Why You Can't See Your Abs
If you are training on a regular basis and you can't see your abs, then your diet is wrong. Abs are built in the kitchen, it's all about your body-fat, if you train hard you should give the muscles what they want, no more and no less. Training correctly will definitely help you lose fat.
If you're a beer drinking eating Cheetos man, then don't expect miracles because you need to change your habits first. These habits should be adjusted to universal dietary principles in order to have sharp abs 12 months a year. These dietary principals are both physiological and chemical responses to the foods we eat. Like "cause and effect", what you eat (cause) will result in a very specific response (effect).
There are basically five different physiological responses that you can have to food. Below we have listed the important first three of these physiological responses to various types of food.
1) Carbohydrates and all sugars will raise blood sugar.The study of nutrition tells us that all carbohydrates will raise your blood-sugar levels, simple sugars will raise your blood-sugar fast and complex carbs like veggies and legumes will raise blood-sugar slowly. Carbohydrate foods include: all grains, starches and non-starches, refined foods and simple sugars, plus legumes and fruits.
Sports science shows us that any excess protein taken in will have minimal effect on your blood sugar level, providing adequate insulin is available. The bottom line, is that if you can't see your abs then there's a good chance that your diet is raising your blood-sugar levels too high.
2) Any excess carbs or glycogen that is not used immediately will be stored as FAT.
Your body is only able metabolize carbohydrates and sugars in their most simple form, which is glucose. Glucose is then stored in 2 places, your liver and your muscles. When glucose is stored it is called glycogen. Unfortunately, there's limited storage space available, which means any excess sugar that gets metabolized will then have nowhere for it to go, it has got to be put somewhere, so any excess glycogen produced gets converted into fat.
The reason this happens is because of the extraordinary high levels of free glucose found in the blood. These extremely high levels are toxic, so the body is trying to hold the glucose till it needs it by storing it as fat. However, unlike glycogen, the body continues to store fat until eventually this fat turns into love handles hiding your abs.
3) Insulin is an important Lipogenic Hormone
The only way that your blood sugar is able to process the carbs/sugars you ingest is with a hormone called insulin. The pancreas secretes insulin as soon as you eat or drink any carbohydrate. The role of insulin is to remove any and all glucose from the bloodstream, which it does by binding to your cell-membrane, and activating your "glucose transporters" in that specific cell, allowing glucose to enter into the cell.
Click Here for Your Free Bodybuilding Magazine Subscription