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How To Get Visible Abs In 3 Months (unique advice)

Training abs every morning, cutting protein targets, and why the clean-plate habit is keeping you fat. The science says one thing. What actually works is different.

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"Abs are not made in the kitchen. Abs are made through these workouts and then they are revealed through a low body fat percentage." — Hamza
Hamza, on the episode

This is a late-night Q&A from Hamza, answering a community member who asked whether a six-pack in three months is realistic. Hamza has carried visible abs for several years and spent over a decade in bodybuilding, so the answer draws from real trial and error rather than textbook programming. The pop framing is that abs are made in the kitchen, a phrase repeated so often it has lost any operational meaning. The actual model Hamza runs is a two-part system: build the muscle through consistent daily training, then reveal it by making the calorie deficit easy to hold instead of grinding against it. What follows are the specific habits, numbers, and protocol adjustments that have given him what he calls the easiest fat loss season of his bodybuilding life.

Tactic 01

The Morning Ab Blast Routine

Hamza's best six-pack did not come from weighted ab work in the gym. It came from five to six minutes of bodyweight ab training done immediately after brushing his teeth every morning, before eating or starting work. Two to three sets of crunches, long-lever planks, and lying leg raises, done on the kitchen floor while the kettle boiled. The long-lever plank is a standard plank with the elbows moved forward to eye level instead of shoulder level. Someone who can hold a regular plank for a minute will collapse in about ten seconds on the long-lever version, so the difficulty jump is real. The reason this worked better than gym-based training is consistency. Weighted ab exercises in the gym require setup, equipment, and a long rest between sets. The morning routine required none of that. It became a five-minute ritual that produced a feeling of discipline and daily progress. Hamza tracked it on a checklist. The psychological payoff, feeling like a productive man before the day had properly started, kept him showing up even on poor sleep or difficult personal days. His abs looked their best during this period, which he found genuinely surprising given how unscientific the method was.

The play

Tomorrow morning, immediately after brushing your teeth and before eating anything, drop to the floor and do two to three sets of crunches, long-lever planks, and lying leg raises. Keep the total time to five or six minutes. Set a checklist entry and mark it done. Do this every single morning. The consistency of daily bodyweight training will produce better visible results than occasional weighted ab sessions you skip half the time.

Tactic 02

Lower Your Protein Target to Make the Deficit Stick

Hamza recently dropped his protein target from 1 gram per pound of bodyweight, around 200 grams for him, down to 0.6 grams per pound, which lands at about 120 grams. He calls this the biggest single change behind his easiest fat loss season in his bodybuilding life. His strength has not dropped in two months, and he has not lost a single rep on any lift. The mechanism is simple. When the protein target is high, hitting it requires eating more food. That food brings extra calories from fat and carbs whether you plan for it or not. When the target is 120 grams instead of 200, it is easy to reach before the calorie ceiling, which means the day ends with a genuine deficit rather than a deficit on paper that got quietly erased. The largest research analysis on the topic found that 0.6 grams per pound of bodyweight is roughly the lowest point at which muscle retention holds up, so the floor has scientific backing even if the approach feels permissive. If intake happens to go higher on a given day, that is fine. The point is removing the pressure that used to push calories above the target.

The play

Calculate 0.6 grams of protein per pound of your current bodyweight. That number is your new daily target on a cut. If you exceed it, fine. Stop treating the higher figure of 1 gram per pound as mandatory. Track calories as the primary lever and let protein land wherever it lands above the floor. Run this for four weeks and note whether the deficit becomes easier to sustain without a drop in gym performance.

Tactic 03

Stop Finishing Your Plate

Hamza identifies the clean-plate habit as one of the main hidden reasons people cannot stay lean. For fifteen years he finished every plate regardless of how full he felt, treating it as an act of discipline. On a cut, this habit works directly against the goal. The body sends a fullness signal partway through the meal and the clean-plate reflex overrides it, adding fifty to one hundred calories that were neither wanted nor needed. The reframe he offers is to think like a model rather than a bodybuilder once the foundational muscle has been built. Models trend toward undereating, not hitting an exact target. On a cut, eating 1,800 calories when the plan says 2,000 is a better outcome than eating 2,200 because something was left on the plate. Hamza also removed the couch-and-food pairing that used to trigger overeating. He now eats standing in the kitchen mid-conversation with his housemate, then goes back to work. Without the cozy sitting ritual, the pull to keep eating past fullness disappears. The first time he left food on a plate was notable enough that he remembered it as a specific moment.

The play

At your next meal, eat until you feel full and then stop, even if food remains on the plate. Do not finish it out of habit or discipline. If the couch is where you tend to overeat, eat standing or at a table without a screen for at least the next two weeks. Notice how much less effort the deficit takes when fullness rather than an empty plate is the stopping signal.

Tactic 04

Scale The Protein Number To Your Actual Body Weight

The standard advice is one gram of protein per pound of body weight. At 160 lbs, that means 160 grams a day. Hamza ran that target for years and found it quietly working against him on cuts. The problem is not protein itself. The problem is that chasing a high protein number pushes total calories up because you rarely hit your protein through pure protein alone. Every gram of protein comes packaged with other calories, and when you are trying to stay in a deficit, the extra food you add to close the gap is what breaks it. The fix he landed on is specific. If you are 160 lbs, drop the target from 160 grams down to around 100 grams. That number is not arbitrary. The largest study on the subject found that roughly 0.6 grams per pound of body weight was the threshold where muscle gain was still supported. Below that, you start losing the benefit. At 0.6 times 160, you get 96 grams, so 100 is a clean, conservative target that still protects muscle while making the deficit far easier to sustain. Hamza puts it plainly: "When I lower my goal for protein from 200 grams to 120, it allows me to just eat way less calories." What changes in practice is the moment you reach satiety. At 100 grams you hit your target early in the day. You are full, you are already above the muscle-protective floor, and there is no pressure to keep eating to chase a number. Before, at 160 grams, that pressure meant squeezing in the last 55 or 60 grams through food that carried extra calories with it. The deficit broke not from a lack of discipline but from the arithmetic of a target set too high.

The play

Take your current body weight in pounds and multiply it by 0.6. That is your new daily protein floor. If you land above it, great. If you hit it and you are already full and close to your calorie limit, stop there without guilt. On a cut, the calorie ceiling matters more than the protein ceiling, and a protein target scaled to 0.6 grams per pound keeps you protected on both.

Tactic 05

The Post-Brush Ab Protocol

Hamza's best-ever six-pack did not come from a gym program. It came from five or six minutes on the floor every morning, right after brushing his teeth, before eating anything or starting work. No weights, no gym commute, no complicated setup. Just a consistent window he never had to negotiate with himself about because it was bolted onto something he already did every day. The sequence was simple. A set of roughly 30 crunches to start, which he says was already destroying him when he first began. Then long lever planks: the standard forearm plank with the elbows shifted forward from shoulder height to eye-level height, which turns a hold most people find easy into something that breaks down to about 10 seconds at a time. Then a couple of sets of lying leg raises if he felt like it. The whole thing ran maybe two or three sets per movement, total time under six minutes. "It wasn't scientific," he says. "I didn't go to the gym. I just dropped down on the floor." What made it stick was not the programming. It was what checking it off did for him psychologically. He kept a little checklist, and ticking the ab blast off it made him feel like a disciplined, productive man, not the same person he was before he started training. On bad nights, personal problems, poor sleep, he still showed up and got it done. That consistency, applied to a modest but genuine stimulus, produced better-looking abs than any gym-based ab work he has done since.

The play

Tomorrow morning, immediately after brushing your teeth and before eating or opening your phone for work, drop to the floor. Do two sets of crunches aiming for 30 reps, two sets of long lever planks (elbows shifted forward to eye level, hold until failure), and two sets of lying leg raises. Keep the whole session under six minutes. Do not skip it because of a bad night or a hard morning. That is exactly when you show up. The gains are real, but the bigger return early on is the daily proof that you are the kind of person who does the hard thing before the day has started.

Tactic 06

Hit 200 lbs By Year Five

Hamza is 6'1" and only crossed 200 lbs for the first time in 2024 or 2025. That is over a decade into lifting. He calls it his biggest regret. "I wish I hit 200 lb more like 5 years into this journey," he says. "I wish I focused way more on just packing on mass in the first few years because you just gain so much more muscle when you just bulk the first few years." The logic is simple. Early bulks compound. Your body responds fastest to training stimulus in the first few years, and if you are not in a calorie surplus during that window, you are leaving muscle on the table. Hamza touched 200 lbs as a natural milestone, but by the time he got there he had already passed the years where the weight would have done the most work. The body weight itself is not the goal, but it is a rough proxy for how much mass you have actually put on relative to your frame. This changes the sequencing advice for anyone early in their training. Big bulks belong at the start, not scattered across the entire journey. Once you have a few years of serious size behind you, the case for staying lean permanently gets much stronger. But if you skip the early bulk window, you spend years cutting down to a physique that does not have much underneath it.

The play

If you are within your first five years of lifting, make hitting a meaningful weight target by year five your primary goal. For a 6'1" frame that is around 200 lbs. Scale it to your height: taller frames need more, shorter frames need less, but the point is to set a concrete number and chase it aggressively in the early years rather than cutting prematurely. Do two or three serious bulk phases before you ever think about staying lean long-term. The muscle you build in that window will be the foundation everything else sits on.

Tactic 07

Use Small Daily Sweets To Kill The Binge Cycle

Hamza's vice isn't alcohol or cigarettes. It's food. Specifically, it was the weekly or twice-weekly dessert order: something dirty from a restaurant, eaten on the couch while watching something, as a reward for a few days of clean eating. He describes the pattern clearly. "Good, bad, good, bad. That's what happens with many areas of self-improvement for guys." A few days of discipline, then a full collapse. The binge-starve cycle that quietly destroys fat loss progress for months at a stretch. His fix is counterintuitive. Instead of cutting sugar entirely, he builds a small, deliberate sugar allowance into every day. About 80 to 120 calories worth of sweets, usually one or two sour sweets and a cube of dark chocolate, taken almost as a prescription alongside tea. Not because he's craving them, but as an active choice. "I'll eat it even though I don't really feel like it." The effect: he stopped ordering desserts entirely. Weeks without a craving for the bigger thing, because the smaller thing already scratched the itch. The sour sweets help here too. "It's almost a little bit sickly," he says. Enough to satisfy, not enough to send you looking for more. On paper, adding sweets to a fat loss diet sounds like cope. In practice, it resolved the oscillation that had been costing him more calories than any planned dessert. The total sugar intake went down, not up, because the binge orders stopped. A controlled small dose replaced an uncontrolled large one.

The play

Add 80 to 120 calories of sweets to your daily routine, ideally something slightly sour or rich enough to feel a little sickly after one or two pieces. Take it deliberately, with tea, not as a reward but as a scheduled part of the day. The goal is not enjoyment, it is inoculation. If you have a food vice that shows up as a weekly binge or a late-night order, this small daily dose removes the pressure valve that was building toward it. Track whether your binge frequency drops over the following two weeks.

Tactic 08

The Long Lever Plank

The standard plank has a ceiling problem. Once you can hold it for a minute, adding time stops doing much. Hamza's fix is simple: move your elbows forward. Instead of positioning them at shoulder height, slide them out until they're roughly level with your eyes. That one adjustment changes the leverage completely and makes the exercise hard again. He puts it plainly: if you can hold a normal plank for a minute, you'll be lucky to hold the long lever version for ten seconds. The muscle demand jumps that sharply. It's not a different exercise, it's a harder version of one you already know how to set up, which means no new learning curve and no extra equipment. You just move your elbows and the difficulty resets.

The play

Next time you plank, shift your elbows forward from shoulder height to eye level. That's the whole adjustment. If you've been holding normal planks for 45 to 60 seconds, start timing yourself on the long lever version. Most people land under 15 seconds. Work up from there, adding a few seconds each session. When you can hold it comfortably for 30 to 40 seconds, the lever is doing what the normal plank stopped doing months ago.

Your action plan

the plays, one checklist.

01
The Morning Ab Blast Routine
Do two to three sets of crunches, long-lever planks, and lying leg raises every morning right after brushing your teeth. Five to six minutes. No gym required. Check it off daily and never miss.
02
Lower Your Protein Target to Make the Deficit Stick
Drop your protein target to 0.6 grams per pound of bodyweight while cutting, roughly 100 grams for a 160-pound person. Hit the calorie ceiling first. Let protein fall where it falls above that floor, and the deficit becomes dramatically easier to hold.
03
Stop Finishing Your Plate
Stop when you feel full, even with food still on the plate. Eat standing or away from a screen to remove the couch ritual that drives overeating. Let undereating the calorie target count as a win, not a failure.
04
Scale The Protein Number To Your Actual Body Weight
Multiply your body weight in pounds by 0.6. That is your new protein floor on a cut. Hit it, and if you are close to your calorie limit, stop. The calorie ceiling matters more than the protein ceiling.
05
The Post-Brush Ab Protocol
Every morning after brushing your teeth, drop to the floor before eating or starting work. Two sets of 30-rep crunches, two sets of long lever planks to failure, two sets of lying leg raises. Under six minutes. Do not negotiate with yourself about it.
06
Hit 200 lbs By Year Five
Set a specific body weight target for your frame and hit it within your first five years. For a 6'1" guy that number is around 200 lbs. Do your serious bulk phases early, before you shift into a long-term lean lifestyle. The muscle you build in that window compounds differently than muscle built later.
07
Use Small Daily Sweets To Kill The Binge Cycle
Add 80-120 calories of sweets daily (1-2 sour sweets, a cube of dark chocolate) taken deliberately with tea. The goal is inoculation, not indulgence. A small controlled dose removes the pressure that builds into weekly binge orders. Track binge frequency over two weeks.
08
The Long Lever Plank
Shift your elbows from shoulder height to eye level in a plank. If you can hold a normal plank for 60 seconds, you'll likely manage under 15 in this position. Work up from there, a few seconds per session.