23. The Science of Abs: Why You Might Never See Your Abs (and Why That’s Okay)

Six-pack culture promises quick fixes; the human body offers a far better story. I dig into what abs actually are, why they matter for posture and stability, and how to approach fat loss without falling for spot reduction myths or punishing routines. Our goal is to build a stronger, smarter core and a healthier mindset by pairing science with practical steps you can sustain.

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References for this episode:

1. Yiğiter N. Core exercise as a non-pharmacological strategy for improving metabolic health in prediabetic women. J Womens Health. 2025. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40428900/
2. Irwin ML, Yasui Y, Ulrich CM, Bowen DJ, Rudolph RE, Schwartz SM, McTiernan A. Effect of exercise on total and intra-abdominal body fat in postmenopausal women: A randomized controlled trial. JAMA. 2003. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12525233/
3. Vispute SS, Smith JD, LeCheminant JD, Hurley KS. The effect of abdominal exercise on abdominal fat. J Strength Cond Res. 2011. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21804427/
4. Jayedi A, Soltani S, Motlagh SZ, Emadi A, Shab-Bidar S. Aerobic exercise and body fat reduction: Meta-analysis. JAMA Netw Open. 2024. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2828487
5. Wu X, Zhang C, Liang Z, Liang Y, Li Y, Qiu J. Exercise combined with a low-calorie diet improves body composition, attenuates muscle mass loss, and regulates appetite in women with high body fat. Sports (Basel). 2024;12(4):91. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38668559/
6. Xie Y, et al. Effects of combined exercise and dietary interventions on body composition: Systematic review & network meta-analysis. Nutrition Studies. 2024. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39275322/
7. van Gemert WA, van der Ploeg HP, Jones A, et al. Effect of diet with or without exercise on abdominal fat in postmenopausal women. BMC Public Health. 2019;19:xxx. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30744621/

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- Alita <3

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This podcast is intended for general educational purposes only. The content discussed does not replace professional medical, nutritional, or fitness advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Individual needs and responses vary, especially with exercise and nutrition. Always consult with a qualified healthcare provider before making significant lifestyle changes.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Today’s Focus On Abs
• 1:20 Anatomy Of The Core
• 3:36 Spot Reduction Myth Debunked
• 6:30 Cardio, Deficit, And Fat Stores
• 10:20 Nutrition Quality, Protein, And Inflammation
• 14:50 Stress, Hormones, And Sustainable Eating
• 21:56 Train For Function And Stability
• 25:00 Genetics, Body Types, And Acceptance
• 30:00 Abs, Health, And Red Flags For Women
• 33:00 Key Takeaways, References, And Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:26

Hello, beautiful people. Welcome back to Vita with Alita. I'm your host, and today we're diving into a topic that I know a lot of you probably have been wondering about, asking about. It's something that I know is always at the forefront of conversations, and that is abs. What they really are, how to train them effectively, and most importantly, why you need to kind of look beyond just aesthetics. In this episode, I'm hoping to unpack the science behind our abs, talk about fat loss myths, and explore how genetics, overall health, nutrition, and all those things combined kind of impact what we see when we look in the mirror. So let's get right into it. What are abs? Well, when people say abs, we're usually talking about muscles on your stomach area, but it's important to kind of understand maybe which muscles. And I'm sure you may have heard some of these terms before, but just to preface this episode, we'll get into it very slightly. So the abdominal region has several key muscles. One, you have your rectus abdominis, and this is the muscle group that kind of creates that like six-pack look. And it's the one that runs vertically down the front of your abdomen area. Next, you have your external and internal obliques, and as the name suggests, these are the muscles on the side of your abdominal abdomen, sorry. And these are important for trunk rotation and just overall stability. Last we have your transversus abdominis, and this is kind of the deepest layer of the abdominal muscle, and it acts like a natural, like like you can think of it like a corset. It's stabilizing your spine and your pelvis during movements, keeping it tight, and you don't really see it, but that's what it's doing. So your abs are always working, always on, always doing their thing. Even if you may not visibly see them, they're there, they're working, and they're supporting you. Now, these muscles, as we mentioned, are not just for looks, they can help protect your spine, they assist with breathing and posture, and they even play a role in movements from bending to lifting to twisting, and you may have heard like the expression brace your core or whatever. That's why, because it they do play a giant role in stability. So, on one hand, I'm excited that everyone is into abs because having a strong core sets you up for very good foundation just for not just for lifts in the gym, but even outside of the gym, having a strong core sets you up pretty well. And I think it's it's super important. But obviously, I know that the focus with abs tends to be aesthetic. So now that kind of brings us into our second part here. Can you actually target fat loss? If I just do a bunch of crunches, am I gonna see abs? Because that it intuitively might make sense, right? And this is where I kind of want to address the spot reduction myth. And I think it's something I've addressed before, but never hurts to to reiterate, right? So can you just do abs or sorry, can you get abs just by doing ab exercises and then target belly fat that way? The short answer here is no, and maybe not in the way most people actually might think. Most reach research shows that while core exercises build muscle and endurance in your abdominal region, it doesn't actually preferentially reduce belly fat just from doing crunches or sit-ups. Now, large bodies of exercise reach research show that overall fat loss, including around your abdomen area, is most effectively achieved through regular aerobic and strength training that creates a caloric deficit and actually increases overall fitness. We talk about this all the time. Sort of having to see any muscle actually on your body, you obviously have to train it via strength training and you have to allow that muscle to grow. But when it comes to actually visibly seeing the muscle, that will all depend on how lean you are or how much body fat you actually have. And abs is one of those muscles that the leaner you are, the more visible they become. So while ab exercises can actually sculpt and strengthen your abs, it doesn't actually make the belly fat go away. So you might actually be building abs, but if you have kind of this layer of fat on top of them, you're never gonna see them. And to get to that point where you potentially have visibly abs, visible abs, that's going to actually require more of a comprehensive lifestyle strategy. And that's what we always kind of talk about having overall health and looking at your lifestyle overall. So, yes, I know this is an episode about abs, but this is just a reminder that although abs might be nice to have, they're not everything. If you are leading an overall healthy lifestyle where you're eating whole foods, you are exercising regularly, if you do want to have a goal that is focused on having abs, you have to continue with this overall healthy lifestyle. You have to reduce your overall fat percentage. And again, this is through a caloric deficit. I'll kind of get into this a little bit, but sometimes having abs is not everything. But let's let's continue with if we are with this goal of having abs here. So this kind of now gets into okay, so if our exercises, our crunches and our sit-ups are not really doing anything for our belly fat, how do you actually reduce abdominal abdominal fat? What does what does the science have to say about this? So research consistently shows that aerobic exercise at moderate to vigorous intensities, so moderate to vigorous, you can think of this as it's start it's starting to become difficult to have a conversation while doing the exercise. So, for example, like walking, when you walk and talk, that's not very vigorous or it's not very intense. So, aerobic exercise at moderate to vigorous intensities, so even maybe brisk walking, cycling, or even running for at least 150 minutes per week is associated with clinically meaningful reductions in your waist circumference and body fat. Waist circumference is just measuring how like large your abdominal area is, and this includes your visceral and your subcutaneous abdominal fat. I've never gotten into this, but we do have like different sort of fat depots and stores and ways that our body stores the fat. And you can think of the two kind of biggest categories: visceral, which is more in your midsection, around your organs. That's sort of the deeper, I guess you can call it fat. And then subcutaneous literally just kind of means like under the skin, and this is more overall in your whole body. So when you're doing these aerobic exercises and you're in somewhat of a caloric deficit, you are reducing the fat in these stores, and this kind of contributes to lower fat percentage in your body and potentially visible abs if you're training them. Now, higher intensities and interval training frequently show deeper reductions in abdominal adiposity compared with your lower intensity exercise. And this is true especially in women with metabolic risk factors. So, what this means is that a mix of cardio and strength training, paired with obviously appropriate nutrition, which we will get into, is your best bet for reducing fat wherever your body prefers to store it rather than trying to burn fat from just one spot. I'm emphasizing the wherever your body prefers to store it because there are different ways that each body stores fat. Some people are more likely to store it in their lower body, upper body, midsection, whatever it is. And this is why you can't really spot reduce, and there isn't a one size fits all. All of our bodies store fat differently. And this also means that all of our bodies will lose fat a little bit differently. But for most people, usually, the last place that that fat will be lost is in the abdominal region. And you can honestly think about it as a survival thing. Your most vital organs basically are in your mid-area. So if your body had to choose between losing fat and maybe your legs and your arms versus where your where your organs are, fat is also protecting these organs, right? We we think fat is bad and we want to get rid of it, but there are also consequences to being way too lean and not having enough fat. Things like your hormone signaling goes off, your you your appetite is all over the place, you are very frail. It serves a protective mechanism, especially in women. So that's why our abdominal area is going to probably be the last place most of us are losing fat. Where it will differ from person to person is one person might be able to be at a higher body fat percentage, but still have visible abs, where somebody else may have to be at a much lower body fat percentage to have kind of the same visibility. And that's why you can't really compare yourself to somebody else, what you see online. You don't know. It's your genetic makeup, it's just the way your body stores fat. That's why maybe having abs is cool. Obviously, it's aesthetic. I'm right there with you, but I don't want that focus or emphasis to always be on I want abs. It's more than that health, living a healthy lifestyle is more than just having abs. Okay, I went a little bit on a tangent there, but essentially, you do have to kind of decrease your overall body fat if you are kind of working towards this goal of having potentially visible abs. And of course, we can't talk about having abs without discussing nutrition and why what you eat actually matters. They usually say abs are made in the kitchen, maybe you've heard of this, and obviously that's true to a certain extent. You have to make sculpt your abs in the gym and have and do enough cardio or training to help with your caloric deficit and to reduce that body fat. But where do you get the majority of your calories? Food. And I'm not here to reduce our nutrition and getting abs to just calories, calories in, calories out. Nutrition is so important, and sometimes it's counterintuitive where you think you have to eat less and you'll lose more, but it sometimes does more damage than it does good. And I think that's a whole separate episode. But the idea here is we cannot really talk about abs without actually considering nutrition. Because no matter how strong your core is, what you eat is going to play a major role in whether those muscles in your core actually become visible. So at the most basic level, visible abs require, as we mentioned, a reduction in overall body fat. And this is strongly influenced by energy balance, meaning how many calories you're consuming versus how many you're burning. And as I mentioned, nutrition is not just about calories. We have to look at things like protein and muscle support. So adequate protein intake is essential for maintaining and building lean mass, not just in your abs, in your overall body. So research consistently shows that higher protein diets help preserve muscle during fat loss, which is going to be super important if your goal is like strength and definition and not just weight loss. Abs, just like any other muscle in your body, are are built or made up of proteins. And you have to give your body sort of the building blocks to make those muscles and to actually preserve them. Because if you don't have enough protein that you're intaking through your diet, your body will break down the protein in your body to make sure that it's able to perform the way that it needs to. So having high protein foods, the obviously the common ones, any sort of animal product, fish, meat, chicken, this can be, again, a whole separate episode about protein sources, but having an overall, overall, I want to say whole food diet, where you are eating foods from various sources and you are keeping in mind higher protein foods and putting those sort of as a priority when it comes to making your plate will be very essential for overall health, will be essential for your overall maybe body and aesthetic, I guess you might be going for, and obviously for your abs. Now, when calories drop too low or your protein intake is insufficient, the body is going to lose muscle along with fat. And that's actually the opposite of what we want. That's going to make the abdomen appear softer rather than more defined. Another important thing beyond just calories to consider is the food quality and the inflammation or the impact that that food is having on your body. So the quality of your diet matters. Diet rich in whole food, vegetables, fruits, whole grains, healthy fats, lean protein sources, these are all associated with better metabolic health and lower levels of systemic inflammation. Again, I am generalizing here. Everybody is different and reacts differently to foods, but overall, we know and I know we've heard it all that whole foods and a whole food diet is usually associated with more positive outcomes when it comes to overall health. Now, highly processed foods, especially those high in refined sugars and saturated fats, they have been linked to increased abdominal and visceral fat storage, even when your total calorie intake is not extremely high. And this is important here because this is where, yes, we mentioned calories, calories in, calories out, but it's the quality of the calorie that you're eating that still matters. If the calories you're eating are just from highly processed foods, your body is not going to look its best in any way. You have to be supporting your body. Exercise is a stressor on the body. It is. But there are good and there are bad stressors, but it is still a stressor and it is still something that your body has to adapt to. Weight loss is also another type of stressor because think of back in the day, if you were starving and your body was losing fat, you didn't know if your next famine was going to hit if you were going to survive. So obviously, your body wants to hold on to some sort of fat storage. So these are you're you're putting your body through some sort of stressor where it has to adapt. And our bodies are wonderful at adapting. So that's not the issue here. The issue here is when you're putting it through these like stressors and you're not adequating through nutrition, through other lifestyle factors such as your sleep, reducing environmental stress as much as possible. I know these are all things that might seem out of reach for a lot of people, but it all comes together in an overall healthy lifestyle, which in this case can maybe be visible through abs. Alright, so it's not just how much you eat, but it's what you eat that influences your body composition as well. I wanted to give maybe some more rigid definitions of what we mean by processed foods and whole foods. But processed foods are any foods that have anything added to them, even if it's like salt, sugar, or oil. So you might think like, oh, like I'm having this nice bread. Bread is fine. I'm not saying don't eat bread, but I just want you to keep in mind that bread is some sort of processed food. Now, those are not as I don't know if dangerous is the white word, right word. Those foods can be eaten, should not be avoided. Nothing should ever be avoided, but within moderation, those foods should be consumed. Now, the ones that usually get people, the ones that I would say limit the most are the ultra-processed foods. And these are the industrial formulations with many ingredients that you wouldn't find in your house. Like if you look at the ingredient list and you cannot say half the words in that ingredient list, it's probably ultra-processed. Think of just what your body, like how your body probably doesn't know how to deal with it, and that's why it dysregulates your signaling, inflammation, yada yada yada. So obviously, nutrition is key. Whole foods should be a priority. And I personally think nutrition is such a personal journey that takes such a long time to truly master, if you even ever master it. Like I have been health conscious, I guess you can call it, or in this in this head space of where I want to improve my health for a while now. I have been strength training since 2018, and I've been trying to improve my diet and my routines and my overall health. And sometimes I feel like I'm still learning what works best for my body. And sometimes I've still I still fall into the calorie restriction or this, that, and the other. And I think, especially now in 2026, I'm really taking on this approach of whole food rainbow diet. Rainbow meaning I'm not really excluding foods, rainbow meaning I'm trying to eat multi multiple types of vegetables, fruits, different types of lean proteins, maybe whole foods that I don't really eat, I'm trying to incorporate. Every type of food offers its own nutritional value, its own benefits. And the more variety you have in your diet, the more whole food-based it is, the better for your overall health, and it will show. All right, again, another tangent, but let's get back into it. So, in terms of nutrition as well, we can't forget to discuss very slightly hormones and stress and different eating patterns. So, nutrition also interacts with your hormones, especially in women. So, chronic under eating, extreme dieting, or even cutting out entire food groups. Is going to disrupt hormones like your cortisol, like your estrogen. And this may actually make abdominal fat harder to lose. Remember, I said that dieting, exercise, all these things are stressors on the body. We have good stress, we have bad stress. A bad stress, under eating. You're not fueling your body enough, you're increasing your cortisol, your stress hormone all the way up. And this is actually linked to making it more difficult to lose fat. Your body's stressed. Your body has to feel safe in order to release extra fat. It has to feel safe in order to work with you. It has to feel like it is being taken care of. If you take care of your body, it will take care of you right back. So this is why sustainable eating patterns usually work better, or I should say most are probably always work better than restrictive ones, especially long term. We're here for the long haul. Look, if you have a wedding in two months, I get it, okay, but we're here for the long haul. We're here so that you don't have to go through those restrictive cycles where you have a wedding in two months and now you have to worry because you're already leading a healthier lifestyle. So what is the big nutrition takeaway? If you're training your abs, but you're not fueling your body properly, you may build strength without seeing any definition, you may actually feel fatigued or stalled, and you are going to miss out on overall health benefits. So abs are not just built on crunches and sit-ups alone. They're supported by consistency, balanced nutrition that fuels your training, nutrition that supports your muscle, and nutrition and training that allows for fat loss to occur naturally over time. The slower the process, the healthier it is, the more sustainable it is, and the longer your results will last because you'll be able to keep it up with it. Alright, let's shift gears a little bit here and talk about training abs for function and strength. So, core training. What are the exercises that activate and strengthen the muscles that will actually protect your trunk and support your daily movement? Deep core muscles, like we mentioned, the transversus abdominis, contract first during movement, and this muscle helps with posture and even spinal support. Training these muscles can improve stability and movement quality, and it may actually reduce injury risk when done correctly. Research has also shown that specific core stabilization exercise, even things like Pilates-based routines, where maybe you're not doing like a sit up per se, but you're engaging your core. This can improve muscle thickness, contraction timing, and even muscle ratios of these deep muscles. That doesn't mean doing endless crunches, it just means smart core work, things like planks, anti-rotation holds, integration of full body movements. Even when you're weight training and you do something like a squat, this is engaging your core. You're deadlifting, you have to engage your core. So don't think that you need to just be doing very specific and targeted ab exercises. When you are training overall, even things like running, you need your core. Like when you hold yourself up and you're holding your posture up, you need your core. Your core is always going to be somehow, somewhat engaged. The fancier ab exercises and things can come a little bit later down the line if you want to maybe make your abs pop a bit more. If you're actually at a place in your overall body fat percentage where you may start seeing some sort of visible muscle on your abdomen, then you can maybe get into more specific and targeted ab workouts. But don't kill yourself now to do all these fancy 10-minute routines on YouTube about your six-pack abs. First, start with more stabilization, getting your core engaged, focus on your nutrition, focus on maybe lowering your overall body fat, and then the rest will follow. Alright, we cannot have a talk about abs without discussing genetics, hormones again, and individual differences. So, of course, it's important to acknowledge that every that bodies vary. We there are such a variety. Genetics. Genetics play a major role. Again, we mentioned this earlier where your fat is stored, how easily you lose fat, how your muscles show up, how this, that, and the other. And if you don't have parents or someone in your family who can like sh who has visible abs or visible muscle, you may not even know how your body is genetically, like how you're predisposed to look, right? So that's something you're gonna learn along the way. And this is where you be kind to yourself and you learn self-acceptance a little bit. And this journey here that we are always discussing on this podcast. Yes, I'm very I'm a very big advocate for health and fitness, and all that also includes self-image, self-acceptance, and not always comparing ourselves to what we see online. That fitness person that you're seeing online, you cannot compare yourself to them for so many reasons. A, it's pro it's most likely their full-time job. They dedicate every minute, hour, whatever of their life to looking a certain way because it's their brand. Imagine if you had that much time dedicated to something. Obviously, the results would show. And now let's talk about body variations. Look at different fitness influencers. Many of them don't look the same. Some have a leaner built, some have a more like more muscle mass, some are shorter, some are taller, some whatever the even the different types of training you can see will impact the way that people look. This is a very individual journey. Don't be hard on yourself. Visible abs are cool, sure, but you also cannot work against your genetics and your body type and the way your body stores fat. It just kind of is what it is. And the sooner you can accept that, the better this journey will be for you. Next is hormones, especially in women. This can influence your fat storage patterns and can actually make abdominal fat more persistent, even if you have consistent healthy habits. Now, something that I heard or read about one time and I thought I wanted to share just to show you how complicated this can actually be and why focusing on being healthy overall is more important than aesthetics. So the amount of body fat that your parents have when they conceive you actually impacts the fat stores that you will have. And you are born with a certain amount of fat stores. And that certain amount of fat stores doesn't really change in your life. You can't like destroy fat tissue. You can just make it smaller or make it store less fat. So you can't control how much fat your parents had when they conceived you or how much, you know what I mean? Like that's not in your control. You can just look at yourself, look at your situation, accept what you can control and work with it. And when you do that and you work with it and you kind of remove this stress of having to look a certain way, be a certain way, and you're just doing what you think makes you feel good about yourself and what is best for you, I promise results will follow. And it may not be results you had originally imagined, but you can tell when there is somebody who takes care of themselves and who is feeding themselves properly, who is training themselves, and who doesn't just constantly put themselves down. It shows not just in how their body looks, but even their mood, their energy, their attitude, their hair, their skin, their this, the that, then the other. Now, all this to say, if someone else seems to get visible abs faster, their body might just be wired differently. That doesn't make your progress any less valid. It just means health and strength are more important than looks and symmetry. So we're going to kind of maybe end off with how abs are more than just an aesthetic thing. Here are some of the big take-home messages. Your abdominal muscles are functional. They're not just aesthetic. So, yes, it's important to train your core. Maybe aesthetics drives it initially, but I want you as you're training it to maybe appreciate what your abs and your core is always doing for you. And core strength supports your posture, your movement, and your overall metabolic health. And whether you see a six-pack or not, this does not define your fitness. It does not define this health journey that you're on, it does not define your lifestyle. Strong abs can do things like help you carry groceries, lift your dog, lift your toddler, do yard work, stabilize during runs or lifts. That's what matters. The functionality. So if your goal is health and performance, not just a certain look, you're definitely on the right path. And I don't think I can end this episode without mentioning that just because you see somebody with abs, it does not mean they are quote unquote healthy. Abs does not equal health. You will actually hear that women who have abs and who have such low body fat percentages that you can see their abs don't even get their periods. And that's what I was trying to say earlier about the importance of fat. We also use fat to like make hormones, the hormones that impact our menstrual cycles and the hormones that impact our hunger levels. If you don't have it, your body is gonna go into survival mode. So when you're so, so lean that you lose your period, think of what your body's thinking. Your body's thinking, we don't even have the energy to survive right now. There is no way we're gonna be able to hold a baby. Not that everybody, every woman in this world should have a child, but you just have to think that's what our bodies are basically made for as women. We have the ability to conceive, to get pregnant, to carry children. When your body is in survival mode because you have such low body fat that you lose that ability, that's a big red flag. And for a lot of women, unfortunately, when it's not done right, when shortcuts are taken, when they're only chasing aesthetics, you end up actually harming your health. Although you may look healthy, you have the abs, you have the definition, you have this, that, the other. But it's not healthy when you don't have your period and your hair is brittle and your nails are falling off because you're basically falling apart. All for abs. Abs and what you see does not always equal health. Overall lifestyle, what you're feeding yourself, the way you talk to yourself, these things are way more important. So the same messaging as I try to give you in every single episode is we're looking here for the long run, for overall health. Please stop chasing aesthetics. It's it's something that I think as you age, as you mature, as you as you gain different perspectives on life, and as I have sort of moved away from aesthetics, you gain a deeper appreciation for just overall body health and truly supporting your body, the one and only body that you have. We have to support it. It's the one thing we're gonna have for us our entire life. So show it some love. Show it some love and don't go on this journey out of self-hatred. This journey should be coming out of self-love. Anyway, thank you for joining me on this deeper dive into what abs really are and how to think about them with both science and perspective. I do want to say that I'm going to link all the papers that I get some of my information from in the show notes. I will put references and I'll put the links to the different papers that you can access. I'm trying a different format where maybe I don't cite the exact paper, I just sort of make it in a way that might be easier to follow, but we'll see. We'll play around with it, see what works. But you can find the papers in the show notes. And if you enjoy this episode and you want more evidence-based fitness guidance, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share with a friend who needs to hear this message. Until next time, train strong, move with purpose, and live with intention, intentionality, our 2026 word. This is Vito with Alita. Take care and see you next time.