6packs is not healthy

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By 6-packs I mean the popular shape of 6-packs since we all really have them.

And it is surprising that most women are unaware of what is said in the title..

This thread is directed at those who love 6-packs in men, the women of them in specific.

It is becoming a known trend that girls/women (and especially of the younger generations) believe that having-6-packs is a 'norm of sexiness' in men, exactly like the
common belief among boys/men that big boobs are sexier. 6packs are as unnaturally achieved as the perfectly symmetric big boobs, even if the means differ but both are often unnaturally achieved.



Those beliefs are what leading people to go for unnatural procedures in the first place, actresses often undergone boob surgeries because of the high demand (a lot of men find bigger boobs hotter) - same for the six-packs in men.

Simply put, if most men were't that obsessed with big boobs then there wouldn't be as much as boob surgeries today and women with smaller breasts wouldn't feel as 'wrong', and if many (and maybe it's becoming most lately) women aren't that obsessed with the 6-packs then men wouldn't go into unnatural procedures to get them. It is one common gender's obsession that is leading the other gender to get obsessively meet those expectations.

Those increasing obsessions must be stopped or at least should be gradually halted because they lead to unhealthy measures, and since I am male then I feel that It's my duty to help my gender in advocating against the "6-packs obsession", an almost futile battle but well I have nothing to lose.


Here's a good long article that explains why 6-packs are unnaturally achieved: http://www.unique-bodyweight-exercises. ... -pack.html


if you find it too long you can simply read this part:

Quote:
"Finally before you succumb to the six pack myth you should ask yourself if this is even a healthy goal in the first place. The answer for most people is it isn’t because unless you are genetically gifted and have a low body fat level naturally you would be condemning yourself to adhere to a strict diet permanently which is unrealistic and can cause depression, anxiety and weight gain once you quit the diet as most people inevitably do.
It is also true that the majority of people who undertake abs training neglect lower back exercises and this imbalance can cause a flattening of the lumbar curve and or lower back pain "We're even beginning to see hunchback conditions because of excessive abdominal crunches," claims biomechanics and kinesiology specialist Michael Yessis, Ph.D., author of Kinesiology of Exercise (Masters Press, 1992).
So is the “six pack” the big fitness myth of all time?
Yes is the short answer, why? Because the idea that a six pack is a goal that is obtainable by everyone and for an indefinite period is an allusion that is well promoted but impossible. The fact is that most actors, sports stars and body builders who have a fat level percentage of less than 10% which is what great abs demands have it sporadically with a certain goal in mind weather that be to win a body building competition, display a certain look for a film or be able to compete in a certain weight category.
The rest of us should concede that although with the right diet, exercise plan and dedication we might very well be able to achieve the same success for a short period of time, the likely hood of us managing to sustain such a lifestyle is practically non existent; the 95% failure rate of all diets confirms this. It is also true that the more restrictive the diet is the less likely hood there is of adhering to it."






So for the 6-packs lovers on this forum (women and gays alike), it's up to you to keep believing that "6-packs are sexier" and finding them attractive, I am not here to change your preferences, but you should know that your preference won't make it a natural or healthy norm, science is science, and science shows that your preference is about something usually unhealthy.

To have six-pack abs, you need to have a fat percentage well below the medical ideal (usually 8% or less). I'm way more healthy at around 12-13% BF than I was at 7%. I still have visible upper abs and a visible Jesus crease. If you stay at 10% plus, you can make the same short term progress as Hollywood actors do.

Too bad men don't complain about "unhealthy ideals" as much as women do.

You have to be super-careful what you eat otherwise it ruins the chiseled six-pack abs. High-protein muscle building food often has a good amount of fat in it too, but you can't eat it hardly ever or it will ruin the six-pack abs if you have them.

Besides there's a good chance a woman wouldn't see your abs in the first place until she's already your girlfriend.

I want one, just to see what it's like, having never had one before.

That said, women seem OK with me at 17% BF, and fairly muscular. One time I was getting my hair cut at a beauty school, and somehow the topic of the gym or weight came up, and I was like "Yeah I wanna cut down to 180 or so." And the girls were like "Why, you look good? Most guys wanna bulk up!" That said, six pack is cooler at the beach. I'd probably have a fairly good sixpack at 10% or so bodyfat, belly sucked in I can see my ab outline fairly well even at my sorta high BF, probably from front squats, deadlifts, Olympic lifts, etc, meaning my ab development probably isn't bad. I don't do isolation ab exercises like ever, but I may start. I just tried doing hyperextensions, and I know on the hypers I'm gobs stronger than I am doing situps, and I feel my abs burn from doing plyos and stuff. I remember for the standing longjump, I strained my lower abs for like a day, so maybe time to do some leg raises. My figure is if it's hurting when you're doing something, it's a weakness, you know?

LOL.

I'm a 22 year old woman. I have the '6pack' abdominal definition. I don't stay lean on purpose. I eat whatever I want, I actually eat more than I need for sustenance to gain muscle, and do LOW volume weight lifting purely for strength. We are talking bench press 5 x 5, squat 5 x 5 , deadlift 1 x 5 then go sit on ass and eat some more.

But no, I can't possibly be healthy.

I suppose people that are naturally very skinny with high metabolism is an exception to it. Women sometimes have 6-packs, so they obviously don't equal lots of upper body-strength which is a common misconception about guys that have them.

Right, the best athletes in the world are "unhealthy". Somebody has a complex.

Hehee, I actually do. I can do 3 x 10 pull ups pretty easily. Used to do 20, but that was a loooooooong time ago.

Actually, sometimes they are. It's very easy to look good and be unhealthy. The most extreme cases of this are pro-bodybuilders. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkD-VtTSVpE That's Ronnie Coleman, he's on like 5 prescriptions, and then a tackel box of supplement pills. Nevermind the steroids. And very many pro athletes are on steroids, it's simply part of the game. Obviously pro bodybuilders are just nuts and the most extreme example of this, but looking good doesn't mean healthy.


Carl Lewis.


As far as athletes, too, you can't really argue who's more "fit" than one another. Is a marathon runner more "fit" than a strongman competitor? No, they just do opposite things. Would a strongman competitor being fat make him less of an athlete? No. And besides, even in "traditional" sports, look at baseball players. They can be heavier and still compete just fine. Rugby and football, too.

Anyway, I think imagewise, here's what I believe. Tyra Banks for example, said when she started modelling as a teenager, the standard size of a model was 4-6. Now it's size zero. For men, the same thing happened. Look at any advertising or whatever from the 1950s.


For example, that's Dean Martin, the singer. Dean Martin was considered a damned attractive dude in the 50s. No "sixpack" just he's also not fat either. But now, because everyone is fat, we want people who look all cut up. It's like how in the Middle Ages, there was the "Rubenesque" trend, because everyone was poor and had no food. So now there's the reverse trend going on in our society.

I don't consider body builders to be athletes. There is nothing wrong with Phelps' diet, considering how many calories he burns in the pool. He needs that many calories.

Jack Lalane was considered the posterboy for fitness and physique in the old days, not Dean Martin.

I gotta agree with this, They focus on getting bigger muscles, not stronger. Not to mention most of them are on Steriods to get results out of their silly routines.

Okay maybe not most, but quite alot. Down season ect all you want you're still a riod monkey not a Athlete in my book.

Powerlifting and Olympic lifts on the other hand(Riod free) They're athletes and most of them are in amazing shape, Six pack? Eh Never seen a professional one without the jumpsuit thing. And the Huge fat powerlifters are the guys who don't want to go the hard way to meet their calorie minimum and just eat unhealthy.

This all said, I do recall a article I read somewhere about a Bodybuilder who was asked to do a modeling job for a Abb work out, and inorder to get his abbs "Perfect" he had to do a crazy work out and diet and admitted to being at his weakest ever during the shoot.

Personaly I don't think a six pack is hard to get -if- your willing to put the work and dedication into exercise. -Perfect- Abbs however. . . The lengths to get them is just too much for most people imo.

This is 8% body fat. Mr. Olympia winners today have 4%. I find it funny that a woman with a 20% body fat level is "an impossible standard" (despite not being more unnatural than a man with 13-14% body fat).

To actually carry a lot of muscle at 8% body fat without steroids, you need helluva good genetics.

Nah, huge fat powerlifters usually start out as huge fat people and just end up powerlifters. Most never start "small." The ones that do start small will go from, say, 130lbs to 200 in the span of their whole career. What happens with powerlifters, though, is it's simple weight classes. In Olympic lifting, the weight classes simply end past 105kg. After 105kg, if you're 106kg or like 150, it doesn't matter. In that case, the heavier you are, the more advantageous it is to lifting, if that's all you're doing athletically. Comes at the expense of health generally, but yeah. Also, regardless, the more food you eat, the better you're gonna feel, it'll speed recovery, and you'll lift more weight. Of course it comes at the price of you being fat. Some of it is just genetics, though. IE, the South Korean female lifter, Jang Mi Ran, she probably was always fat. Why? Who knows. But, she also got given some amount of natural strength with the fat and big bone structure, and since she's weightlifting, and naturally exceeds the weight class, there's no need for her to diet to be competitive. Once she stops lifting and wants to diet down or do more cardio or whatever, she can do that, but while lifting, who cares?

And most powerlifters and Olympic lifters at the high levels are on steroids. And strongmen, especially. And NFL players. And NHL players. And MLB players. Hell, I've heard people say 70+% of baseball players were on amphetamines in the 70s. Again, athlete doesn't always equal healthy, especially at the professional level where it becomes an easy proposition to trade a little health for a little performance. Even without steroids, people, say, shoot insulin post workout for muscle gains and stuff. Not natural, but undetectable doping-wise. In the 1930s drugs was so prevalent in cycling that the Tour De France event book said drugs would not be provided by the event organizers. Anyway, strongman doesn't even test (only tests for stimulants/rec drugs), and powerlifting has 87598379843 federations that are tested and untested. At least powerlifting is honest, in that you just choose to compete in tested/untested, or raw vs suit/wrapped equipped, etc. But the hard part is nobody, for good reason, takes powerlifting seriously, as all the federations and whatnot fragment the sport a lot.

Olympic lifting tests, but that puts America and pretty much all Western countries at a big disadvantage, as countries like China are pretty much guaranteed to be using, and it's obviously much harder to get testers down to China. Also, America tests within the country for its sports, and China, Russia, etc, doesn't test for its national events. So the only time international competitors have to worry about drug tests is when they're competiting internationally. Basically, there's no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny, probably the majority of athletes are "on" something or other.

Anyway, I'd like to have a sixpack at least once. It'd be cool.

^
Gotta say I enjoyed the read, Just presumed with Olympic lifts it'd be mostly clean. Only cheating I heard about this year was a Asian team messing about with points to play against easier teams.

A lot of them, yes.