CHAPTER 1

Find Your Abs in Your Kitchen

WELCOME TO THE KITCHEN - the room with all the knobs and buttons and

stainless steel. You know, where popcorn comes from.

Turn on the light. Look around. Get familiar with this space. You

may already be an experienced chef, but if you're like most Americans,

cooking isn't your forte. And that's fine, because this isn't a traditional

cookbook.

Sure, it's got recipes. And a shopping list. And it's got a lot of

phrases like “sauté on high for 3 minutes” and “stir until smooth” and

“add a pinch of salt.” But that's about as technical as we're going to get.

There's nothing exotic or complicated or French in these pages. No,

what's in these pages is something even more intriguing: the keys to the

body you've always wanted—one with more lean muscle, less flab, and

yes, even abs.

That's right. Exercise machines and dumbbells, jump ropes and

running shoes may have their place in the pantheon of fitness and

weight loss, but the tools in the kitchen are far more powerful than the

tools in the gym. Measuring cups and microwaves, sauté pans and soup

recipes will become your real fitness buddies, helping you shape up way

faster than medicine balls and supersets will.

Your kitchen will help you find your abs, if only by keeping you

out of those wastelands of waist expansion: restaurants. A large, 15-year

study published in the medical journal The Lancet found that people

who ate fast food at least twice a week gained an extra 10 pounds a year,

compared with those who hit the restaurants less frequently (and,