You may have seen a lot of people performing a variety of crunches, side bends, leg raises, and abdominal exercises in hopes of getting rid of that belly fat or love handles at the gym.
But is it possible to reduce fat just from the belly or in other words, is it possible to target fat loss from a specific body part such as the thigh, abdominal area, hips, etc.?
Simply put, is spot reduction possible?
The clear answer is “no” for now but there is some evidence regarding its effectiveness but not conclusive enough at this point.
However, before we get to that it is important for you to understand how the body accumulates & loses fat.
How does the body accumulate fat?
A simple way of looking at this is, when you’re in a state of caloric surplus, meaning you’re consuming more energy through food (in form of carbohydrates, fat & protein) than you burn (Total energy expenditure), the extra energy that remained in your body will be stored in cells as triglycerides.
In your body, fat storage is determined by several factors such as genetics, age, gender, lifestyle, etc.
And, women generally tend to accumulate fat around thighs, butt areas whereas men store fat around their belly region.
How body loses fat?
When you are in a state of caloric deficit, meaning burning more calories than what you’re consuming, your body will break those triglycerides into free fatty acids & glycerol and use them as the energy source.
When this process takes place continuously, you’ll lose fat.
What about those abs, obliques, and thigh exercises we see people doing at the gym?
While all those exercises are great at increasing strength and endurance for a specific muscle group that’s being trained and might as well help grow the muscle under favorable conditions, however, removing fat mass is clearly for your body to decide.
To simplify it even further, performing biceps exercises will help grow muscle mass but will not warrant the reduction of fat mass from the biceps area. Likewise for other muscle groups.
In order for that to happen, strength training must be coupled with a calorie deficit so the body also starts to lose fat.
Do any specific body part gets preferential fat loss treatment?
No. It is for the body to decide which fat cells get used as energy first.
Whether they’re coming from the biceps, thigh or belly, you cannot decide.
A number of studies have proved that targeting fat loss from a specific area doesn’t work.
A 2017 study, however, showed some signs of a fat mass reduction in specific areas in 16 physically inactive women who did resistance training followed by low-intensity cardio sessions.
But more research is needed to confirm this for a larger group of individuals.
But meanwhile, something that definitely works on reducing overall fat mass is –
- caloric deficit diet
- resistance training and
- consistency
References –
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21804427/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23222084/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28497942/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17596787/
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