Everything you do to improve yourself should be done because you want it and because it will help you grow as a man. You should never set out to change yourself to impress other people.
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This is the time of year for fitness. New Year’s fitness resolutions are running rampant, and everyone is trying to take off those holiday pounds. This is a good thing–being trim and in shape has many benefits for both mind and body.
But, as with everything in this great pendulum we call life, things can go too far in either direction. The media promotes “the most desirable men” as having six-pack abs and the ever sought after “Adonis belt” (the v-shaped muscle right below the hip bones).
Magazines, print ads, commercials, and movies all promote the wonders of having six pack abs. You’ll get the woman, the money, the cars, the success–if only you had a washboard stomach. According to the media, abs make you a man, scratch that, according to media, abs make you a superman.
Well, I’m here to tell you that simply isn’t true. You see I’ve been on both sides of the equation. I was once upwards of 40% body fat with a 44-inch waist, and I’ve been ripped (as us fitness folks call it) more times than I can count. What did all of this teach me?
Well, it taught me that there is a lot more to being a man than sporting a set of six-pack abs. But let’s dig deeper shall we? Here are my top three reasons you don’t need that washboard stomach to be a strong, desirable man.
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1. Women don’t dig abs as much as you think – Lots of guys want to get a six-pack to increase their chances with women. Sorry guys, I hate to disappoint you, but women care about abs much less than you imagine.
In fact, abs can actually work against you if the lifestyle required to maintain them sabotages your ability to eat normally. Women want a man that can go out to dinner and eat ordinary foods. They don’t want a high maintenance primadonna.
According to one study, over 75% of women would take a man with love handles over a guy with a six-pack. Men who concentrate so much on their bodies are often seen as egotistical, and even cause women to be self-conscious about their bodies.
2. You and others don’t see them as often as you think – Abs are the most coveted muscle group for men to attain because they require not only great diligence in training but also great dietary attention (and discipline).
Strangely, though, they are also right up there as the “least visible” of all the muscle groups a man can attain. The truth is that most of the time your coveted abdominal muscles will be covered by clothing. That is unless your boss lets you come to work shirtless, and in that case–where do you work exactly?
Now it’s true that if you go to the beach, you’d be able to sport them, and that any time your clothes come off, they will be there. But, most of the time they will be hiding under a layer of clothing.
3. Abs are hard to maintain – Having a great midsection isn’t easy to get, and it’s most certainly not easy to maintain. There is no doubt about it, you have to pay particular attention to your diet and exercise routine to sport a set of lean and defined abs.
That means adapting your lifestyle to accommodate a lower calorie nutrition plan. This can be accomplished many different ways; with flexible dieting, eating “healthy” foods several times a day, or even with Intermittent Fasting (this is the method I use and is the most social life-friendly in my opinion).
But regardless of the method you use, you will have to employ discipline and energy that could be used elsewhere to maintain your six-pack. Energy that could make you a better person from the inside out, instead of the outside in…
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So the question to ask yourself is: Why do you want to get a six-pack? Are you doing it for you? Because you deeply want ripped abs? If the answer to that question is a resounding “yes,” then by all means go for it. Your abs would be worth every ounce of self-discipline and sweat you spent on them if you attained them for the right reasons… for you.
If however, your answer is “to impress the girls at the beach,” or “so that people will pay attention to me and like me more,” then hold on right there. To get those things, you need to make changes to your mindset, not your body.
Everything you do to improve yourself should be done because you want it and because it will help you grow as a man. You should never set out to change yourself to impress other people.
Remember, there is much more to being a man than looking like a Greek God. Becoming a caring, strong, focused, and successful man on the inside is much more important for long-term satisfaction than any outward superficial attribute you could ever attain.
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If you want (or have ever wanted) to lose fat click this link.
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Photo: Flickr/ Michael Taggart
Erin, I cleaned, clear the table, do the dishes on turkey day so my wife can take a break. We watch the Patriots together after that if they are playing. (yes, you can all hate me for being a pats fan) :p Likewise, in a study mentioned in Farrell’s most recent book it was discovered that, when all things were considered, that men and not women put in more total work hours in a given week (not by much). Other studies have shown that women put in slightly more work…but the key word is “slightly”. Old dogma dies hard, especially… Read more »
Erin, though I can appreciate your enthusiasm, this is an article about men, not women, and part of the problems we now face as men are due to such reprove and redirection from men’s issues back to women. The “women had it worse” argument that tends to indicate that men have no right to discuss their issues, or correct them. I will also disagree with the statements inferring that women had it much tougher then men in this country. I’ve been studying this for almost 30 years and know that to be revisionism. We’ve never marched entire generations of women… Read more »
Regardless of what you may think, we have every right to support our sub-group just as every other has as we are talking about men that exist today, not 100 years ago. I think that is a part of the problem. In order to erase the experiences of men dissenters are quick to reference a revisionist history where all men were a collective entity that acted in the interests of men and to keep women down when that wasn’t the case. It wasn’t even the case in ancient feudal times. Women have won their independence; men have only begun to… Read more »
Excuse me, but for the record, DJ brought up women’s experiences in the 70s and suggested that what women experienced then was the same as what men are experiencing now. It isn’t. He also attempted to suggest that what women experiences throughout history wasn’t really that oppressive. Please re-read his other comments. Men and women didn’t come from the same place and don’t have the same experiences of oppression. Which is why I talked about the history of women women endured. I find it wrong to call me out for talking about history of women’s experiences in this country when… Read more »
Let’s see if I can use the word “literally” correctly on the internet:
Did you LITERALLY entitle an article “3 Reasons You Don’t Need Six-Pack Abs to be a Man” and then LITERALLY use a picture of a guy with a six-pack as your featured image?
Are we setting the tone for 2016 GMP? You can do better than this, I’ve seen it.
Actually the picture makes perfect sense. If the article was about about how the heads side of a coin is better than the tails side – why would you be angry if the picture showed the tails side of a coin? Either is appropriate in that case – and in this case as well.
Jay
@Colby Butler,
I think you can do better than this too! Seriously.
I guess if I were doing a story on why men should not wear a fedora hat, then I should NOT include a pic of a fedora?
Cheers! Happy New Year!!!
enjoyable read, Jay….and could be extended to a great many things that we, as men, are participating in. May be an impetus of sorts, a new awareness that service to self (as every other sub-group does) may need to be prioritize a bit for men ()over country, family, women) so that we cease looking to everyone except ourselves for what is appropriate in our lives, or those that will actually help us. No? Insure that we are a fully functioning, well oiled machine (as we know and see us) before launching out to hero everyone else. Is that not what… Read more »
Okay, first, while men certainly have their own set of unique challenges to over-come, that are no less deserving of acknowledgement (which is why I support this article even as I disagree with your comments to the article) what women experienced through-out history is not the same thing as what men are experiencing now. Women were literally denied basic human rights while men gave themselves power and rights over other groups of people. Women are still paying the price today from a long standing history the world has had with women since the dawn of time. External pressure for fantastic… Read more »
@ Erin, Hi Erin and Happy New Year Year to you!!!! I agree with your comments 100%. As a Black guy, I used to get very angry when gays would compare their plight to that of Black people here in America. They would attempt to make a moral equivalent type argument. I never accepted it. Nor do I accept it today for many of the very same reason you have mentioned. I wish we men would really step up and understand the plight and history of women in America. As you mentioned above, women (and Blacks) were denied for centuries… Read more »
Hello Jules. No Gays cannot be grouped in with the plight of blacks, but they’d have more right there then would white women. Women were never denied, not in this country, basic human rights. Your people were, but not white women. Certainly they were denied such as the right to vote, under land ownership statues, but there were women land owners that did vote. There were other issues also, but we also have to maintain that while they were marching down mainstreet USA demanding the right to vote, we were marching our young men into machine gun fire in places… Read more »
DJ – Why do you choose to address your response to Jules when I was the one that said women were denied basic human rights? I simply don’t think that your assessment of history is very accurate when you easily ignore, minimize and outright claim where not denied basic human rights men afforded themselves. Lets look at some ways men historically denied women equality: 1. Married women had no rights in the eyes of the law. So much so that husbands could imprison, beat or rape them based on their own judgement and men would not be subject to any… Read more »
Hi Jules! Happy New Year to you too! Thank you for your support. I am really glad that as a black man, you see the sense in what I’m putting out there. DJ’s comment about ‘sub groups of people’ being selfish got my goat. Just seeing the racial turmoil that is still unfolding in our country should be reason enough alone to understand that we are still affected by generations of racism and sexism that came before any of us. Like a pebble that is thrown into a pond, the ripples are still rolling. I don’t have any issues with… Read more »
Can’t you just, for once, put aside your natural reaction of “women have it worse!” and simply try to learn about men’s difficulties? Would it really be such an imposition on you that you have the grace to read one of these articles on GMP about men’s issues, not so you can respond in the same manner every time and (probably unintentionally) belittle the men going through these experiences, but to learn and absorb and perhaps appreciate men’s unique life experiences in the way you expect men on here to do the same for you?
Women were literally denied basic human rights while men gave themselves power and rights over other groups of people. Its funny that as soon as men start experiencing something bad we are a collective. The men at the top have nothing more to do with the rest of us shared gender. To say otherwise is to engage in guilty by gender association. We’re male. The ones at the top are male. Therefore we are a collective entity that looks out for each other and are collectively responsible for our wrong doings. Considering this idea of collective responsibility is only applied… Read more »
“No you just want to be there to constantly remind us that women have it so much worse…” Actually no! I don’t want that responsibility. I’m forced into it because I don’t feel that men have fairly acknowledged it yet. It’s no fun being the one that feels like they have to remind a group of people how they’ve fostered images of your gender’s worth through their perception beauty. I would be so THANKFUL that if for a change, I started to hear more men say the things Jules says. I would be so grateful to men and thankful to… Read more »
Erin I didn’t research women except for the part of the article that stated that 75% of them don’t care about a six-pack. Many of them do feel self-conscious about their own bodies when around a “ripped” guy from my experience as well. But overall this article is not primarily about women, it’s just about what some men “think” women want, what some men “think” society wants, what some men “think” will make them a man – and how to deal with those issues.
Jay
Jay – I don’t have any issue with your article. I don’t disagree with it and I certainly didn’t argue against it. I’m not sure why you feel that I am since one of the very first things I said was that I supported your article. It almost leads me to believe that you didn’t really read what I said. I had an issue with DJ’s response to your piece. And since his response to this piece included a comparison to women’s experiences, I do think I was fair in my response. I think DJ’s response falsely represented the situation… Read more »
Thank you DJ! I agree it applies to many things we pursue as men – fame, fortune, success. We have to genuinely watch it or we will end up chasing happiness instead of embracing fulfillment.
Jay