Targeted Fat Loss

It’s not as simple as training one muscle group to lose fat in that area.

Losing fat in a particular area requires both a calculated exercise approach and a calorie management system.

Good Morning!

I hope you’ve had a great week.

Today I want to discuss fat loss, and why it’s a more complicated topic than we give it credit for. In past newsletters, I’ve talked about how hormones play a role in how our body composition is made up.

To keep it short, there are a multitude of factors that can contribute to the amount of water you’re retaining (think of that “bloated” feeling in your lower stomach).

The food you eat, when you eat it, the intensity at which you train, the amount of quality sleep you get, non-exercise activity, stress levels, genetics and your age are all big contributors to how many extra pounds your body decides to hang onto.

But today, I want to explain why fat loss can’t just be “trained away.” A client of mine recently asked me to continue busting myths on my weekly newsletters, and today I’ll be doing just that.

There’s No Such Thing As Targeted Fat Loss

Or at least there isn’t enough science yet to show us there is.

As a fitness professional, I often get requests from clients who are struggling to shed fat from specific areas of their body.

They are concerned about belly fat, thigh fat, arm fat, and so on, and often ask if there are specific exercises or diets that can target those areas.

These questions are valid, because in theory, training biceps will cause your biceps to grow. That’s exercise science 101. However, muscle growth doesn’t always happen at the expense of fat loss.

In fact, it’s very rare that you can “trade” fat for muscle. Nonetheless, influencers, gurus, and snake-oil salesmen and saleswomen will attempt to tell you you can. It's a myth that has been perpetuated by the fitness industry for decades.

Joining the club of unsexy fitness truths is this: There’s no such thing as spot-targeted fat loss.

In other words, training your legs excessively alone won’t reduce cellulite as quickly as it would as if you began to make dietary adjustments and increased your step count along with that training.

I Know, It’s Not Fair.

Why can't we target specific areas for fat loss? Let's break it down.

Our bodies are complex chain of multiple systems functioning simultaneously. They are both incredibly intelligent and super simplistic at the same time.

With fat loss, it errs more toward the simplistic. When we lose weight, we lose it from all over our bodies, not just one particular area.

Our bodies store fat in adipose tissue, which is distributed throughout our bodies. Before you go demonizing this tissue, remember that like most of our body’s functions, it exists to keep us from dying. With less adipose tissue, you’d freeze to death faster in the Arctic Tundra because you’d have no protective tissue to keep you warm.

Extreme example? Maybe. But I’m here to get you to understand your body, not create “good things” and “bad things” about it.

Thus, when we increase our energy expenditure (a.k.a calorie burn) through diet and exercise, our bodies start burning fat for energy, and that fat comes from all over our bodies, not just one particular area.

In 2015, a group of researchers took a bunch of women and gave dietary guidance (and the experimental group was also given targeted abdominal exercises) to see if there would be an improvement in stomach fat over 12 weeks.

The good news? Both groups lost weight.

The not-so-good news? There was no significant difference in abdominal definition between the two groups after 12 weeks.

It’s an unfortunately small study (40 subjects, all overweight), but one that is still represents significant proof that exercise alone can’t fix fatty tissue.

What Can I Do For Fat Loss?

If you're struggling to lose fat in a specific area of your body, know that you're not alone. It's a common frustration, but the truth is that there's no magic solution or exercise to get you the body part you want.

As with many fitness-related endeavors, some of it comes down to playing the long game, but there is a sure-fire quicker answer for those who have the capacity to make significant changes to their diet.

The best approach is to focus on creating a calorie deficit (burning more than you consume) through a combination of diet and exercise, and let your body do its thing.

This doesn’t necessarily mean ramping up the intensity of your workouts either (although the authors of this 2019 study recommend the occasional HIIT Class), but progressively moving more throughout the day (walking, doing more household tasks, fidgeting or even chewing gum.

For consuming calories, there are a plethora of ways to look at dietary changes. My first bit of advice is to always take stock of your day-to-day eating habits. If you aren’t eating the same thing every day, try to first build a consistent diet that is — if not exactly the same — similar every day, so guesstimating calories becomes easier.

From there, it becomes a process of elimination:

What can I do without? Can I resist the temptation to eat? What can I substitute with non-processed, whole food?

With patience, consistency, and dedication to these principles, you will lose fat from all over your body, including those stubborn areas.