An article titled like this raises a lot of questions. I’ll answer one right off the bat: no, this is not branded content. I would have been smart to get some money from Nintendo, but nobody has ever accused me of being smart. I’ll be happy to answer all your other questions in a second, but it’s probably best if I introduce myself first. I go by Skylar, which is my middle name, my first name being something else unimportant. I’m 36, at least for a couple more months. I have been remarkably average for as long as I can remember. My height is 5’10”, right in the middle, and my weight generally hovers in the 160ish range, below the overweight threshold but by no means remarkably healthy. My normal boring hobbies include music, movies, traveling, and eating food. I don’t care much for extreme sports, or anything with the word “extreme” in it that isn’t a Doritos flavor. No one would describe me as a health nut or gym rat, mostly because I’ve never set foot in a health food store or gym.

So what is this six-pack stunt about? Is this some sort of post-pandemic midlife crisis? Probably. More than that, though, this was sparked by my friend Will studying to become a personal trainer. He said if I could show him a goal body type, we could set a plan for training our way there for free. I thought about this for a few seconds, then showed him a picture of Brad Pitt. No, not the sculpted Ken doll Brad Pitt we know from Fight Club, the lean sinewy Brad Pitt from the movie Snatch. More specifically, the only part of Brad Pitt I cared about was the lean six pack abs.

“Really? That’s easy. Abs are made in the kitchen.”

I heard at least one of the words Will said, which was “easy.” I love doing easy things. I play video games on easy. I cook eggs over easy. If I must use an oven, I’d prefer an Easy Bake. Come to think of it, I don’t want a personal trainer, even a free one. Not easy enough. What if, instead of a personal trainer, I used a video game? This idea was really coming together for me, so I silently walked away from Will, never to speak to him again. I had a plan. And the best part? It was easy.

The first step was research. Could I really get six pack abs from just dieting? The general consensus seemed to be that I could, but the diet would have to be very strict, and the abs still might not look all that great. Strict dieting sounds hard, so I persisted and looked up if I could get six pack abs just from playing the Ring Fit Switch video game. There was only one Reddit thread talking about this, and it seemed fairly direct in saying that no, I could not. What do they know, though? Somebody else told me it was easy, and they read a book and everything.

Okay Reddit, if you’re so damn smart, what do I do to get abs? What did Brad Pitt do? I couldn’t find any information on what he did for the movie Snatch, but the Internet is filled with information on what he did to get fit for Fight Club, both fitness and food-wise. One interesting thing about the Fight Club workout regimen is that it contains no ab exercises. Also, it seems like many trainers believe it was over-the-top and very likely not something he was actually keeping up every day. What does Brad Pitt say? Not a whole lot, but if you read between the lines a bit on some quotes from later on, you can see that he was likely drinking or smoking every day during training for this film. A sad truth for Pitt to admit, and I’m glad he’s doing better, but a very good omen for me. It meant I could do this without giving up drinking.

What would I have to give up? I decided fried food, sugar, and simple carbs would be a good start. For how long? The Internet said that most people take at least 3 months to develop visible abs. It was a good deadline for me, because 3 months marked my trip to Montreal to play Pouzza Fest, where I’d have no choice but to eat like a king in a city of bagels, maple syrup, and gravy-coated fries. In order to give myself the laziest advantage I could within my 3-month window, I additionally resolved to walk as much as possible. I could write a whole other article just about the benefits of walking, I probably will at some point, but simply put, it’s the exercise equivalent of water. It’s satisfying, you can have as much of it as you want, and generally speaking, it’s only going to help, so more is better.

And what about the Ring Fit, the crux of this whole stunt? Well, it’s no Brad Pitt Fight Club training regimen, but I took the basic concepts Brad employed (basically working different muscle groups each morning before eating anything) and set about putting together a rinky-dink version of them on my Nintendo Switch. Fortunately, Ring Fit Adventure does have a Custom Workout mode designed specifically for this type of low-intensity training. Unfortunately, it’s probably the least fun way to play the game, replacing all of the game’s colorful environments and enemies with a robot in an empty room that observes and scores your workout routine through cold dispassionate metal eyes.

The following was my daily schedule for a full 90 days.

6:30am	Wake up, turn off the alarm, take a Duolingo French lesson to get my brain working, use the restroom, check messages, that sort of stuff
7:00am	30-minute Ring Fit “workout.” Arms/chest on Monday, legs/cardio on Tuesday, core/hips on Wednesday, yoga/balance on Thursday, then back to legs/cardio on Friday and core/hips Saturday.
7:30am	Breakfast. The best breakfast, according to the Internet, is unflavored oats, an unsweetened nut butter of some sort, and fruit. I’ve been doing this with classic childhood nolstalgia peanut butter and apples for years now and I’ve got no complaints. Add a glass of water and mug of breakfast tea with a splash of sugar-free oat milk and you are ready to tackle the day. Usually. If you’re already poking holes in my goals of avoiding simple carbs and sugar here, you’re going to have a field day with all of the small cheats I sprinkled throughout this routine. It’s 3 months, man. Make it livable.
7:45am	Shower. No big changes here.
8:00am	Walk to work, about 3 miles, or maybe the movie theater or tennis court or brunch on the weekends. I’m blessed to live in a very walkable flat city, but February mornings in Philadelphia are not always the most relaxing or comfortable. The subway was always an option for days when the weather was completely unforgiving, and I spent a few sick days at home, but I got a good 80 days of this walk in at least.
9:00am	Sit at my office desk and look busy. Take 10-second “get up and walk around” breaks every hour as instructed by my trendy smartwatch.
11:30am	Lunch. On weekdays, this is always a high-protein low-calorie frozen meal of some sort. No frozen brands or meal delivery services are sponsoring this article, nor any fitness video games, so I’d say they’re all pretty good.
12:00pm	Back to the desk. Paid hour lunch breaks were a luxury of generations before me. I’ll be in this office until 6pm because that’s just the world now.
3:00pm	Might grab a snack or tea here. There’s a lot of 100-calorie popped snacks out in the world that are maybe not the healthiest thing you can possibly eat, but they work well for a quick office break.
6:00pm	Walk home. Step counter reads about 12,000 when I get back, ~5,000 each for the walks to and from work and ~2,000 incidental steps around the office.
7:00pm	Dinner. I like to throw a bunch of stuff in a pot and cook it for the entire week. Usually soup, sometimes a buddha bowl or curry or chili or maybe low-carb wraps if the week schedule looks tenuous and requires frozen dinners. If my sweet tooth requires a dessert, I’ll grab a spoonful of the keto cookie dough I’ve prepped for the week. This stuff truly got me through this thing, no joke.
Night	Practice an instrument, watch a show, maybe have a couple of drinks with friends. My drinks are always a base spirit on the rocks or topped with seltzer water, sometimes pre-mixed in a trendy 2010s-reminiscent can. It’s not the most exciting, but it’s a nice compromise.
10:30pm	This is ideally bedtime for a full 8 hours of sleep. This of course doesn’t happen half the time, but a complete and consistent sleep schedule is a big part of any good fitness plan.

So I followed that schedule for 90 days, and as fast as a couple getting green card married on a TLC show, I now have abs. Was it really easy, though? That’s a difficult question. It was easier than I thought it would be, but it wasn’t without difficulties. The biggest one was turning down free food and drinks, or looking at a place’s menu and realizing I can’t eat anything there. I hate being a difficult food person. Worse yet, I became even more difficult after a St Patrick’s party where I realized I love Irish cheeses with whiskey; my overindulgence led to me cutting cheese out of my diet entirely. I also went a little crazy with sugar-free drinking on a few weekends, understanding but not fully comprehending that even straight liquors are 90-120 calories per shot, and they do some damage to the metabolism that water does not. On top of all that, I made a lot of workout mistakes, most notably disabling my Switch controllers by shaking them too violently. Still, I persevered, and eventually I reached the point where I now sit writing an article, as any ripped dude with a six pack would do.

Do I recommend getting abs this way? I’ve watched enough fitness gurus on YouTube to know that this is the part of the video where they tell you no, do not to do this, there are much better ways of getting to this goal. For me personally, I don’t know if that’s true. Yes, I got a six pack in a performative kind of ridiculous way, but it was my way, and it worked for me. Gym nerds and fitness coaches were once regular mortals like you and I, and if prodded they will reluctantly admit that the best fitness routine is any routine you’ll actually commit to and stick with. This was the one I stuck with, and while I have no intention of keeping my six-pack, there are a lot of new habits I’ve picked up in these 3 months that will live on. For instance:

• Low calorie meals and snacks. I’ve spent my life avoiding green labels or anything with “healthy” in the title, a byproduct of the Slim-Fast-and-Jenny-Craig 90s when everyone was convinced that sugary food science that leaves you unsatisfied and hungry would cure us of fat. I’m glad I overcame my fear of this stuff. Rest assured that diet food has come a very long way since then; it’s just food now. Bowls are a great innovation of the new era; almost every restaurant has some sort of bowl now, and they’re great.
• Walking. Even when it’s unpleasant, it’s more pleasant than taking the subway, and always worth the extra 20 minutes of commute time. That extra sleep wasn’t going to save me anyway.
• Portioning meals. This isn’t the most polite thing to talk about, but beyond the aesthetic consequences of overeating, the amount of time we spend on the toilet seems intrinsically linked to how much we’re overexpanding our stomachs, especially as we age. It’s kind of nice to keep my energy up and be able to return from the restroom in a regular amount of time.
• It pains me to say this, but spiked seltzers really aren’t that bad. Don’t get me wrong, they’re not good, but they’re at least a lower-damage option when nothing really good is available. If you’re at a fantastic tiki bar or beer garden with 100 new and exciting taps, I’d definitely say to drink something you’re excited for, but if you’re at another paint-by-numbers bar with the same draft and cocktail list you’ve seen your whole life, why take the caloric hit for your 5000th unspectacular PBR? Get a High Noon or a gin and soda. It’s light, refreshing, and it will eventually have the same numbing effect on your brain, if that’s what you’re after. Additionally, I learned during this journey that it’s best to finish eating and digesting food before drinking, as the body will prioritize metabolizing alcohol once it enters the system, leaving undigested food to become fat, so when you drink is important, too.

Normally, I’d say something clever to wrap everything up here at the end, but I’ve been sweating and starving for three months, and I’m pretty exhausted. I’m playing with a band called Reclawed at Pouzza Fest on Sunday night (well, technically Monday morning), May 21st, at 12:30am at the Théâtre Sainte-Catherine in Montreal, come drop by if you’re in town. Don’t ask me to show the abs, they’ll be long covered by french fries and gravy by then.

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