Dear Friend,

The questions I seem to get over and over are always a variation of "how do I build muscle/strength?" or "how can I get rid of this body fat?".

A few weeks ago I mentioned to somebody that I'm dieting because I haven't seen my abs clearly in over a year. They replied, "Why don't you just do some crunches?"

What a poor deluded person! Don't we wish it were that easy!

See, I HAD been doing crunches...for quite some time! I definitely have a well-developed set of abs. They're just covered up with fat! And NO amount of crunches is going to burn it off.

I hate to ruin your day but I've found this idea of "spot reducing" to be an absolute myth. If you want a six pack and want to get ripped, the only solution is diet. You gotta eat the right things (and know what NOT to eat) if you want less body fat.

And I hate to be the bearer of bad news but it gets harder and harder as you get older, especially if you're over 35. The reality of the situation is, after about age 35 you start experiencing a continual decline in testosterone and growth hormone. Hey, don't kill the messenger! It's a fact of life.

Granted, you can positively affect this with proper weight training and diet but it's never going to be like when you were 18 unless you go the hormone replacement route.

So over the next few weeks I'm going to share some things that have been proven to help you reduce your body fat.

The first thing you can do is start to restrict your starchy carbohydrates.

Cut out all breads, pasta, potatoes, rice, fruit, anything with sugar, etc. Basically your only source of carbs should be leafy green vegetables like lettuce, spinach, tomatoes in small amounts.

The remainder of your foods should be animal proteins and fats, eggs, cheese...basically anything with protein and fat and no carbohydrates.

On this type of restricted carbohydrate diet you can see some pretty rapid changes in your body fat percentage. You might even start seeing noticeable changes within 2 to 3 weeks.

One thing I would recommend on this diet is every 5 days or so have a carbohydrate meal consisting of a sweet potato, rice, and oatmeal. Or really any kind of "clean" (no sugar) low glycemic carbohydrates.

Obviously, this is just a brief overview and I don't have the time or space here to go into all the details. But with this information alone you can make some pretty significant changes in your physique in a pretty short period of time.

I think you'll find that by dieting in this way you'll be able to avoid most of the muscle mass losses that seem to accompany traditional calorie restricted diets.