Is it possible to spot-reduce body fat?
For once, this health and fitness question has a very straightforward answer: no. It is not possible to spot-reduce body fat, despite what you may have been led to believe. Doing a tonne of ab exercises won’t ‘shred’ all the fat off of your stomach, and doing a million reps of banded leg exercises will ‘strip the fat’ away from your legs and hips. It just doesn’t work that way.
Where we hold body fat is a lot more individual than that, and far more out of our control. Some differences are more generalised (for example, women tend to store more fat in their triceps than men), but a lot comes down to individual genetic and hormonal differences. Where and how you store body fat is not really within your control, and unless you have a medical condition or hormonal imbalances (which should be addressed with the help of a medical professional), it’s not worth trying to change your body fat distribution. It also should be noted that body fat distribution can change over the course of your life, as hormone levels also change.
What you see as your ‘problem area’ is likely just the area of your body you are predisposed to store fat. Understanding and accepting this doesn’t make it any less frustrating, as usually this means the area you would most like to lose body fat from is the last place it’s going to go from. This can be demotivating at times, and often people feel they aren’t making the progress they want because they don’t see the changes where they really want to - and this is an understandable feeling. When you compound this with the effort someone might put into ‘fat-burning’ exercises to target their problem area - whether it be their stomach, arms or bum - you can see why some people get to a point where they ask themselves ‘what’s the point?’
So, the first thing to understand is, quite simply, exercising a certain body will not promote fat loss from that area. The second thing to understand is, having some excess body fat is not a terrible thing, and not something we should beat ourselves up about. Our efforts aren’t all futile, though. While we are unable to spot-reduce body fat, it is possible to spot-increase muscle mass. So what does this mean?
Well, we can grow specific muscles by training them. So, instead of trying to do ‘fat burning’ exercises (which don’t exist) to try and tone up or lean out certain parts of your body, focus on increasing your muscle mass in those places with consistent and efficient strength training. By increasing the amount of muscle we have, we can appear ‘leaner’ at higher body fat levels, and certainly feel more comfortable and ‘firmer’ without actually losing body fat.
This is another reason why resistance training can be beneficial. Using resistance exercises, and gradually adding progressive overload (eg adding weight, repetitions or sets) to an exercise can stimulate muscle growth on the muscle that we are targeting. This is a much more useful and effective use of time than trying to reduce the amount of body fat at a certain body part. You want your arms to look more defined? - Do more arm exercises to increase the amount of muscle there. Want ‘firmer’ legs? - Well, train your legs regularly to get stronger and more muscular. Want your stomach to feel less ‘soft’ and have more shape to it? - You guessed it, train using exercises that challenge your core and increase its strength.
If you combine effective strength and resistance training with a calorie deficit (how we actually lose body fat), you will see your body composition improve, and your overall body fat percentage will decrease. While you may not see this decrease exactly where you want to, by targeting the areas that you want to focus on most, you will see a big difference in your physical appearance in the end.
If you have any other questions regarding body fat loss, or strength training, get in touch via the comments, or by emailing coretrainingpt@gmail.com
