Listen to the late night infomercials and you will no doubt hear about the latest exercise machine to help you miraculously flatten your stomach. In fact, the first thing you need to understand about getting a six pack is that you need to reach a low level of body fat to get a clear definition of your muscles. Exercise is an important step in attaining low body fat, but the first step is to adopt the correct nutritional habits.

Successful competitive body builders like Tom Venuto know exactly how important nutrition is in their sport. They have refined their use of nutrition to manage their body fat to a fine art, and may well know more about it than most medical experts. Leading up to competitions, they will reduce the fat layer covering their muscles to very low levels - much lower than you or I would wish. Even they don't maintain such low levels all the time. It may even be unhealthy. But my point is this: being able to manage body fat levels through nutritional habits, using the methods that have been perfected by body builders, has important lessons for everyone interested in how to get a six pack.

Body building may, for you, have some connotations of using and abusing drugs, like steroids. There is no doubt a fringe element in body building that resorts to these methods, but they are a minority today, and natural methods are all that is necessary. It is these natural methods for using nutrition to manage body fat that is the key to losing weight, getting a flat stomach, then developing six pack abs.

Tom Venuto has closely studied natural nutritional methods for controlling body fat through his successful competitive body building career. He has prepared a highly popular practical guide to these methods - an informative guide intended for everyone wanting to lose weight and look good, not just body builders.

The right nutrition for looking good is not about fad diets, but about a lifestyle change. There are foods you should eat, and foods you should not eat. There are also ways to eat - how often to have meals, and how much to eat. You also must have the right psychological mindset if you are to succeed.

The wonderful thing about Tom Venuto's book is that it offers a healthy lifestyle system that anyone can apply. Once you have adopted the system and made it a habit, the changes are permanent. You won't look back.

Tom explains the system he offers in great detail, with convincing reasons why each aspect is important. If all you want is a quick fix, this might seem a little boring. He does refer to scientific support, for example. But if you are serious about discovering how to get a six pack, and how to keep it, it does help to know why you should do certain things and not others, and not just "follow some rules". Diet fads based just on following somebody else's arbitrary rules rarely last.

Click on this link to learn more about Tom Venuto's fat reduction lifestyle system, Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle.

Now to the second route to six pack abs: exercise.

No, you don't have to line up with a platoon of soldiers and do sit ups to get your flat abs. In fact that is not the recommended way to go today. For many people, sit ups are a soul destroying exercise. It's so hard to keep those feet down unless you have a partner to hold them, or hook them under something! There are also unecessary risks of muscle and back strains for all but the fittest.

Nor does David recommend most of the exercise machines for flattening your abs, especially those that you see on popular infomercials. He argues that they often take up the strain for some muscles by limiting the range of your motion, and don't give you the full benefit you expect from the exercise.

David's recommended range of exercises make a lot of use of exercise or Swiss balls, where you use your own weight, and naturally need to keep a full range of your muscles active, just to keep your balance.

Do you need both the books by Tom and David? If you are serious about your overall fitness, can afford them and have the time to read them, yes. But if you are in a hurry and really just focused on your abs, David's book does cover the essential nutrition issues as well as the exercises you need for flattening your abs.

Click on this link to learn more about David Grisaffi's methods to Flatten Your Abs

In this candid and revealing interview, Tom Nicoli, a clinical hypnotherapist who was featured on Dateline NBC's Ultimate Weight Loss Challenge, meets with fat loss expert and best selling author Tom Venuto. The two Toms discuss what it really takes to increase or even "skyrocket" your fat loss success and they uncover the reasons why it takes more than hard work and physical effort to succeed - it also takes the right mindset. Some of the facts Tom reveals you will surprise you because you won't hear them from most other experts in the weight loss and fitness industry. Why? Because they either don't know or they have a vested interest in keeping the truth hidden from you.

Click on this link to get your free ebook Skyrocket Your Fat Loss Success.

Although most readers wanting a flatter stomach will have no ambitions to be a body builder, it may help to get an insight into how serious body builders manage their body fat through their nutrition. One of the "hard core" body building diets is the Cyclical Ketogenic Diet. This diet is a distant relative of the Atkins Diet, in that it is a low carbohydrate approach. Surprisingly, the focus is on protein and fat, with meals such as hamburger patties drizzled with cheese - as a way to lose fat!

Carbohydrates such as bread, potatoes, rice, pasta and anything derived from flour are removed from the diet to manage the fat producing processes in your body.

Happily, the diet does allow a blow out day each week when anything, including tasty carbohydrates, are allowed.

The diet has a carefully developed reasoning behind it, aimed at manipulating the hormones and processes that build and burn fat, develop muscle and accumulate energy within the muscles. It is not just a fad diet approach without any medical foundation. You can learn more about the rationale and practical implementation of these methods, in combination with an intense body building exercise program, at this explantion of the Cyclical Ketogenic Diet.

Interestingly, this diet contrasts with the traditional food pyramid with it's emphasis on carbohydrates at the broad base of the pyramid and fats at the narrow top. It clearly points to the popular consumption of carbohydrates as a primary source of excess body fat, and turns the food pyramid upside down.

Some food for thought!