Have you heard the phrase “abs are made in the kitchen”? That’s not entirely true. Like all muscle growth, building abs takes your combined effort in the kitchen and the gym. “Abs are uncovered in the kitchen” is a more accurate phrase.

You probably already have abs. If you work out regularly, your core is probably strong enough and developed enough to look like what you want them to look like. If you can’t see them, it’s because there is a layer of fat hiding them.

Doing 10 sets of 10 crunches won’t reveal your abs. Crunches will help develop them, sure! But to reveal your abs you have to reduce body fat, and you can’t do that with crunches alone.

If you want to see your abs, here’s your recipe for success.

*Note that the best results will come from a customized plan that is made and tweaked for your specific body, but this recipe is a great place to start.

One Part Diet

 To lose fat (to be clear, it’s fat you want to lose, not muscle or water or any other weight) and see your abs, you have to be in a calorie deficit. To do that sustainably and healthily, combine a strategic decrease in caloric intake and an increase in energy expenditure (exercise).

In order to decrease calories in a healthy way, you need to have a general sense of where you are starting and a good idea of where you need to be to lose fat.

Know Where You Are Starting

Keep a food journal for 1-2 weeks. You can do this in a notebook, in an Excel sheet, on My Fitness Pal or wherever you feel comfortable tracking. Be as specific as possible. A food journal will help you get a sense of what a typical day-in-the-eating-life looks like for you, so that you can make adjustments accordingly later.

Know Where You Need to Be for Fat Loss

Use this calculator from Precision Nutrition to calculate the calorie and macro range you should target for fat loss. The calculation takes into account where you are now, where you want to be, how hard you’re willing to work to get there, and how much time you’re willing to take to get there. This calculator also takes into account the fact that as you lose weight, your metabolism will change.

What this calculator can’t know: your particular body, your preferences and your lifestyle. So while the numbers it gives you are a great starting point, you should continue to track your food intake so that you can adjust according to your progress.

Eat the Healthiest Foods

Choosing the healthiest foods for fat loss is just as important as knowing how much of these foods to eat (maybe more important, in the long run). When it comes to putting food on your plate, a good rule of thumb is “quality first”.

Use this Healthy Eating Grocery Guide to help you make smart choices at the grocery store. This tool will help you get a variety of lean proteins, heart-healthy fats, complex carbs and an array of vitamins, minerals and fiber in your diet.

Stay Hydrated

Staying hydrated is crucial to any fitness and health goal, and comes in particularly handing when you want shed some fat. Drinking plenty of water (at least ½ of your body weight (pounds), in ounces every day), helps to speed up your metabolism, transport nutrients, remove waste, regulate body temperature, keep you full and reduce your appetite. Keep a water bottle with you and full at all times.

One Part Training

The best training plan for building and revealing abs is one that combines strength training and high-intensity cardio.

Strength Training

Lifting weights does a couple of things. First, building muscle increases your resting metabolic rate. The faster your metabolic rate, the more calories you burn even at rest. Second, your muscles respond to strength training the same way that every other skeletal muscle responds: by growing. It makes sense that the larger your ab muscles are, the easier it is to see them even with a higher body fat percentage.

Cardio

When it comes to losing body fat, high-intensity cardio is the ultimate cardio method. It involves alternating short bursts of intense cardio with short rest periods. High-intensity cardio increases your metabolism, burns more calories in less time and does all of this while burning fat and preserving muscle.

Finally, simply make sure to move more. What you do in the gym is important, but even a hardcore workout for 60 minutes, 3-4 times a week can’t counteract a couch-potato lifestyle.

One Part Mindset

What you think determines how you act. How you act determines your results.

While your training program and nutrition plan play roles in building and revealing abs, your mindset is just as important. Why? Because your beliefs and doubts about your own ability to succeed play a huge role in whether or not you progress or get stuck. If you believe that you will succeed, you will find a way. If you believe that you probably can’t succeed, you’ll find excuses.

Understand That It Takes Time

Building abs, like pretty much any other physique goal, can be a complex process with some necessary trial and error. This recipe is not a quick-fix. It’s not a recipe that you can whip up ahead of time and let sit. If you want results, you have to be patient. Real change takes time. Lasting change takes time. Healthy change takes time. Remind yourself that you are worth your patience.

Consistency Counts

Starting, quitting and starting over only serves to prolong the process and make you frustrated. Change isn’t something that you see in the mirror every day. Where change really shines through is when you look back and realize how far you’ve come.

Consistency in all things counts. Stay honest with yourself about your diet. It’s not about perfection, but what you do, consistently, the majority of the time. Follow a workout program that you can stay true to. If you can consistently workout 3 times a week, do that.

Don’t Compare Your Journey to Anyone Else’s

There’s a very fine line between being inspired by someone else’s success and obsessively comparing yourself to someone else’s success. The former can be motivating and educational. The latter can be detrimental to your mindset and to your progress.

Your body is different than everyone else’s. Where you are on your fitness journey is personal. Your genes, your lifestyle, your history, your preferences – all of these things are real factors in determining what will work and what won’t, and how long that will take.

Not All Results are Physical

This is an article about the recipe for abs, but that doesn’t mean that’s ALL it’s about.

Not all results are going to show up in the mirror. Some of the best results that you can get from this recipe are mental and/or emotional. Working to build a stronger and healthier you builds confidence and mental strength. Eating well and staying hydrated can change the way you move and feel almost instantaneously. These are changes that drive you today and for years to come.

The end result is not where you live. You don’t live in the world where the goal has been reached. You live here, today. It’s so important to enjoy the process. Building abs (and revealing them) takes work. To appreciate yourself for the hard work it takes, show yourself compassion for the times when you feel less than perfect. When you’re too focused on where you want to go, you forget to recognize how far you’ve come.