It isn't enough to build and tone your abs if you can't see the results. If you only focus on strengthening your ab muscles, you will still have an excess layer of fat covering them. You have to lose the excess fat that surrounds your stomach and decrease your percentage of body fat overall. We all want six pack abs. It's that look we all wish we could have. While most of us go through life with a one-pack, we'd like to upgrade that to six pack abs.

When Do Ab Muscles Become Visible?

You need to decrease your body fat to about 10%. Because even if you get the muscles sculpted and built, you will never see it because of the fat! Next, you'll have to work on all three sets of muscles. You'll have to do exercises for the top, middle, and lower abdominal areas.

See the reasons of belly fat and What Causes Stomach Fat.

How Is Body Fat Measured?

You generally know when you have a high body fat percentage. It is very apparent just by looking at your body. Finding out a persons body fat percentage can be done through scientific means that can give you an exact percentage, but that isn't required to know when your fat percentage is too high. The 10% figure is just an arbitrary number based on averages between many people, but it varies between people so don't cling to that number over anything else. And the ideal body percentage is different between men and women as well. Women will generally have a higher ideal body fat percentage than men. It will be more likely that many women should be aiming more to a 15%-20% body fat percentage.

How To Decrease Percentage Of Body Fat

You can decrease your body fat percentage by changing your diet so that you start losing weight instead of gaining or maintaining. You have an excess layer of fat that surrounds your stomach, you need to lose that before your ab muscles can be seen. This is done by changing your diet and by exercising to burn the extra fat.

Decrease Body Fat And Increase Muscle Mass

In order to get visible ab muscles, you need to decrease your overall body fat percentage by losing weight and burning the excess fat from your stomach. You also need to increase and tone your ab muscles so that they can be clearly defined and visible. This is achieved by a commitment to an exercise routine that involves the flat stomach exercises that you find on this site.

See where your body weight should be with the Ideal Body Weight Chart.

Final Thoughts

If you want to get firm, toned, and visible ab muscles, then you have to take the steps to achieve it. You need to decrease your overall body fat percentage and get it to a level where your abdominal muscles beneath the fat can be seen. Then you need to do the right flat stomach exercises to get your ab muscles toned and defined. This is very do-able, but it takes commitment from you and the dedication to do what needs to be done.