How To Get Eight-Pack Abs

I know, you want answers. You’ve tried everything: weekend diets, 30-day ab challenges, even joining a gym for weeks on end. None of these things seem to work for you. You’re tired of not seeing results from all your minutes of hard effort.

I understand. I’ve been there.

You’re surrounded by misleading information from people who just want to sell you their product or program. There’s too much information going around to know what’s real and what is only going to be a further waste of time.

I’m here to help you.

I’m not going to sell you anything. I’m going to give you my own, time-tested personal information that I have used for nearly 20 years to develop and keep, not a six-pack, but the mythical eight-pack abs that so many of you want and deserve.

Follow these four simple steps, and I guarantee that you will see amazing results for the rest of your life.

1. Pick Your Parents Well

Genetics is everything. Therefore, before you’re born, you need to plan accordingly. Deciding who your parents are going to be is vital. Granted, you will inevitably need to make sacrifices in order to achieve this fantastic aspect of physique, but in the big picture these sacrifices are worth it.

However, do your homework. There are a lot of factors that go into this. How will you balance one aspect for another? Do want higher muscle density or just a longer torso? Is it worth it to you to have hyperthyroidism if it means having an incredible metabolism that burns off all those excess calories and keeps you trim and lean? Only you can answer that.

I chose parents who guaranteed my eight-pack physique while making the relatively small trade-off of knowing that there was an extremely high prevalence of multiple cancers, Alzheimer, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, and as well as several other diagnosable DSM-5 neuroses. Have I struggled with multiple bouts of crippling depression that left me utterly useless and nearly failing out of college because I couldn’t function like a normal human being for weeks on end from having such a high metabolism that my body fat became so low that I couldn’t produce certain hormones or neurotransmitters? Absolutely. But who hasn’t? Again, I cannot over emphasize the importance of remembering to keep the bigger picture in mind. You may feel terrible for the rest of your life, but in those instances that you manage to make it out bed, you will look incredible.

2. Choose The Right Digestive Disorder

Once you have the issue of deciding your parents taken care of, the next step is to determine which digestive disorder you want to have for the rest of your life. Why? Because having a digestive disorder guarantees that you won’t have to be held accountable for having a lack of self-control. Think of it like a nuclear bomb deterrent when you decide that momentary happiness is more important than overall health.

I chose celiacs.

Here’s why: by going the first 27 years of my life being intolerant to gluten and not knowing it, I was able to turn my small intestines into the Battle of Verdun of digestive tracts. I dedicated myself to damaging my digestive system so completely that I was malnourished to the point of having a nearly non-function nervous system.

In fact, I was so lean that I had too little body fat to fully myelinate nerves. Which, granted, it did cause further and more extensive bouts of depression, adrenal fatigue, and crashed my hormone levels. Also, my thyroid stopped working (just a heads up for those of you might not like being cold all the time). Not to mention the crippling abdominal pain. I know, having gall stones probably doesn’t sound like a fun way to be in excruciating pain. But for just a few hours a week of debilitating pain curled up in a fetal position on the bathroom floor waiting for the pain to subside, you’re going to look great in a swimsuit.

How did I manage it? By continuing to eat gluten when I didn’t know I shouldn’t be, I caused so much intestinal inflammation that my body couldn’t absorbed nutrients. Because of this, I was essentially starving no matter how much I ate. How great is that?! I would eat, and eat, and eat! After all that eating, I would actually lose body fat! Forget macros, I was body building lean 365 days a year. I walked around at a steady 4.5 - 3.5 percent body fat constantly!

But I digress. The important thing to remember is that there are lots of options out there. Find the digestive disorder that works best for you. Don’t worry either, there are so many fad diets currently available to assist you in your transition into your digestive disorder that you’ll never have to worry about not having an exorbitant and exceedingly complicated grocery bill.

3. Immerse Yourself In A Culture That Instills Low Self-Esteem and Destroys Your Sense Of Worth

Put simply: go to school in a small town.

This is one of the easiest ways to insure that you will have the work ethic required to be able to have, not just decent, but phenomenal abdominal definition. I was lucky enough to be surrounded by a support group of peers (both older and younger) that took my future physique development very seriously. Yes, it may have seemed harsh at the time. Looking back, I realized the truth of the of the tough-love support that they were providing. My fellow students and mentors were playing the long game. They knew that all those days of telling me that I was worthless and a piece of shit, slamming me against lockers, beating me up in bathrooms, and overall making my life a living hell day in and day out were going to pay off one day.

I can’t thank them enough.

…Really.

This is certainly not the only way to accomplish this task. It is only one example. Have fun with it. Experiment and see what works for you. The purpose here is to find an environment that reminds you on a daily basis that you will never be worth anyone’s time no matter how hard you try or what you accomplish.

Why does this, and similar examples, work? Well, you need to realize that you are worthless before you can become truly obsessed with something that might offer redemption. By being beaten down physically, mentally, and emotionally by your peers, you begin to look for solitude and escape into any or all outlets. It could be drugs. It could be acting out in public in ways that eventually escalate to criminal activities. But it could also instead turn into an interest in an otherwise healthy and beneficial activity (ie. strength and conditioning) and proceed to take it to an astronomically unhealthy level.

Once you’ve decided on how you’d like to establish feeling worthless, go all in! No one wants to do things in halves. Those years of feeling repressed anger and isolation will become the fuel to help you dive in and destroy your still growing body with excessive workouts, too little sleep, no nutritional awareness, and crap recovery. Your pursuit of abdominal definition on par with Grecian works of art will be strenuous. You’ll need to call on those memories when you feel tired and weak. But that kind of fuel takes time to build and doesn’t come cheap. You will need to be truly dedicated to feeling worthless if you pick this method.

4. Develop A Sufficiently Powerful Addiction To Exercise

Even though this is the last step, it’s importance cannot be understated. The fourth step is the culmination of all the work you’ve put into developing a system of getting breath-taking abdominal definition. The first thing you need to do is remind yourself on a daily (or even hourly, be an overachiever) that your self-worth is determined by how good you look. Then tell yourself that the only part that looks good is your abs.

Not your face. Never you’re face. Because, frankly, you’re ugly.

You’re also too short.

And too skinny.

And weak.

Basically, you suck. That’s the mantra you need running through you head 24/7. Give yourself constant reminders. In fact, say it every time you look in the mirror. *(If you can slide in a “you will never succeed or amount to anything in life” along with “no one’s going to love you” this will certainly help to accelerate the addiction, but it isn’t as critical.)

Now be patient, it will take a little time to develop this mindset. But stick to it. You’ve put in so much time and effort getting to this point. Don’t quit the negative self-talk until it really pays off. At the end of all of this, you’ll have the opportunity to realize that working out is the only thing that helps stave off the voices in your head that beat you down every waking hour of every day.

Now, and only now, you are truly ready. It’s time to become addicted.

You might be thinking, “Dane, I workout hard. I’m an athlete. I’m a…” Nope. Addiction isn’t going to the gym 3-4 days a week. That’s only consistency. It isn’t two workouts per day or training five or six days per week. That’s just dedication.

Addiction is 6 hours per day. Minimum. Every day. Always. You either destroy yourself or its not enough. How do you keep this level of determination going? With everything that we previously discussed driving you towards your goal. The only happiness you should ever feel is when you’re working out. The idea of a runner’s high is mere child’s play. You need constant stimulation. You need to be on the brink of insanity when you’re not in the gym, or not running, or not squeezing in a training session at inopportune times while neglecting all of your other responsibilities. Life depends on working out. The voices of your peers will only be turned down when you’re in the middle of a set. The reflection you see in the mirror will never amount to the image you have in your head of what you should look like. The body you know you need to have to prove everyone wrong is only another workout away. The physique that will make up for all the pain you were put through growing up is coming, someday. All of this is what is truly important.

Happiness = destroying yourself. Repeatedly. With no end in sight. Ever.

I know, all of this may seem like quite a bit at first. The science is compelling, but you may still be skeptical. I can speak from personally experience that not only does this system work, but as an n=1 experiment, it works 100% of the time. So, if you’re tired of wasting time and money on reputable strength coaches and qualified nutritionists, then I’m here to offer real help and even realer results. On top of which, I’m giving it to you for free. Why? Because you deserve to be as unhealthy as you want to achieve the body you think you need.

Good luck to all you!

Sincerely,

Dane Lee, LMT