Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2885: How to Get Six-Pack Abs in 4–6 Weeks: Track Calories, Eat High Protein, and Strength Train Your Core

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

Get The No BS 6-Pack Formula: https://www.nobs6pack.com?htrafficsource=libsyn-organic&hcategory=MPSHOW&el=2885 This Episode discusses why visible six-pack abs are rare and emphasizes that abs are muscles that must be built while getting leaner through improved body composition, not just weight loss. It outlines a three-part approach: (1) track everything you eat and drink for seven days without changing habits to establish a true calorie baseline, then monitor waist or body-fat trends; (2) create a modest calorie deficit of about 500 calories, eat about 1 gram of protein per pound of target body weight, avoid heavily processed foods, and test removing bloat-triggering foods like gluten, dairy, eggs, or legumes; and (3) prioritize strength training over cardio to preserve muscle, and train abs with resistance, full range of motion, and moderate reps rather than high-rep endurance work. The episode also promotes the No BS Six-Pack Formula program and sponsor products.   This episode is brought to you by CRISP POWER www.crisppower.com/mindpump Go to www.crisppower.com/mindpump and use code mindpump for 10% off your order 00:00 Six Pack Reality Check 00:58 Build Abs Not Skinny 03:41 Track Calories Baseline 06:02 Avoid Tracking Mistakes 09:34 Cut Calories Add Protein 11:09 Beat Bloat Triggers 16:25 Strength Training Wins 18:16 Train Abs Like Muscle 21:46 Programs And Wrap Up

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump. Mind pump with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast in history. This is Mind Pump. All right, in today's episode, we're going to teach you three things you can do to get a six-pack, six-pack abs in four to six weeks.

By the way, we have a core training program, a program designed to give you a six-pack to build those abs, give you hard obliques, to make you look impressive in the midsection, and it's 50% off. You can get the full program for $28.50. Go to no BS6pack.com. That's no BS, the number six pack.com. Use the code six pack for 50% off. That's the number six, and then pack again. That'll get you the price of $28.50. Now, this episode is brought to by Crisp Power. These are high protein pretzels. One bag of pretzels would normally contain one gram of protein. Not crisp power.

Crisp power protein pretzels are like 24 to 28 grams of protein in a bag. Same size bag of pretzels. Way more protein. Why is this good? Build more muscle, burn more body fat, get more satiety. What does that mean? That means one bag of crisp power pretzels, although they taste like normal pretzels, because they're so high in protein,

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Use the code mind pump. Get 10% off. All right, real quick, if you love us like we love you, why not show it by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpumpstore.com. I'm talking right now, hit pause,

head on over to mindpumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. We're going to talk about six-pack abs. We're going to talk about the three things that you can do to get a six-pack in four to six weeks. Oh, man, this would be...

Let's get to it. Easier helping people make a million dollars. The statistics show that. Uh-huh. The impossible. Statistically, there are more millionaires than people of six-pack ads. That's wild when you can do.

about that. When you think about the difficulty of making a million dollars and think that, like, you know, you feel like probably very, you feel like very few people have that. Just shows you how few of people have actual six-pack. Well, think about how many millioners have a six-pack? I wonder what, I want, yeah, that's even more rare. You, how do you think they make, because there's probably a lot of people that have had a six-pack,

but then they don't keep it. Yeah. And so how do they count that, right? Is it like at any given time, there's only a percentage? You've got to be musk or it can't just be like, you know, the skinny pack. Bingo. Yeah. Skinny abs.

We all have abs. It's skinny enough. That's where I've seen the most, probably. No, that's a good point because there's a, when you train wrong, uh, because, let's say you're trying to get a six pack and you're working out, right? If you train wrong, you don't build. People forget that the abs are muscles. They, they, they, for some reason, we consider them as something different.

And yes, it's true. You need to get lean to see, uh, your abs. but when you build them, they're just going to be more visible at higher body fat percentages. I experienced just myself. It'd be interesting to test the, like what that is on average, like the percentage.

I know we've speculated on here. We've talked about this. Like, you know, the difference of like building your abs, you know, you could probably see them at 2 to 3% higher body fats. That's right. You know, is what I would speculate. It'd be cool to see an actual, like, study around that.

Well, think about an arm. Think about a guy who's 16% bodyfat. So that's not lean enough to be considered like really lean, but it's athletic, right? Think about a guy with a lot of muscle who has six, is that 16% body fat. What does the arm look like versus a guy with no muscle at 16% body fat? What does his arm look like? I mean, I would go even as high as 18, 19%. If you, if you train your muscles for a long period of time and you have decent arms,

even at even at 18, 19% body fat, you look like you work out. That's right. So if you train wrong to get a six-pack, you're just not going to build them. So it's going to be much more difficult to make them visible. And then if you eat wrong, here's what happens if you eat wrong, you lose muscle or you gain fat. You may lose weight on the scale, but you're not leaner. Remember, what we're after for is leaner. And leaner is body composition.

Leener is not necessarily lighter or skinnier. So a guy, and you could pull this up. probably find this online. If you picked up, if you pulled up a six foot tall guy at 10% body fat, who's 200 pounds versus a 19% body fat, six foot tall guy at 200 pounds, they look radically different. Yeah. They look very, very different. And in fact, most people would think that the 10% body fat guy is much lighter. Uh, but he's just leaner. He's a lot leaner. So if you don't train right and you don't eat right or you do things the wrong way, will you end up with is no results or maybe even worse results.

What I've seen so many times in the past is that people will do this the wrong way and they'll lose weight and actually end up flabier than they were before because of the amount of muscle that they lost. It's actually weaker and flabbier at a lighter body weight on the scale. And so if you're after a six-pack, what you want to do is get leaner and build. Yeah. You don't want to lose muscle in the process. That's right.

So here's step one. Step one is we want to start tracking. We want to start tracking because we're going to be. trying to be in what's known as a calorie deficit. So any time you want to lose body fat, you have to eat less calories than you're burning. Okay. And in order to do that,

you have to know how many calories you're burning on a regular basis. Now, there's a couple ways to do this. You could get a general number. You could go to maps macro.com. We have a macro calculator. And this will give you kind of general idea of where you may be at, but it's it's not perfectly accurate.

In fact, there is no perfectly accurate way to know how many calories you're consuming, or should I say burning, versus tracking. Tracking is the most accurate way to do this. So what you would do is over the next, let's say, seven days, is you would not change your diet whatsoever, and you would use a tracking app to track everything that you eat and drink. And you're not changing anything. The goal is just to see what you average on a regular basis.

By the way, just one tip on this. You want to track in real time. In fact, I saw some data on this earlier, and it was like a duh moment for me. What people sometimes do when they track is they wait until the end of the day. Terrible. Yep. To track. I've seen the stats on this.

The percentage that you're likely to be off when you do that, it dramatically increases. Yes. Instead of doing it in real time. So like right when you finish eating, track them. What's crazy, Adam, is now there are apps that... You can screenshot it. You could screenshot it. Yeah.

And they're remarkably accurate. Whereas, you know, well, she's, when I was a trainer back in the day, we used to have a book. Was it calorie king? Is that the new of it? You'd have to, like, look it up and then weigh your food and do the whole thing. And then apps got better and you had to kind of know the weight or enter the food. But now you can literally take a picture of it and it'll track it for you right then and there. Don't leave anything out.

Track everything you eat, everything you drink for seven days. So you can get an average of what you're consuming. And this is what we're going to assume. is your baseline. So if you're averaging every single day, 2,700 calories, then this is what your body is burning on a regular basis. You're consuming 27. This is what you're probably burning.

So now we know what your baseline is. And so we want to go below that in order to lose some body fat. Yeah, I would add to that because what happens sometimes somebody hears this episode and it prompts them to, you know, want to kick it up a notch or get back to being consistent. And then this first week, a mistake I see sometimes is they track, but they track the first week of their dieting already. They're trying to clean it up.

They've already modified it. They've already modified it. They've already made behavior. It's like I always used to have to tell clients like, listen, this sounds weird, but I want you to eat completely normal. Meaning if you normally go get that frappuccino in the morning, you know, at Starbucks, I want you to do it. And we're just going to track it now.

If you normally have a late night snack, I want you to do it. I want you to do the things that you normally do, so I have a true baseline. Because if you just send people off to track for a week and they're now motivated to track and do a diet and go to... And like, they tend to change behaviors because they know they're tracking. Because there's a bunch of research on that too. Like people that just track automatically... Start to eat less. Eat less because they know they're tracking.

And so I would always have to put this emphasis on, listen, we're trying to really find your baseline right now. And so I really want just normal week of eating. This is not me going, oh, that's bad or good or measuring any of that. It's like we want to see your normal patterns and behaviors. Now, why is that so important? Because if you go in too large of a deficit, the risk of losing muscle goes up. That's right. So if you have somebody who already starts to correct behaviors and is eating cleaner,

i.e. shaving now 250, 500 calories a day because they know they're tracking. Right. And then your coach or then you, take the advice you're about to give where you reduce calories. Well, now you put them in this massive deficit they didn't need to be in because they already were in a deficit because they're tracking. Yeah. So in other words, I may want to put someone in a calorie deficit of 500 to 700 calories,

but because the person already cleaned up, quote unquote, their diet when they were tracking, now I accidentally put them at a 1,200 calorie deficit, which increases the odds that they're going to lose muscle. And we don't want to lose muscle. Losing muscle is the wrong strategy, especially if you want to see muscles. You want to see muscle? You want to see your abs? they got to be there.

You got to have them built. And losing muscle is not going to accomplish it. You might get lighter on the scale, but you're not going to get necessarily leaner. So you want to track for about seven days. And we also want to start tracking some measurements. So waist measurement is a great way to do this. You can measure your waist with a circumference tape

and do this at the same time every single day and get a nice general number. If this starts to go down, you're probably getting leaner. You tend to not build tons of muscle around the waist. So it's not like measuring your arm, where it could get bigger as you get leaner type of deal. Your waist probably won't do much of that.

So waste is a real basic, easy way to do this. Or you can use a body fat test, which is great as well. But again, if you're testing your body fat percentage, you want to look at trends. Don't look at the number that you just got based off the last one over the next few weeks or whatever. We're looking at trends. Which direction is it going?

Then we get to the diet part. So now you're like, okay, I know what my calories are normally. I'm going to cut my calories down. Typically, you want to go about 500 below what you were averaging. You may be tempted to go even more than that. Don't do that. It'll increase your odds of rebound or increase your odds of losing muscle. And we can always go lower later.

You could later, right? Leave some room. So give you just 500. That's it. 500 below what you were eating. And now here's what we're going to do. I want you to eat your body weight and grams of protein. Eat your target body weight in grams of protein.

This accelerates fat loss. So when they compare diet to diet with the calories of the same, both in a calorie deficit, the high protein version loses more body fat and maintains more muscle. So in other words, you'll lose the same amount of weight except some more of it's going to come from muscle if the protein isn't where we're saying it, by the way. And if you look up high protein, RDA, it's not what we're saying. We're saying optimal protein from what we see on the studies, the upper limit from where you're going to get benefit, which is close to about a gram of protein per pound of target body weight.

You also want to avoid heavily processed foods. Heavy processed foods make you overeat in the data when you look at the studies and you compare and they compare these diets together. Really well-controlled studies. People consume five to 600 more calories when they eat processed foods with the same level of satiety, meaning same level of fullness, but I just ate 600 more calories. And that's because processed foods are engineered to make you. really want to overeat.

And then the third thing is avoid foods that give you bloat. We are talking about wanting to see your abs. And bloat isn't necessarily body fat. But if you want to see your abs, bloat will take away from that. And the foods that tend to contribute to bloat, this isn't true for everybody, but generally speaking, these are the foods that tend to be the greatest offenders. They tend to be gluten or dairy or eggs or lagoons or all three of those. So I would try to look at easily digestible foods or food.

foods that don't cause bloat. Now, if those foods don't cause blow in you, that's totally fine. I would say of all of them, gluten seems to be the most consistent with the people that I've worked with that causes the most blow. So I'd say stay away from it. You know, I think it's a, it is a good time. You're on a kick. You're going to start this plan. Maybe you think those foods don't cause that. I think it's a good time to test that. I would always encourage clients that we were like, let's say we're going to set a goal like this. We would get to or see our abs. And maybe I'd ask them previously, like, you know, are you allergic to any foods or intolerant to anything? No, no, I'm good. Glutin's fine.

Dairy's fine. They tell me that. And then we go on this kick where we're really dialing in and we're trying to really move the needle or see visible change in your abs. A lot of times I would encourage them, hey, I know you told me that, you know, you don't have any issues with gluten or this and that. But since we're doing this anyways and we're eating, and we're, let's, let's try and actually limit this or cut this out for a little bit. Just tell me how you feel. I'm just curious. A lot of times I would encourage them to do that because what I've found is there's, there's a spectrum here. There is definitely people that are very aware they have a dairy intolerance. There's no denying that. You know that. It's like immediately. Yeah, you have

something and it affects you immediately. Then you have somebody who I think is like, so like, I'm a lower on that spectrum. Like, I can get away with a serving or so of dairy. I started hitting two servings of dairy or three servings of dairy in a day. And I start to have, I see, I see stool issues. I see bulls. I see bulls. I start to notice that. So I think a lot of people fall somewhere on that spectrum and they assume because they don't have this loud signal that says you're intolerant to it, that they don't have a mild intolerance to it.

And so what a great time. You're trying to see your abs. Like, how about we pull this out for a little bit? And I have found that a lot of clients who are okay with eating those foods realize, you know what? I was okay, but I'm even better when I don't. And I see my abs. I'm leaner.

I feel, and so this is a good time. I would encourage even the people that think they have no intolerances to this to test out pulling some of those out and see how you, and see if you see an improvement. If you see no improvement after the 60, 90 days that you're doing this, then cool, have it in there.

But I would say 80% of the clients that thought they had no intolerance whatsoever to any of those foods, when I convinced them to at least try that, saw an improvement. Yeah, It's interesting too, because there's also that delayed effect, like a day or two later. That's right. That's right. Now you're not pinning it specifically to that food group unless you're really tracking that.

So I think it is like, you know, it's something to peer into. In my experience of the foods that can cause this, like these kind of mild intolerances, I can count on one hand the amount of clients that I had that gluten didn't affect them in this way. So in other words, a majority of them did better without gluten. Just, just, again, this is based on my mind. experience with the clients I worked with. Dairy is an interesting one. Typically, people from Northern European origins seem to do okay. But you can look this up. You can look at lactose intolerance across the world. Northern European is very low. Is you going more into Mediterranean.

Lactose intolerance increases. Asia, Africa, you know, South American, you start to see lactose, you know, issues start to go up. So you can test that one out. If you don't have an intolerance to it, go for it. But I think what Adam said is absolutely a great idea. Like, you know, you. You You might as well, go on it for now, reintroduce them later and see what happens. So, a bloat will totally mess up your ability to see your abs. You could have abs and get bloated and no suddenly you have no ears. And I feel like everybody has kind of seen an example of this, at least if you're relatively lean.

Obviously, if you're 30, 40% body fat, you may not experience this. But if you are in the high teens and you've had mornings where you wake up and you're like, oh my God, you look lean and you feel like that that's a difference. of a lot of like bloat water attention changing through the night, right? And so there's a good chance. There's foods in your diet that are causing some of this. And the way I would have clients do it that didn't think they had any sort of intolerances. Like one week, it would be just dairy that we'd focus on.

Like, let's eliminate all dairy this week and report back how you feel. You know, how do you feel? Do you notice anything? Do you feel like, no, okay, cool. That's fine. Okay, now let's do gluten. And so choose some of those big offenders, focus on them for at least a week. of completely eliminating the diet and be honest with how you feel and see if you notice a positive

and again 80% of my clients that said they didn't have obviously my clients that knew they had intolerance see how massive difference but the ones that didn't even think they had an intolerance saw a good chunk of them saw an improvement just by eliminating one of those things all right let's get to the workout portion and so the two primary ways people tend to work out these days when they're trying to change how their body looks is cardiovascular training and weight training or strength training. Which one is better for a six-pack? Well, you may think cardio because cardio burns tons of calories.

And it does. 45 minutes of cardio will burn more calories than 45 minutes of strength training. But here's the thing that cardio training doesn't do. It doesn't build muscle. In fact, it can encourage muscle loss and the calorie deficit. We see these in the studies. And I'll take it a step further. When they compare strength training to cardio, okay?

One to one for pure fat loss, strength training, wins. Why you don't lose muscle when you strength train? So the form of exercise you should focus on, I'm not saying don't do cardio, but if you're going to prioritize a form of exercise for a six-pack, you've got to make it strength training. And now let's get to the type of strength training. We're trying to build our abs. Train your abs like any other muscle you're trying to build. If you want a six-pack, you need to build your abs. You're not trying to improve the endurance and stamina of your abs. Now, there's nothing wrong with endurance and stamina at all. It's great to have lots of endurance and stamina. But most ab training routines are basically like doing a marathon for

your abs. Like imagine trying to build your quads and so you just run marathons. You can have big quads running marathons? No, you have very skinny legs running marathons. You want a strength train for your abs. What that looks like is resistance. It looks like reps in the 10 rep, 12 rep, eight rep range and you're also training them in a full range of motion. The other mistake people make with ab training besides doing 50, 60, 100 reps is they do very short choppy movements to try to get as many reps as possible. A full range of motion for the abs looks like full extension, full contraction. If I'm fully extending my abs, I actually go beyond a flat back.

I actually go back even further and a physical ball allows you to do this, for example, a full sit-up and then full contraction. You also want to understand what the abs do. The abs close the distance between your lower rib cage and your pelvis. They flex you at the lumbar spine. They do not flex you at the hips. Okay, it's not a hip hinge. Hip hinging is not working your abs.

Now, you may feel your abs doing a bunch of hip hinging ab exercises because the abs are trying to stabilize you, but you're not working them in a full range of motion. It would be like me holding a dumbbell out with my arm extended and lifting with my shoulder. My bicep will get a little tired, but I'm not doing a curl, right? So you want to curl your body with that full range of motion, use resistance, build the abs.

And again, if you build them like any of the muscle, they'll look way better, even at higher body fat percentages. You know, my competitors that I used to train, I used to tell them, let's let the diet take care of the burning fat phase of this and let's focus the exercise on keeping muscle. So the diet will take care of the burning body fat. and then the exercise should be focused on keeping muscle. And if the exercise portion is focused on keeping muscle, the best things that we could do is, you know,

strength train, lift heavy. And to your point, you know, this lifting heavy for the abs, long rest periods, it would not be circuit training, it would not be supersetting, it would not be hit training, it would not be cardiovascular training.

That is not our strategy for keeping as much muscle as possible. The diet is going to take care of the fat burning part. If we're in a caloric deficit through diet, we're going to lean out. And then everything I do inside the gym should be about keeping muscle. And getting on a treadmill and running for an hour is counterproductive to that strategy. And so if we do a really good job on the diet portion and follow everything you're talking about, then all of my time in the gym should be centered around, let's keep as much muscles I possibly can, i.e. strain training, long rest periods and not focus around cardiovascular.

think the long, I mean, obviously, it makes sense that people have been doing tons of reps, but also, too, they'll do, like, isometric holds for a long period of time for endurance, which here, like, we're trying to say, you know, adding weight, we're adding resistance and actually going to full range of motion with contraction is going to be a better result. That's right. Now, we have a build a six-pack program called the No BS Six-Pack Formula, and it's put together into two phases. So one phase is lower rep,

one phase is higher rep. You're hitting your core, your abs, your obliques, twice a week in the program, and in between, you're doing what are called trigger sessions.

It's the most powerful program that exists for building your abs so you get a six pack. And if you go now to no BS6pack.com and use the code six pack, you get the whole program. So it's a whole program. Exercises,

demos, the whole deal. You get it for $28.50. That's it. $28.50, the full no, BS six-pack program. Again, it's no BS6, the number six pack.com. The code is six-pack for the 50% off. You can also find us on Instagram. It's Mind Pump Media. We'll see you there. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance,

check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes Maps Anabolic, Maps Performance, and Maps Aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee,

and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is Mind Pump.