Understanding How to Get Great Abs Can Boost Your Mental Health

Understanding how people get great abs can help to help make you feel better about not having abs

There are three key elements that you need to understand to get a rocking six-pack:

• Exercise
• Diet
• Genetics

Where many people go wrong is in not understanding how the above three elements interlink.

The amount of exercise and the type of exercise, along with the sort of dieting that you need to do to get a six-pack (or a great bubble butt), is completely and entirely defined by your genetics.

And everyone’s genetics are different. It is simply a fact of life. There are people who have similar genetics but there are no people with identical genetics. That means that every person must carve their own path to getting in shape which means the key factor to getting in shape is self-learning, specifically working towards understanding the way your body responds to exercise and diet.

Though you are probably wondering at this point what all this has got to do with helping people to feel better about their body image, and I will get to that. First I want to briefly talk about how different people go about getting into shape, along with the different results people have.

Some people need to do a lot of cardio to get great abs, some people need to stay as far away from cardio as possible. Some people need to eat a lot of carbs, some people need to cut out as many carbs as they can.

To get in great shape you have to experiment with all of this and work out what your body best responds to. A good personal trainer can help you in this regard, but not without substantial input from you.

It doesn’t matter whether it be through learning from a personal trainer or whether it be through learning from the Internet or wherever, the key is still the same. Not in your desire to train in the gym or eat right — which is important for staying healthy but not for getting in great shape — but in your desire to first learn how your body responds to different forms of exercise and diet, and to second carry out the exercise and dietary requirements that you have worked out best suit your genetics.

On a side note, that’s why getting in shape can take such a long time, because it takes trial and error to work out the best path. For example, a person may experiment with an exercise and diet plan for six months only to realise at the end of it that it was not right for them in regard to achieving their goal, in which case they will need to learn from the experience and create a different exercise and diet plan.

Yep, getting in great shape can be extremely frustrating. And in all probability to get into great shape you are going to have to spend more time learning about gym training and diet and experimenting with how your body responds to all the different types of training styles and diets than you are going to spend training in the gym.

What has all this got to do with helping anyone feel better about not looking like all those people we see on Instagram looking amazing these days?

Here is the thing, some people are lucky, they have the right genetics and for whatever reason are already near enough eating the right diet, and due to the way they live their lives are already not far away from having great abs. That is why they are able to get themselves a killer physique in a period of 6 to 12 months.

Most people are not so lucky, and in fact some people can train in the gym every day, working unbelievably hard in there, really tearing the place up; they can spend much time trying to get their diet right, working out the right level of carbs, protein, this, that, everything and yet still not have killer abs.

Some people despite the time they spend in the gym, and despite their efforts to get their diet right, and despite the fact they’ve been trying for years, the closest they will get to a killer set of abs will be looking at a picture of Zac Efron in Baywatch.

And that is not because it is impossible for them to have great abs, it is just that they either have not worked out what it is they need to do to get great abs, or know what it is they have to do but either it is simply too great of an ask for them to do it or they simply have not done it yet for whatever reason.

But seriously, what’s all this got to do with helping me feel better about not having great abs?

If you don’t have the right genetics, you could spend endless hours in the gym, put in much effort into perfecting your diet, be super strong and have great fitness endurance, and yet stand next to a person who has the right genetics, and even if they put in about a tenth of the effort you could still find they look in better shape than you.

Cristiano Ronaldo is a great footballer and he’s a great footballer for two reasons: he has great genetics for playing football, and he has a great desire and will to play football and get better at it which he does through a mixture of self-learning, training and smart lifestyle choices.

What if he didn’t love playing football every day, living for football, breathing football? Even if he had the same genetics, he wouldn’t be even close to the player that he is. And he wouldn’t care either because he wouldn’t want to play football.

Perhaps he would fantasise now and then about being rich and famous like a footballer, but he wouldn’t be interested in putting in the effort to be one, because again, why would he if he didn’t like football. Cristiano Ronaldo is only a great footballer because he has both great football genetics and loves football — obsessively loves it at that.

This brings me back to gym training and looking like those guys and gals on Instagram. How many people love the gym, love dieting? Unless you are extraordinarily blessed if you don’t love the gym and you don’t love dieting you are not going to have great abs or biceps or have a gym perfect ass.

Lots of people are upset about this — mainly due to societal pressures to look perfect. But here is the thing, how many people sit around and get upset because they can’t play football as well as Cristiano Ronaldo can, or even as well as a Sunday league footballer can?

There are some but not many.

A lot of people who love football would love to be as good as Cristiano Ronaldo, but even then that love does not translate into a desire to put in the effort that he does. You have to want to live and breathe football as well as having the right genetics to be Cristiano Ronaldo.

Again this is why even those who love football are not upset that they can’t play as well as Cristiano Ronaldo can. They may wish they could, but they don’t beat themselves up over it.

The point I am making

Most of us don’t get upset because we can’t play football like Cristiano Ronaldo, we don’t fall into depression because we can’t play golf like Tiger Woods, we don’t crumble with self-doubt because we can’t play tennis like Serena Williams.

Despite this, many of us suffer severe mental health issues because we aren’t blessed with great aesthetics or a desire to work obsessively to get great aesthetics.

Put in a lot of hard work and effort and get the right amount of support from the right age and you, just the same as anyone, could become a good footballer. Not many can become a Cristiano Ronaldo or a Lionel Messi, but anyone can become a good footballer.

The gym is the same, with a lot of hard work and effort anyone can get into great shape and sport a rocking six-pack. But here is the thing: even if you have great genetics, if you don’t want to spend a ton of time in the gym and getting your diet right, why would you beat yourself up because you don’t look in great shape?

Society has put abs and ass on a pedestal

Society has groomed us all to think that being in great shape somehow makes a person superior. It doesn’t. It just tells you that they’ve either got great ab/ass genetics or are willing to spend crazy amounts of time and effort learning about gym training and diet and utilising those learnings to get into great shape.

I learned something years back, if you focus on what you enjoy and what you’re good at, and forget everything else, you’ll end up happy and confident in life and yourself.

If you don’t love the gym and you don’t love eating the perfect diet, it’s no different from if you don’t love playing football or if you don’t love playing golf or tennis or whatever. So why would you treat not being in great shape any different to how you treat not being great at football or golf or tennis or whatever?

The more of us that understand that being in great shape is no different from being great at anything else, the more of us will feel better about the way we look.

To put it more bluntly. We don’t punish ourselves for not excelling at football like Cristiano Ronaldo, or for not excelling at golf like Tiger Woods, or for not excelling at tennis like Serena Williams, or for not excelling at general relativity like Albert Einstein. And yet the only reason they excel at what they excel at is because of genetics and an obsessive love for what they excel in.

So if you are not blessed with Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jennifer Lopez genetics, and you don’t love training in the gym or eating the perfect diet, and you don’t get upset because you can’t play football like Cristiano Ronaldo or golf like Tiger Woods, why waste emotional energy getting upset that you don’t have an amazing physique?

Because society has made you think that you should get upset. Society is wrong.

Final words

Societal pressures to look good these days are immense. But if you don’t love the gym and aren’t obsessed with eating the perfect diet, remember that there are other things you are great at. Focus on them and you will be just as successful as those with great physiques because you will be doing the same thing that they are doing, working hard at what you are best at and most enjoy doing.

The more of us who acknowledge that fact, the less pressure there will be on people to look in amazing shape.

That’s all for me, thanks for reading!

Note: what constitutes fit and healthy looks different in every person, and in some people the price of having an amazing physique can be the sacrifice of their health. So remember the goal is not to look amazing (unless that’s what you want), but to be fit and healthy, which is the most amazing shape anyone can be in.

If you like this post you may also enjoy the following:

The Most Important Person You Need to Listen to If You Want Great Abs

Five Things You Can Do to Get Great Abs

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