We are in March and summer is upon us.
The rare percentage of people who decided to lose fat in January and haven’t given up yet may be starting to think, “hmm how much longer is this going to take, do i really have abs under this layer of fat?“…
It’s human nature to be impatient, whether it’s to see your abs appear, to learn the piano or to become a golf champion.
For piano and golf, I don’t know, but for abs, let’s try to give a realistic answer.
How long does it take to show your abs?
This is far from an obvious question with a universal answer, as you can imagine.
The answer depends on 4 main criteria:
- How much fat do you have on you?
- How fast can you get rid of it?
- What is your fat distribution?
- How developed are your abs?
Let’s look at each criterion in more detail and try to create a realistic timeline.
How much fat do you have on you?
I’m definitely not going to win a Nobel Prize with the following statement, but too bad, I’m ramming open doors.
If you have more fat on you, it’s probably going to take longer to be able to see your abs!
I had warned, it makes sense, but it must be taken into account to answer our question realistically.
How fast can you get rid of your fat?
Good newsit is possible to lose weight very quickly!
The boxers are proof of this a few days before the weigh-in.
You can do like them and get dehydrated, or go climb Mont Blanc without ration, catch a very serious illness or fast for a week.
Bad newsall this is as ridiculous as it is dangerous, so we have to rule out these solutions that can lead to imminent death (spoiler, your abs aren’t worth it).
You should remember two things when it comes to healthy weight loss:
- Weight loss is generally not a linear adventure. The more weight you have to lose, the faster you can lose it,
- To lose weight too quickly is to risk losing muscle. If this concerns you (it should) you should take the slow route to weight loss.
In other words, you can’t decently say to yourself:
“Ok, I have 10 kilos of fat to lose before I see my abs, if I lose a kilo a week it will take me ten weeks”.
No, it doesn’t work like that, we said it, it’s not linear (we talk more regarding it in our article: How many calories are equal to 1 kg?).
We talk regarding the slow way above, but how slow is it to lose weight in a healthy way, without losing muscle?
According to this study, here is a good recommendation:
Calorie intake should be set at a level that results in approximately 0.5-1% weight loss (note: of body weight) per week to maximize muscle retention.
What does your fat distribution look like?
Fat storage is another area where men and women are not equal.
Men tend to have more fat android (located around the torso, chest and abdomen), associated with increased health risks.
Women, on the other hand, tend to have more gynoid fat around the hips, buttocks and thighs.
Within the same sex, there are also individual variations!
Two people of the same sex can thus have the same body composition (i.e. the same percentage of fat mass, muscles, the same weight in water and bones in the body) and yet look totally different!
Your friend may have a tiny bit of fat around her abdomen, and stores mostly in her buttocks and thighs.
You will take everything in the belly and little in the legs, yet you have an identical body composition.
But thanks to genetics, one of you will be judged “more attractive than the other”.
So some may have more apparent abs at a higher body fat percentage.
It’s unfair, but there’s nothing you can do regarding it, and that’s okay.
It might take you a few more weeks of dieting to get the same results, which, on a lifetime scale, isn’t that bad.
How (un)developed are your abs?
More muscular people may look leaner with a higher body fat percentage.
Logically, if you have more muscle, you have more definition for the same body fat percentage.
But of course, if you can’t see your abs, it can be a bit difficult to know if they are developed or not.
Good newsif you are overweight but active, there are high chances that you have developed abs.
And this for the same reason that obese people often have muscular calves, they must push more weight with each step.
overweight people assets must move more weight and constantly work on stabilizing the body, thanks to the core and abs.
In fact, you might even have stronger abs than some fit people who neglect abdominal training because it’s boring.
These people usually remember that this muscle group exists two weeks before the Honolulu vacation.
Scenario: Nanard wants abs
I sense you are perplexed and lost in this flood of information.
You are a bit in mode “he’s going to drop his number there, how long does it take to have abs in the end“.
Ok, calm down, we’re going to project ourselves into something concrete.
But remember that it is impossible to give a universal time range for everyone (it depends on too many factors), this is therefore an estimate.
We will take the case of Bernard, alias “Nanard”.
Nanard weighs 77 kg for 20% body fat, so he has 15.5 kg of pasta grasse.
If you’re a man, you need to be between 6-14% body fat to expect to see your abs.
It’s hard to be more precise, because the calculation of body fat can be done by different methods and not all of them give the same results.
Moreover, even the most advanced methods are not very precise with the thinnest individuals.
To put it simply, let’s say that if a person has a good fat distribution and decently developed abs, they can get away with 14% body fat.
If not, 10% will do in the worst case scenario (99% of men will see their abs at 10% body fat).
If we remove 5.5 kg of pure fat from Bernard, he will drop to 72 kg with regarding 10 kg of fat mass, which will give us 14% fat mass: (22/158) × 100 = 14 %.
But that’s not realisticbecause the weight you lose is usually a combination of glycogen, fat, water and muscle.
So the question is how much weight should you lose to be able to rid Bernard of 5.5 kg of pure fat.
We admit that Nanard:
- Consumes enough protein to maintain muscle mass,
- Regularly follows a weight training program,
- Knows the importance of sleep and makes nights of 8 hours of quality sleep,
- Sticks to a calorie deficit that follows the 1% body weight loss per week rule,
So, we can assume he’s not going to lose muscle in the process.
Then, an average person will store 550 g of glycogen in the liver and the muscles, which can vary according to the muscle mass of each one.
However, for each gram of glycogen, approximately 2.6 to 3 g of water are stored (take an average of 2.8 g).
This gives us: 550 + (2,8×550) = 2 kg.
It’s huge, besides UFC fighters can lose between 10-16% of their body weight the last days before a fight by becoming severely dehydrated (never do this).
So if Nanard has to lose 5.5 kg to reach his 14% body fat, he will ultimately have to lose a total of 7.5 kg (we add the 2 kg previously calculated corresponding to the weight of glycogen and water).
Following the recommendation to lose 0.5 to 1% maximum of his body weight per week (to maintain his muscle mass): how many weeks will it take Bernard to lose approximately 7.5 kg?
You have 30 minutes, no need to ask GPT chat.
We collect the copies, here are the results with a loss of 1% per week:
- 76.23 kg at the end of week 1
- 75.46 kg at the end of week 2
- 74.70 at weekend 3
- …
- About 70 kg at the end of week 10
Here is the detail for Bernard:
- total weight loss = 7.5 kg,
- estimated glycogen and water loss: 2 kg,
- muscle loss: 0 kg,
- total fat loss: 5.5 kg,
- Final fat mass: 15.5 -5.5 = 10 kg,
- Body Fat Percentage: (10/69.5) × 100 = 14 %.
Well done Nanard, in the best case, you will need 10 solid weeks of dieting to see your abs.
That’s if all goes well, with 1% loss of body weight per week, a good preliminary distribution of your fat and relatively developed abs.
If not, you’ll probably want to aim for 10% body fat, so a little over 14 weeks.
But in real life, it won’t be as simple as we said, weight loss is never linear and we are all human, with our weaknesses.
Do like Nanard:
- Calculate the fat loss needed: current fat mass – fat mass needed to achieve 10-14% body mass (depending on your fat distribution and abs development, if you don’t know, take 12%) ,
- Add 2-3 kg to this to account for the glycogen and water weight you will lose (will depend on your muscle mass),
- Subtract from the current weight to get the total weight loss required,
- Multiply body weight by 0.99 until weight loss goal is achieved. Every time you multiply by 0.99, that’s 1 week of 1% body weight loss*.
*If you are assuming 0.5% body weight loss per week, multiply by 0.995.
We end by recalling that all these estimates are very imprecisebut if it can give you a realistic idea, then so much the better.
Our abs articles