Whoever said, “You have to eliminate carbs to get great abs?” It’s utter and total nonsense. But it has come to be what many people believe, thanks to all those cookie-cutter diet infomercials that have saturated the TV channels for the last several years.

Once Atkins and then Sears found big bucks in telling people how to diet, everyone else jumped on the bandwagon. This wouldn’t have been so terrible, except for the fact that these were intense diets meant for obese people. They were diets for people who were forced to diet under doctor’s orders before pending surgeries, or very heavy people suffering from having their internal organs pushed together. People who were maybe a few pounds overweight were told to diet as if they were obese—and they believed it.

After all, it was the esteemed Cleveland Clinic that endorsed the Atkins’s diet for their overweight pre-operative heart patients. And thus, a diet was born that was taken completely out of context and became part of the lifestyle for millions who never saw themselves as needing to diet in the first place.

Sure, there’s no question that anyone sticking to these diet regimens will lose weight. But if you think that dieting by itself has anything at all to giving you great-looking abs, you’ve got another think coming.

And while you’re at it, here’s another thought: this myth about carbohydrates. Yes, there are “carb sensitive” people. There are some people who seem to gain weight just by looking at the wrong carbs. For these unfortunates, of course, a low-carb diet is what’s called for.

But don’t ever think of eliminating all carbs from your diet entirely. A no-carb diet will string out, flatten and generally atrophy all of those muscles you’ve put hours into sculpting and strengthening. Also, the glycogen and glucose in carbs provide your muscles with most of the energy they need.

Like most everything else, moderation is the key. Too many carbs at once, or too many of the wrong kind, produces an excess of insulin that floods the bloodstream, crashing blood sugar levels. What happens next is part of the vicious carb cycle: tiredness, cravings for sweets, desires for salt. Then back to taking in more carbs, and so, on and on it goes, to the end result—storing fat and weight gain.

Ideally, you have to compensate for those days when your will power won’t. So, have some high carb days, then have some low carb days. Mix it up and you’ll stay out of that cycle that wreaks havoc on your body and makes you dependent on too much of the wrong kinds of foods.

Once that’s under control, it’s time for portion control. When you start eating correct portions of good carbs, healthy fat and lean protein, then you can refer to dietary tools to help determine the exact breakdown for food types based on genetic makeups.

So, the next time someone tells you, “you have to eliminate carbs to get great abs,” tell them what you just found out…” that’s only a myth.”