GOAL NO. 1
THE TAPERED TORSO
• REMEMBER THE OLD ADAGE that “abs are made in the kitchen?” Well, the same principle applies to your entire midsection. “You can do all the gym work in the world”, says Zach Even-Esh, founder of New Jersey’s The Underground Strength Gym in the US, “but if your body’s covered by a layer of fat, then nobody will know”.
That’s why getting yourself on a very strict, clean diet — with the right balance of proteins, fats, and carbs — is the key to transforming your flabby torso into a perfectly cut, tapered midsection.
But how do you do it? The first order of business is to get your math in order, and that means calculating what your overall calorie intake needs to be, says sports nutritionist and strength coach CJ Murphy, MFS, owner of Total Performance Sports, in Malden, USA.
So, if pure fat loss is your goal, you need to set the goal of ingesting roughly 16 to 24 calories per kilogram of your entire body weight per training day, depending on how active you are and how much fat you need to shed. (And remember: Be honest with yourself.) If you’re already fairly lean and you just want better muscular definition, you’re allowed 24 to 30 calories per kilogram of body weight. (Though it’s best to start on the low end and see how it goes.) So, if you’re a 90-kilogram guy looking to get lean, at 20 calories per kilogram, you’re looking at roughly a 4000-calorie-per-day diet.
Now what should it be? Well, Murphy recommends a simple high-protein carb-cycling program, with which you eat more carbohydrates on your strength training days and less on days off, creating a caloric deficit that torches fat.
So, let’s start with strength-training days.
First, of course, you’ll need lots of lean protein. “That includes anything that
