Designed specifically for busy people, A Flat Stomach ASAP is your daily plan of action—whether at the gym or at home, with or without equipment—to get the look you want as soon as possible. A great body begins with a flat stomach... The secret to losing waistline pounds and inches quickly is ASAP, an acronym for Awareness, Science, Application, and Persistence. This successful method for achieving a lean body and a flat stomach includes a powerful new concept called superhydration. It's a fact: drinking large amounts of water daily synergizes your eating and exercising, accelerating fat loss and stomach flattening. Now nationally renowned fitness expert Ellington Darden brings you the program that tells you how to reshape, tighten, and shrink your stomach the way top competitors do—and to do it faster than you dreamed possible. With step-by-step instructions, Dr. Darden details a method that can help you lose from 7 to 11 pounds of fat and 2 1/2 inches from your midsection in as little as two weeks—and see even more dramatic results in six weeks. Discover: -The no-fad eating plan based around five daily “minimeals” -Exactly how to superhydrate to accelerate weight loss -The super-slow style of strength training that brings super-fast results—in less than thirty minutes a session Ellington Darden tells the truth about his subject: you can't get a tight, muscular waistline from doing just a few minutes of abdominal exercise a day. (This from a guy who has actually hawked an ab-training device on infomercials.) In Darden's book, ASAP stands for "awareness, science, application, and persistence," and his program promises that, if you work really hard, you'll see results in six weeks. That doesn't sound like much of a promise, but considering how many people work out for months--if not years--and don't see any results, Darden's book is a dash of welcome hope and reality. Ellington Darden has a goal: to help people live leaner and stronger longer. For the lost thirty years he has worked with thousands of men and women who wanted to feel better physically, look more attractive, and improve overall health through a disciplined approach to nutrition and exercise. He holds bachelor's and master's degrees in physical education from Baylor University and a doctorate in exercise science from Florida State University. Two years of postdoctoral study in food and nutrition set him on the trail that led to the ASAP program. Dr. Darden was director of research for Nautilus Sports/Medical Industries for seventeen years. There he helped develop and popularize the highly acclaimed Nautilus exercise machines. Today, Dr. Darden is the founder and chairman of Living Longer Stronger, a corporation devoted to science and education. His outstanding research, which is applied in his books, is one reason he was recently honored by the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports as one of the top ten health leaders in the United States. A Flat Stomach ASAP is Dr. Darden's forty-fourth book. Chapter One ANSWER: SOLVE YOUR BULGING BELLY Absolutely fabulous: The craving for chiseled stomach muscles," blazed the front-page headline in USA Today (May 21, 1996). Placed throughout this article were pictures of the rippling midsections of Sylvester Stallone, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Janet Jackson, and a Calvin Klein underwear model. "It used to be enough just to be thin," wrote Joe Urshel, the author of this cover story. "No more. Now you must have great abs." Understanding the Obsession Why are Americans so obsessed with flat stomachs and muscular waists? Much of this obsession has to do with the law of supply and demand. What is scarce and difficult to achieve is valuable -- not only valuable but attractive. Twenty years ago, according to Ann Scott Beller, Americans were the third fattest people in the world -- ranking behind the Russians and Germans. Not so today. In 1995, we were elevated to the number one position. As if this number one position isn't secure enough, we're trying to run up the score. A study released by the Harris poll in February of 1996 shows that 74 percent of Americans twenty-five years of age and older are overweight. Similar Harris surveys found that 58 percent were overweight in 1983, 64 percent in 1990, 69 percent in 1994, and 71 percent in 1995. If this rate of increase -- approximately 1.1 percent per year -- continues unabated, then by the year 2021 every adult in the United States over twenty-five will be overweight. Obviously, we're becoming more and more obsessed with flat stomachs, great abdominals, and leanness in general -- because we're seeing fewer and fewer of what we find attractive. Remember the law of supply and demand? It applies not only to economics but also to body parts. The opposite of a flat stomach is a protruding or bulging belly. The opposite of leanness is fatness. Research reveals a direct relationship between flat and lean, and between protrusion and fatness. A p