Visible 6-pack as a woman

kennydrawr

Hey all! First post here. I'm a 27 year old woman with a goal of a visible 6-pack. I'm not sure what my bf% is but here are my other stats:

5'4"
116 lbs
27" waist
30" hips

I've had a hard time with bf% calculators online because I don't have a very good hip:waist ratio and I think that skews it. I would like to find out for sure sometime, but in the mean time...

HOW THE EFF DO I ACHIEVE THIS? Should I focus on eating completely clean? Should I adjust my macros to less fat and sugar than normally allowed? My thing is, I do a lot of biking, running, hiking, just about every day. I tend to burn so many calories that I need to eat 2,300+ just to break even. I don't want to lose any more weight, so I am trying to eat at maintenance, but I'm generally under just about every day.

The amounts of food I would have to eat to break even is ridiculous if it is all stuff like veggies, lean meats, and what not. So I end up eating more carbs and fat (bread, rice, peanut butter, usually) just to get my calories in. I've got good strong abs, I can feel them under about an inch layer of fat. I can't cut back calories anymore because I can't afford to lose any muscle, I need that ****.

I'm just an active person with a taste for healthy food, I'm far from a fitness expert. I kinda have no idea what I'm doing, but I want to. Any tips on this would be appreciated, thanks.

audrast

You would have to decrease your body fat percentage but you can keep your weight if you focus on strength training over cardio-fat loss. Gain muscle and lose fat.

ETA: A fit % of body fat for women is around 21-24%. An "athletic" amount of % body fat goes from about 15-20%

kgeyser

This link is helpful. For your stats, I would recommend a much smaller deficit than TDEE-20%. 5 or 10% should be enough to burn off the fat while still retaining your muscle and allowing you to maintain your activity level.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1161603-so-you-want-a-nice-stomach