Want to know the real secrets to owning a Six Pack? If you thought this article was going to start off recommending a bunch of exercises or gadgets that you should be working with, think again.

    The most important element in getting a defined mid-section is what and how you eat. You can perform crunches until the cows come home, but it won't mean a thing if your rock-hard muscles are concealed by a tub of blubber.

    With that in mind, you absolutely do not have to starve yourself. Instead, you want to make sure that the bulk of your daily nutrition comes from foods that rank medium to low on the Glycemic Index. All you need to know for now about "the GI," as it's called, is that the lower a food's ranking, the less likely it is to be stored as fat by your body. Apples, oatmeal, lettuce, pumpernickel bread, sweet potatoes, and peaches are but a few examples of low-glycemic foods. Eat more of them.

    Conversely, you'll want to avoid starchy foods like most pastas, breads, white potatoes and anything high in sugar. For a complete list, visit the official GI Database maintained by the University of Sydney at http://www.glycemicindex.com/. Generally speaking, foods ranked 50 and below on the scale are OK. Higher than that and you begin to get further into "high-fat storage territory."

    Drink plenty of water. Not fruit juice, not energy drinks, but clear, pure water. You've no doubt heard that water plays a host of important benefits, but did you know that it's essential to helping you metabolize (burn) fat? Drink a minimum eight glasses daily.

    Don't fear fats in your meals. Certain types of fat, namely mono-unsaturated fats (they remain liquid at room temperature) actually help you to burn body flab, when consumed in the right proportions. When you try to eliminate all fat from your diet, however, your body goes into a "preservation" mode and makes it even harder for you to get rid of unwanted body flab.

    Train with weights so that you build up your body's other muscles. All things being equal, a muscular body burns more calories than a flabby body of equal weight.

    As you gradually lose fat, you'll notice that it comes off from areas all over your body -- that's because you can't target just one area for flab to disappear. The popular misconception for this is called "spot training," and many infomercials would have you believe there is such a thing. But the body simply does
    not work this way. Thus, solely working your abs is a recipe for failure if you want to lose belly fat.

    Ab Exercises
    Practically any exercise you do for abdominals will yield results if you a) put enough load on the muscles; and b) do it consistently and regularly. Let's address these one at a time.

    "Load" simply means, for our purposes, "are you tiring them out with each workout?" If you want extremely defined, raised abdominals, you will have to constantly increase the load, by perhaps placing a weight plate on your chest or moving the pin on the weight stack if you happen to be using some type of machine. By no means should you need to do 100 reps of an ab exercise to feel fatigued. If that's the case, add weight!

    Consistency: This isn't going to happen overnight. Don't be duped by those late-night TV ads. Like other forms of training, the longer you've been doing it, the better results you will see. But as a general rule of thumb, in working abs three times a week, for 15 minutes per session, you should notice that they feel more solid to the touch within two to three weeks. Depending on your training intensity and your starting bodyfat percentage it could be weeks or months before you can see or feel ridges.

    There are too many ab exercises in existence to list them all here, but these are some of the most popular and effective: Lying leg raise; regular crunches, seated crunches, alternating (oblique) crunches, hanging leg raises; hanging oblique crunches; ankle toss/leg raise (with partner), cable crunch (machine exercise), Swiss Ball crunches and many, many more...

    In addition to all the above, you'll want to adopt a cardiovascular component to your workouts that allows you to burn more calories than you take in. For the most effective fat-burning, check out High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) on the Web. That's just a fancy way of saying "varying your pace and intensity so that your body doesn't get used to the training." When your body adjusts to a particular mode of exercise, you stop progressing, which means you need to change it up.

    As a result, HIIT will net you much better results than doing an hour of monotonous time on the treadmill each cardio session.

    Start slowly, work your way up gradually in level of exertion, remain disciplined, and you'll eventually reach your goal. Also, continue to read articles like the ones on this site and elsewhere. One of the quickest paths to mastery is to become an expert yourself, by continuously learning and doing. Now get off that computer and get started!

    Oh yeah ... Good luck!

    For more Six-Pack Secrets, go to my Web site, http://www.musclefoundry.com and download the free report "12 Ways to Turbocharge Your Metabolism." You'll find lots of tips to dial up your body's automatic Fat Furnace so that you spend less time in the gym and more time living your life.