If it’s a flat belly, a better all-around diet, and a stronger heart you’re after this year, we’ve got you covered. But if you’ve got an even bigger goal in mind—like, say, a truly diced midsection (we’re talking Brad Pitt in Fight Club, or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, in basically everything he does), you need a slightly more—OK, much more—stringent approach.

“Seven percent is as lean as you’d ever want to be,” says John Alvino, a nutrition coach in Morristown, New Jersey, who works with bodybuilders.

So, if you want to get cover-model-worthy abs, you’ll have to be willing to think about food purely as fuel and regulate it with precision. Follow these four steps.

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