous at least three times per week.
  • We've been blitzed by a complex array of eating advice involving such things as fat grams, antioxidants, sugar-free, junk meals, and health foods. Such advice hasn't worked. Although we are consuming more low-fat and sugar-free foods than we did a decade ago, we have compensated by eating more of almost everything else as well. As a result, most adults add 1 1/2 pounds of fat per year to their bodies and accumulate a large amount of this fat around their midsections.
  • Research indicates that as most people age, they become drier. This drying occurs throughout the body: skin, hair, internal organs, bones, muscles, and even fatty tissues. Such dehydration can go unnoticed for years. Even mild dehydration accentuates the gradual loss of muscle and the gradual gain of fat.
  • More bad and good information exists today than ever before concerning eating and exercising. Unfortunately, bad information -- which is protected by our country's freedom of speech and freedom of the press -- is increasing in disproportionately large amounts compared to good information.

    The Answer to the Problem

    Logically, the answer must involve corrections for all of the causes, and it does.

  • Loss of muscle mass: Strength training rebuilds lost muscle mass. Strength training involves the use of dumbbells, barbells, lightweight home machines, heavy-duty health club equipment, or even movements using your own body weight.
  • Unsafe and unproductive exercise: Any type of exercise can be unsafe and unproductive, at least from a muscle-building capacity, if it is performed in a fast, jerky fashion, or if it is repeated for longer than two minutes. The safest and most productive form of strength training is called super slow. Each repetition requires fifteen seconds and is repeated four to eight times.
  • Complex dietary guidelines that lead to the overconsumption of calories and the increase in body fat: Simple, specific guidelines direct a person in exactly what to eat each meal. Five minimeals a day teach portion control, facilitate appetite regulation, and accelerate stomach flattening.
  • Dehydration: The cure for dehydration involves more than gulping down a little extra water. It entails the systematic and progressive sipping of at least one gallon of ice-cold water each day. Superhydration is the name I've given this process. When superhydration is correctly combined with the strength training and minimeals, you get a compounding, synergistic effect: you lose fat pounds and inches faster than ever!
  • Too much misleading information concerning courses of action: Having all parts to the puzzle is important. But equally important is the way and order in which you put them together. Too many courses of action quickly become a part of the problem rather than a reliable solution. A carefully organized six-week program -- with daily guidelines centering around eating, superhydrating, exercising, and resting -- combats misinformation and yields fast fat loss.

    Science: The Most Important Cornerstone

    As stated in the introduction, ASAP is a common acronym for as soon as possible. These letters also stand for Awareness, Science, Application, and Persistence, which are the cornerstones of stomach flattening.

    Science is the most important cornerstone.

    At the heart of science is the tension between contradictory attitudes: an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre they may be, and a skeptical scrutiny of both new and old ideas. The battle between creative and skeptical thinking keeps science on track.

    For more than twenty-five years I've been, in a sense, a scientist. Even before I began college, I had a curiosity about facts and a desire to search out the truth. For most of my fifty-three years I've had a strong interest in physical fitness.

    I graduated from Florida State University in 1972 with a Ph.D. in exercise science and then completed two years of postdoctoral study in the food and nutrition department. I was director of research for Nautilus Sports/Medical Industries for seventeen years. As a result, I've read, studied, and reviewed much of the scientific literature on fitness. Furthermore, I've researched and published more than 350 articles and forty-four books on food, nutrition, fat loss, and strength training.

    In the process, I've trained more than four thousand men and six thousand women on various eating and exercising plans. My overriding objective was always to find the most effective and efficient way to reduce fat and build muscl

    • Customer Reviews

    Amazing results5
    What Darden advocates in this book is a reduced calorie eating plan, drinking a whole lot of icy water, and a series of intense, deliberate, strenuous mussle building workouts. The three work together to produce amazing fat-loss results. I'd note that while the diet is somewhat restricted, it is macro-nutrient balanced in carbohydrate, fat and protein, unlike many fad diets. However, becasue of the reduced caloric intake levels, it is not an eating plan designed to be kept after the program. Those looking for other dining options and recipies can check out Darden's "The Nautilus Diet" for options that work in conjunction with the ASAP plan. P.S. I'm a strong proponent of the ASAP plan, becasue it worked amazingly well for me. This program, and specificaly the SuperSlow exercise techniques, alowed me to build many pounds of muscle mass, without any type suplementation. I also lost nearly 20 pounds of fat.

    Very Good!4
    This scientific approach to a flat stomach is logically presented and fairly easy to read and understand. I've been using some of his principles (the super hydrations technique and the exercises) with some success.

    There are two reason why I didn't give this book 5 stars: 1) The diet is just too rigid. I mean very rigid. You have to buy a certain brand of bagel and THAT'S IT. There were no substitutions on the menu. I can't live like that. And 2) There was very little about a maintenance program to follup up with. The exercise program looked progressive, but the diet part of it wasn't.

    Very Good Guide for Effective Exercise with Gimmicky Title4
    I liked this book despite the "ASAP" part of its title (ASAP being an acronym for some principles the author presents). Darden presents a program that lasts for 6 weeks but can then be adapted over the long term to improve overall muscular strength and weight of all muscles, not just abs. The key to the exercise component is to do a small number of exercises (some with weights, some without) at a very slow and controlled pace until individual muscles are fatigued. I have had good luck with this approach in strength training and think it works well to develop muscle without causing you injury.

    As a book on using the "super slow" strength-training approach to exercise, it is quite clearly written with good instructions. I found the diet parts less interesting, in that there really isn't anything new there, though recommendations for diet are clear. It basically says you need to cut calories by eating certain types of food to lose weight, and can do so most efficiently in combination with exercise.

    This is a very good exercise book that is effective, easy to understand,and that comes at a good price. I would recommend it highly.