By: David Zinczenko, Editor-in-Chief of Men's Health and Ted Spiker, Co-authors of The Abs Diet

 When I was in college, I had a friend who argued that he knew the key to a six-pack: "All you have to do is 1,000 crunches a day for a month." He said it in a way that made you believe him-that if only you were disciplined enough to put in the time every day to concentrate on your abdominal muscles, then you'd eventually chisel away a gut of stone. His theory was that it all boiled down to volume and discipline. He went on to say that the iconic ab exercise would do more than just build abs-that it was also the fix-all to weight problems, that you could simply crunch away years of bingeing on pizza, wings, and all-night keg parties.

In a lot of ways (a heck of a lot of ways, actually), my friend was wrong. For one, crunching won't burn fat. And you won't develop abs by doing the same exercise over and over-let alone the same exercise every day. And 1,000 repetitions? C'mon. There's only one thing most of us would do 1,000 times a day if it were physically possible, and it wouldn't be a crunch. But he was right in one sense: If you want abs that will make you stronger, healthier, and better looking, you do have to work them. And that does take discipline-but not as much as you'd think.

Though your midsection works as one unified core, it does help to think of your abdominal center in regions. To build speed-bump abs, you need to work the entire region. The three visible regions consist of the upper abs, the lower abs, and the obliques (the muscles along the side of your torso). But there are also a number of supporting muscles that, when developed, will add strength to your abdominals: your lower back and the transverse abdominis-muscles that run underneath your abdomen horizontally to give support to your entire midsection.

You already have all of these muscles; you just need to break them out. That's why your priorities have to revolve around the first two components: the nutrition principles and the fat-burning workout. Once you strip away the fat, your abs can grow and show. Unlike what my friend said, you won't get a six-pack by working your abdominal muscles every day. Instead, follow these guidelines for adding the final component.