You Can't Target Where You Burn Fat From ... Or Can You?

Spot reducing fat, or targeting the exact place from the body you burn fat from has always been promoted when people want to sell a program or something like a workout DVD.

"Burn belly fat" or "Lose the love handles" spring to mind and immediately when I see this I straight away know they're looking to hook people in who are unhappy with the way they look into their brand new workout program that costs X amount to sign up for.

It could be that you can follow their program and create the thigh gap, lose lower back fat or sculpt your abs via their follow-along workout videos. It might also be that a certain food or supplement is going to help you melt the fat from a certain area of the body and get you looking beach body ready in no time.

Does any of the above sound appealing? To a large amount of people who have these insecurities and would love them gone the answer is a HELL YES! But, do they actually work? The answer is not an overwhelming no, but by themselves they are without doubt no miracle cure.

Allow me to explain...

You can't directly burn fat from a certain area of the body, such as your abs. However just about every single fitness magazine and most places online will have a section or headline for a workout that guarantees you six pack abs in a set time date.

If only this was true why on earth would they promote a new one each month?!

Training a muscle in any area of the body and growing that muscle - such as the back - will increase the surface area of that muscle. Now the same amount of fat spread across a larger surface area is obviously going to look leaner. Therefore it does help to lift weights to elicit fat loss and get a leaner area of your body - providing you don't add to your fat stores through your nutrition.

Fat loss occurs over the whole body and is not specific to one area at a time. You have to create the proper environment (a calorie deficit) in your body for this to happen and your body reduces it's fat stores all over the body - some areas will get leaner quicker than others, but mostly everyone will be different in where they lose from first.

You could do however many abs workouts you want through the week - in fact you could do them morning and night - it won't matter unless you reduce your fat stores so that they actually become visible. And this is more done through your diet and not your training, although you can use activity to create or increase a calorie deficit.

You must be in an energy deficit - through either consuming less calories than you burn or burning more than you consume through activity. You can not get away from this. To lose fat, you need a calorie deficit.

The breakdown of where you calories come from can definitely improve fat loss and body composition, but this is a topic for another post.

For now just know that you can not choose where your body will go to get energy from it's fat stores. Unfortunately, it decides! We can utilise exercise to increase our calorie deficit without needing to drop our food so low, but still we are at the mercy of patience and waiting for our body fat levels to drop to low enough that we can see certain areas and muscle groups.

Typically abs are the areas both males and females would like to be leaner and visible. Now for these areas you want to be around 10% body fat for males, and 20% for females. This can be hard to achieve as it will mean commitment and consistency in your training and diet to get so low, but it can be done. You might however notice other areas of your body becoming leaner before your abs get there, but keep going and it will happen.

So the next time you see someone advertising their 'Six Pack In Six Week' challenge - scroll past!

---

Want information like this and to be updated when a new blog post is up? Sign up to my FREE emails for all sorts of advice and help.