How to get Lean with 6-Pack Abs (No Bullsh*t Full Guide)

The Level 1 Gamer hates looking in the mirror every time he takes a shower. He wears baggy clothes to hide his fat. He avoids taking off his shirt at the pool or beach. He’s self-conscious about his body when he’s with his girlfriend and thinks she’s gonna leave him any minute now. He feels no girl would ever love his body. He catches people wrinkling their nose in disgust or moving away from him.

The Level 100 Gamer smiles every time he takes off his shirt. He notices girls checking him out at the beach / pool, his girlfriend loves running her hands down his abs. Guys give him fist-bumps at the gym. He loves wearing tight clothes that show his biceps perfectly. He’s proud of the body he’s built.

I always wanted to build muscle. I knew that muscle = popularity & muscle = girls. Yet I could never figure out how. I worked out through 4 years of college but barely gained any muscle. I worked out in 4 years of med school, but I mainly just got fat cause I thought you had to “eat big to get big.” It wasn’t until my late residency (around 28 y/o), that I finally figured out the secret to getting an incredible aesthetic body.

But I look back and I’m like “I wasted all this time. Imagine if I had this body in college or med school. How different would my health, confidence, and social life have been back then? Did I miss out on better friends, better relationships cause my body wasn’t at its peak?

I’m writing this post so you don’t make the same mistakes I did.

This guide is for beginners to specifically get us a hot, aesthetic, physique.

It’s for skinny-fat or fat guys to get lean and muscular. Think Geralt of Rivia. It’s not for bodybuilders, its not for runners, it’s not for advanced lifters or powerlifters. This is for the lifting noob and intermediate - or the guy stuck for years not noticing a difference.

If you want a lean, shredded body year-round, while enjoying gaming and eating whatever you want, this is the guide for you.

Side note: You should NOT feel ashamed for wanting that body. There’s a movement in society telling people it’s okay to be fat, “health at every size,” fat acceptance”, “dad bods”. Or that it’s shallow / vain. Screw all that. A LOT of these people just want others to be okay with their poor choices. Yes some people have eating disorders - this article is not for them. The scientific evidence is clear that obesity is bad for our health. Chris Hemsworth and Jason Mamoa are getting all female attention in Hollywood, not Jack Black or Seth Rogan. We’re jealous of the jacked guys living amazing lives, not the fat guys. This is how the world works.

So my view is: we don’t complain about it. We understand it, and get to work.

Weightlifting

In high school I’d sometimes go to the gym in the evenings with my parents. One day I’d do a hot yoga class. Another day I’d run on the treadmill. Next week I’d play racquetball with my friend. And then other days I’d walk around using random machines like the bicep curl. And then I’d wonder why I wasn’t getting bigger like the guys on the football team.

We have to be in the gym lifting weights consistently. No exceptions. Lifting is the single greatest thing known to man. I’d rather have the gym than make 1 million dollars a year.

(Yes I know some people do bodyweight stuff, but that’s the exception not the rule. I don’t know much about that, so will not comment.)

The #1 Gym Mistake Noobs Make:

We don’t have a structured plan. I remember in college I’d show up when I “felt like it”, workout “whatever I feel like” or “hit chest again with the boys.” So of course, I made no progress.

The most important concept in muscle building is PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD. This means we’re gaining strength over time on the same exercise. This is weight increasing on the bar over weeks and months. It’s also increasing the reps with the same weight, improving our form with the same weight/reps or decreasing our rest with the same weight/reps. Basically, our PERFORMANCE of each exercise gets better with time.

Here’s an example of that that looks like:

See if you can spot the progression above.

How often should we lift?

The mistake I made for years was lifting TOO much while trying to lose body fat. When bulking I’d workout 5-6 times a week while overeating “for the gainz”; and yeah I gained strength. But when trying to cutdown body fat, I’d lose strength, which meant I lost muscle. It was a horrible feeling to be putting in all this effort, and then a year later I’d look at my body… and I looked the SAME as last year. WTF!

All the fitness youtubers told me you gonna lose a ton of strength when you’re cutting and I believed them. Instead when I cut my workout back to 3-4X / week (every other day), I was rested every session. I gained strength on my lifts and lost weight at the same time! I gained muscle while losing fat. 3-4 solid workouts / week with excellent performance beats 5-6 subpar workouts with moderate performance any time.

What kinds of workouts should we do?

When starting out, focus on COMPOUND movements. They workout multiple muscles with one exercise. They also generate the most testosterone. These should be the foundation of any muscle building program.

Examples: Squats, Deadlifts, Overhead Shoulder Press, Bench Press, Pull-Ups, Rows

Focus on Compound Movements

But if we want a HOT body, we also need isolation exercises focusing on these muscles: Neck, Lateral shoulders, Upper Chest, Arms, Back, Forearms, Abs.

This will give us that sexy V-Taper (wide shoulders, narrow waist). Look at Geralt above again.

I’m not including a specific workout here because there’s literally thousands of workouts to choose from online. You need to pick ONE, and stay consistent.

Pro tip: Stay away from powerlifting workouts. Those are designed for pure strength, not aesthetics. Do we want to look like big bulky powerlifters? No. We want to look hot. So we must workout accordingly.

If you want me personally to coach you through a plan, apply under SERVICES.

How Hard Should We Work?

In my lifting journey, the lift I’ve been stuck on the most was bench press. I specifically remember my bench not going up after YEARS. I remember asking one of my fraternity bros in college - how do I get my bench to go up. He watched me do a set and then said, “you sure that’s all you can do?”

We must make sure we’re challenging ourselves with each set. It should feel like we could only do 1-2 more reps max. I personally go 0-1 reps in each set - where maybe I could pound out 1 more rep but my form would be crap. We should feel the burn in our last rep and feel like we struggled to get it (but without sacrificing our form).

But as beginners we may only do 8 reps when we easily could’ve done 14 - a sign we need to increase the weight).

Going to failure is overrated. We ruin our future set performance in that workout by dramatically increasing fatigue without much more muscle building benefit. And impact recovery for our next session.

How Important Is Form?

Here’s one of the most embarrassing times in my lifting career:

I loaded 205 lb on my squat rack, thinking I was super strong. I get a few reps, and then as I’m coming up… I can’t get up anymore. BOOM. The bar falls down my back onto the rack. Everyone around me sees. I then duck UNDER the bar to stand and unrack the bar, embarrassed.

I got cocky. One with the weight I’d put on. And second with my form. I’ve found our ego gets in the way of having proper form. We want to lift more weight than we can or show off to our friends. But that risks injury and causes LESS gains cause we’re not stimulating the muscle properly.

If you don’t listen to me, listen to Kratos:

Diet

*NOTE - this section is NOT for people with eating disorders such as binge eating disorder, anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa. They have specialized medical needs that are best addressed by an eating disorder specialist such as an adolescent medicine physician or specialty trained dietician.

I thought eating a lot was the only way to gain muscle. I’d eat 3000 Calories / day! But then I’d get fat, and I’d waste time trying to cut back down again. At the end I’d barely notice any more muscle, and I spent 6 months of that year being fat. Now I feel like I wasted YEARS of my life - Imagine if I had this body at 25!

If lifting is the car’s acceleration, diet is the steering wheel - it decides the direction we go. Eat more than our maintenance calories, we gain weight. Eat less than maintenance, we lose weight. Lifting provides the stimulus to make the weight gain muscle and the weight loss fat.

The mistake I made for YEARS was going on these bulk-cut-bulk-cut cycles.

Now my philosophy is to stay lean year-round and slowly add muscle. This way I’m always happy looking in the mirror.

How Much Should We Eat?

Calculate your maintenance Calories or TDEE (total daily energy expenditure). Everyone burns Calories at rest, chilling. This is your body doing its natural life-sustaining processes. When we eat less then this, our bodies tap into stored energy (aka fat) to fuel ourselves. And that’s how we lose fat.

Use this calculator. Choose “sedentary” for activity level and “maintain” for your weight goal, This will give the rough amount of Calories you burn at rest.

Eat 300-500 Calories less than maintenance / day for sustainable weight loss of 0.5-1 lb / week.

Don’t go below a 500 Calorie deficit. You’ll crash, give in to cravings, mess up your hormones, feel cold, have no sex drive etc. And before you know it you’ve binge eaten it all back. Slow and steady baby.

How Do We Know How Much We’re Eating?

Would we buy a plane ticket or rent a fancy apartment without knowing how much money we make per month? Same thing here. We track our eating.

I was the “weird guy” for years who tracked my food. My roommate wondered why I weighed my pasta and meat separately rather than just dumping it all in. My mom wondered why I brought a scale to dinner when she made us food. Or I weighed the bowl before/after putting a scoop of ice cream. This let me know exactly how much Calories and protein I was getting / day. The best part? It made my weight loss GUARANTEED.

We keep track using an app like MyFitnessPal, MyNetDiary, LoseIt etc. If we make our own meals, we can measure the ingredients before cooking. Prepackaged foods we can scan the barcode. If we’re eating out we can search for that food in their database.

But the best part? Once I got good at tracking, I didn’t have to do it anymore. Now I keep track in my head approximately how many Calories and protein I got, cause I can look at food and guesstimate. And you can too.

How Do We Know If Its Working?

In my weight loss phases (cutting), there were times I felt like my diet was great, I was making so much progress, but then I’d check the scale, and I gained 3 lbs? Or I lost 5 lb in 1 week? It made no sense to me. And that’s when I learned: our weight fluctuates every day, every hour. Some days we’re full of water and food, other days we’re dehydrated. Some days we get good sleep and our body’s good at metabolizing fat, other days we’re in fat storage mode.

Here’s the key. We track over TIME - weeks, months, years. And we look at the trend.

How to Not Lose Muscle While Cutting

1) Keep lifting to maintain strength and get stronger. Why I recommend 3X / week to minimize fatigue.

2) Eat 1 g / lb of body weight per day of protein. Studies indicate 0.8 g / lb is enough, but 1 g is safe to shoot for.

This is where protein powder is helpful to reach those numbers.

*Note this is based on LEAN Body mass, not total mass. So if you’re 200 lb and 20% body fat, shoot for 160 g, not 200 g.

The SECRET to Staying Lean All-Year Round

This analogy transformed how I view my diet. Imagine you have $50/day you can spend. You could A) Buy a coffee, a newspaper, candy, a lunch sandwich, a movie ticket etc. And then at dinner time, you have $10 leftover, enough for a Chipotle burrito. OR B) You can save your money and not buy that stuff earlier in the day. So for dinner you can afford a nice Steak dinner at the fancy restaurant in town.

The best method I’ve found to manage my diet is intermittent fasting. I’d always heard the “eat throughout the day to stoke the metabolic fire” myth. And what did that do? Made me hungry all the time. I felt like a rabbit nibbling on food.

But think about how we evolved to eat, how our tribal hunting ancestors ate. They would be fasted until they got a big kill. They were constantly moving and couldn’t really store the meat for long, so they would feast, and wait until their next kill.

I fast 18-22 hours day and eat in a 2-6 hour window. This lets me have 1-2 HUGE meals a day where I feel satisfied, yet still stay in my Calorie budget.

This lets me go out for dinners, celebrate with friends, drink etc. I save my eating windows for these times so I can eat/drink without guilt. I can enjoy treats, ice cream, popcorn, pizza etc. cause its in my Calorie budget.

What Should We Eat?

I mainly eat beans, lentils, chick peas + rice, quinoa or protein pasta as my main meal, huge AF of veggies, and Quest protein bar + protein shake for dessert. The beans/rice I cook in my Instant Pot once / week, so its ready whenever I come home. When I eat out I always get a high protein option like chicken, fish or steak. (I just don’t like cooking meat at home).

Intermittent fasting doesn’t mean we can eat crap. No. We eat healthy, unprocessed, high-protein, whole foods for the majority of our diet. That gives us the best mental and physical health. But this diet sets the foundation so if we want to indulge without guilt, we can.

Sleep

Sleep is vital. In college, I would stay up until 2 am hanging out with friends in the fraternity house, wake up for class at 8 am, and wonder why I wasn’t making any gains.

Sleep is where our torn muscle fibers are repaired bigger than they were before. Sleep also recovers muscular and nervous system fatigue, so we can perform optimally in the gym. If I don’t sleep well on a workout day, I might push that workout day to the next day so I can be fully recovered and perform. It’s that crucial.

Also here’s something no one talks about. Not sleeping worsens our willpower and jacks up our cravings. Just today (March 21 2023), I slept less than 7 hours. Not only did I order Doordash this morning (I normally fast), I also went to the Indian sweets shop and bought 1 lb of burfee (Indian sweet).

Impulsive burfee (Indian Sweet)

Good for my taste buds. Bad for my waistline.

Lesson is: You wanna get fit? Sleep more.

Here’s how seriously I take sleep (haha):

@agamdhawanpsych How fast are you able to sleep? 😴 #sleep #bedtime #goodnight #fyp ♬ As It Was - Harry Styles

What to do after Getting Lean

If you follow the steps above, you’ll see your abs, your shoulders, arms and back will all be bigger. Congrats - that took a ton of work. Now our goal is to maintain this body AND gain muscle without getting fat. It comes down to Calories again. I’ve found eating at our maintenance Calories or up to 200 Calories above lets us gain muscle without geetting fat again. And I’ve found the best time to switch from cutting to “maingaining” or “lean bulking” is when I can see my abs unflexed in all lighting (around 10% body fat). It’s slower than dirty bulking or having a 500 Calorie surplus, yes, but you don’t lose your hard-earned physique. So it’s completely worth it to me.

To summarize:

-Lift 3X / week, compound lifts, isolations for aesthetic muscles. Progressive overload.

-Eat 500 Calories / day below maintenance = lose 1 lb / week. 80% whole foods. Protein 1 g / lb / day.

-Sleep 7-9 hours / night

-Once you reach 10% body fat (see your abs unflexed in all lighting), “maingain” or “lean bulk” by eating at maintenance / slight surplus and progress your strength in the gym. Expand your workout program as needed.

Follow these principles and I guarantee you will have the body of your dreams in 2 years.

Imagine: guys coming up to you in the gym to give you props, girls smiling when you take your shirt off. Imagine all your friends being fit, ripped, and you hype each other up in the gym or in public. Imagine your girlfriend stopping one day saying “wow you look really good.” Imagine feeling strong and capable every time you wake up. Imagine having a smile every time you look at yourself stepping into the shower. That’s what an amazing body does for you.

I know its hard man. This might feel overwhelming especially if you’ve never done this before, or you’ve been trying but it hasn’t worked out. Truth is, there’s a lot of crap information out there, we never know what’s right. The youtubers and fitness companies WANT you to keep struggling so you keep coming back to their videos and buy their products. It’s not your fault, and I’m proud of you for being on this journey.

I’m a psychiatrist who’s been through this and it’s now my mission to help gamers beat their loneliness by becoming a Level 100 Gamer. I specialize in treating Young Men & Gamers with Depression, Anxiety, ADHD and Video Game Addiction. CLICK HERE to book your free consult call.

Check out our MEDIA page for more content like this.

Remember, real life is the video game.

So let’s level up.

Agam

FAQs

Can you drink?

If you want. Fitness should enhance our lives. It shouldn’t BE our lives. You can still have a social life. This does not mean you can get drunk all the time. This means you can fit it into your life strategically. If I know I’m having a social night, I’ll workout earlier that day rather than the next day - cause I know alcohol messes up my sleep and next-day performance. I understand that consequence, so I re-arrange my life to accommodate. 1 can of beer has approximately 150 Calories. 1 shot of vodka has approximately 100 calories, + around 100 calories for the mixer. So just account for it in your daily budget.

What if you overeat or there’s a vacation / birthday / wedding etc.

When we want to go on vacation but we don’t have money, what do we do? We save up for it. It’s the same with Calories. This is the beauty of fasting and understanding Calories as a budget. If I have a birthday party or wedding at night, I’ll fast that day up to that event. At the event, I choose the high protein options, which leaves a ton of Calorie budget to enjoy desserts and drinks without messing up my physique. If I overeat that day, I’ll eat slightly lower Calories over the next few days to even it out. Fasting lets me live a thriving social life while still enjoying the physique I spent years building. Having mastered fasting, I can say with complete confidence I will never get fat again in my life.

Is fasting unhealthy?

No. Fasting is how our ancestors lived. It’s an ancient spiritual practice that has been used to cure disease. We’ve just forgotten about it in our modern McDonald’s world, and become conditioned to eating 3 meals a day.

Can we eat junk food and lose weight?

Yes. Should we? No. Our diet should primarily be whole, unprocessed foods (not made in a factory). Not only do these foods provide essential micronutrients our body needs, its harder for our bodies to break these down = more energy burned = more fat lost. Processed foods contain unnatural chemicals. Plus eating shit food will impact our gym performance = less gains.

I use the 80/20 rule. Keep 80% of my diet clean, so I can enjoy 20% without guilt. Dessert is my weakness, and this lets me have one with every meal without guilt.

Do we need to count Calories?

I don’t count Calories anymore. Nowadays I can eyeball a food and guesstimate how many Calories it has, and judge how much to eat based on how my body’s feeling. But that took years to develop. I used to weigh out my food and log it for a long time. And I loved it because it told me exactly what I was putting in my body. It became a game. So I recommend doing it for sure when you start, and can step back once you start seeing results.

Isn’t Calorie Counting restrictive?

People say Calorie counting is restrictive. I actually think its FREEING. If you don’t know how much you have in your bank account, you can’t buy anything big cause you might overspend. But if you know, you can buy exactly what you want without guilt, cause you know you’re good. It’s the same thing here.

What about supplements?!?!?!

Overrated. Literally the only one I use other than plant-protein powder is creatine. That’s it. The others will maybe do 5% difference MAX, and that’s once you’re an intermediate/max lifter. I’d rather have a good night of sleep than the most expensive supplements in the world. Pre-workout feels amazing only when you take it sporadically. Pointless once your body’s gotten used to it. And caffeine only if the workout’s in the morning - too high risk of fucking up my sleep any later than 12 pm.

Can vegetarians or vegans do this?

Yes. I was a complete vegetarian for 3 whole years from 26-29. The main hurdle is getting protein while eating out - the vegetarian options simply aren’t optimized for protein. Even while eating home, I supplemented my beans/lentils/chick peas diet with protein powder cause they don’t compare to meat. I really don’t love meat that much, so now I have a happy medium where I primarily eat plant-based, and only eat meat when I go out.