How do I get a six pack?

Everyone has abdominal muscles. A six pack shows when there is little enough fat over them, and that comes from losing fat across your whole body, not from ab exercises. Lose about 0.5 to 1% of your weight a week, keep lifting, and eat enough protein so the muscle stays. Train your abs like any other muscle, two or three times a week, so they show well when the fat comes off. For most people it takes months, not weeks.

Why can’t I see my abs?

The muscle is there. The fat over it decides whether it shows. The American Council on Exercise (ACE) gives 18 to 24% body fat as typical for a man who isn’t an athlete, and 25 to 31% for a woman. Abs show well below those ranges.

No study sets one body-fat number where abs appear. It depends on where your body stores fat, how thick the muscle is, and even the light you look in. Two people at the same body fat can look quite different. So aim for the process, not a percentage: a steady fat loss that keeps the muscle you have.

In Nume: choose Lose body fat as your goal. Profile > Goal shows your daily energy and protein, each with the reason, such as “About what your body uses on a usual day with your activity, less 15% for fat loss.”

Do ab exercises burn belly fat?

No. In a six-week trial, adults did seven ab exercises five days a week. Their belly fat and waist didn’t change, but they could do far more curl-ups (47 against 32 in the group that didn’t train). Ab work builds the muscle. Fat loss across the body uncovers it. The full answer is in how to lose belly fat.

Which ab exercises help?

Train your abs as you train any other muscle: a few hard sets, two or three days a week, made a little harder over time with more reps, more load or a longer hold. The WHO recommends strength work for all the major muscle groups on two or more days a week, and the NHS names the abdomen among them.

Pick from three kinds of movement:

Bending the trunk: cable crunch, hanging knee raise, ab wheel rollout
Resisting movement: plank, side plank, dead bug, Pallof press
Carrying: farmer’s carry, suitcase carry with one weight

Squats, deadlifts and overhead presses work the trunk hard as well, so a full-body routine already does part of the job.

In Nume: tell Talk “more core work” and Nume keeps it in mind for the workouts it writes next. During a session you can add an exercise from your recent ones or the list, such as a dead bug or a Pallof press. Progress > Strength shows your sets each week by movement group (Push, Pull, Squat, Hinge, Lunge, Core and Carry) and your best sets by lift.

How fast should I lose fat?

A review of contest preparation for natural bodybuilders recommends losing about 0.5 to 1% of body weight a week to keep as much muscle as possible. A trial in elite athletes, all doing four strength sessions a week, shows why. One group aimed to lose 0.7% a week and the other 1.4%. Both lost about 5.5% of their weight. The slower group gained 2.1% lean mass. The faster group gained none.

Faster isn’t better for a six pack. The muscle you lose on a hard cut is the muscle you wanted to see.

In Nume: a fat-loss plan sits 15% under what your body uses, and never more than 750 kcal under. A new fat-loss goal starts with a smaller 10% cut for two weeks. If you’ve trained steadily for three months or more, you start at the full cut. After a heavy meal, the rest of that day adjusts and says why, and tomorrow stays as it was. Your workouts keep building too: after a full session, the next one steps up.

How long will it take?

Do the arithmetic for your own weight. At 80 kg, 0.5 to 1% a week is 0.4 to 0.8 kg. Losing 4 kg takes about 5 to 10 weeks, and 8 kg about 10 to 20 weeks. If you have more than a few kilos to lose, plan in months.

Weight also swings within the week, so read it over two weeks or more. See why the scale stops moving.

In Nume: Progress compares your latest weigh-in with one at least 14 days earlier, and a change under 0.5 kg reads “about the same”, so one big meal doesn’t look like a setback. Your daily energy follows your latest weigh-in, so the plan keeps up as you get lighter.

What should I eat?

Enough protein, food you like, and a total you can keep. In a review of 49 trials of protein supplements alongside lifting, muscle gains levelled off at about 1.6 g per kg of body weight a day. Lean lifters on a cut often go higher: the bodybuilding review above suggests 2.3 to 3.1 g per kg of lean mass. See how to get enough protein from the food you already eat, or work out your number with the protein calculator.

Protein and fibre at most of your eating times keep you full on less. Grilled chicken with rice and greens, a lentil soup, eggs on toast, tofu with noodles: the dishes can be ones you already enjoy. Once you’re lean, small misses show more on the mirror, so see how exact you need to be and how much fibre you need.

In Nume: with two or more training sessions a week, your protein is set at 1.6 g per kg and builds up week by week, as in “This week: about 75 g · building to 130 g”. Meals start from the plates you already eat, at your own one to six eating times, and eating out is part of the plan.

How do I know it’s working?

The scale lags behind the mirror, especially while you lift. Photos in the same light and your lifts holding steady tell you more. The full answer is in losing fat and building muscle together.

In Nume: add up to four private photos to a weigh-in. Only you see them, and they are never read by AI. Your strength sits beside your weight on Progress.

Keep the six pack, or not

Very visible abs are hard to hold all year. Many people settle at a level they can live with and go leaner for a holiday or a shoot. When you get there, switch your goal to Maintain.

In Nume: change your goal in Profile > Goal, or in one sentence in Talk, and the plan follows. Maintain plans your energy at about what your body uses.

Bring it to Nume

A six pack is a fat-loss project that keeps muscle, run over months. Nume runs the long part with you. Your plan starts with a gentle cut, unless you’ve trained steadily for three months or more, and stays moderate. Protein builds up week by week. Workouts are written for your days, at home or at a gym, step up after each full session, and keep your core work in them once you ask. Every meal comes from dishes you enjoy, at your own eating times, and the rest of the day adjusts when a meal runs heavier. Progress puts your weight, strength, protein and private photos side by side, so you can see the change before the mirror does.

To pick between goals first, see how to choose a goal. New to the gym? Start with your first four weeks.

Common questions

Can women get a six pack?

Yes. Women naturally carry more body fat than men (ACE’s typical range is about seven points higher), so abs tend to show at a higher body fat than they do for men. The method is the same.

Can I get abs in 30 days?

Only if you’re already close. Thirty days at 0.5 to 1% a week is about 2 to 4% of your weight. Use the arithmetic above with your own number.

Should I train abs every day?

There’s no need. Two or three hard sessions a week, like any other muscle, is enough.

Does cardio help?

It adds to the energy gap, and aerobic exercise reduces the deep fat around the organs. See how to lose belly fat.

Checked on 12 November 2026 · The Nume team