Why You Can’t Spot Reduce To Lose Weight
18 Feb 2009If you’ve trying to lose belly fat, then it’s important that you have the proper information. Otherwise, you will never achieve your goals. If you’ve been trying to shrink your waistline by doing countless sets and reps of crunches or legs raises, then you DON’T have the right information.
When you ask someone who seems to know about belly fat loss, they’ll give you an extensive abs routine consisting of crunches for the upper abs, reverse crunches or leg raises for the lower abs, and side crunches for the obliques. That should work your abs from all angles and melt that fat right from you belly, right?
No Way! That is completely false. You will never lose belly fat by doing all of those abs exercises. Yes, you’ll end up with strong abs, and possibly even a six pack, but good will that do you if you have a roll of fat around them?
The reason direct ab work doesn’t work (pardon the pun) is that you can’t spot reduce. By spot reduction, I mean trying to lose fat from only one area, or body part. It is therefore impossible to lose belly fat, and then not lose fat throughout the rest of your body.
In order to lose belly fat, you have to have a total fat loss plan. Fat won’t just disappear from your abdominal region simply because you’re doing every imaginable abs exercise. That’s not the way it works. Fat loss occurs in the body as a whole. That means that if you want to lose belly fat, you have to have a fat loss strategy that burns fat throughout your body.
To lose belly fat, you have to change your workout focus away from direct ab work, and instead start doing the types of exercises that really burn fat. That’s heavy, compound exercises like squats, deadlifts, presses and rows. These exercises work most of the muscles of the body, along with their stabilizers. This, in turn, helps to release the hormones responsible for muscle gain, and fat loss. You can’t get that from crunches, or leg raises, and definitely not from side bends.
You also have to do cardio, but not in the way you’ve been taught. To lose belly fat, you have to do high intensity cardio. That low intensity stuff won’t produce a hormonal response the way high intensity, interval cardio does. Simply put, high intensity cardio releases fat burning hormones, and revs up the metabolism in a way that slow, steady state, and long duration cardio never will.
Aside from heavy compound exercises and high intensity cardio, if you’re serious about losing belly fat you must also eat a healthy and well balanced diet to really lose that belly fat. By healthy and well balanced I mean a diet that includes plenty of fruits and vegetables, lean meats such as chicken and fish, nuts (unsalted), and whole grains. Notice I didn’t mention anywhere that you must starve yourself. That’s not the way to lose belly fat, and it’s definitely not the way fat loss works.
If you starve yourself, or deprive your body of any of the macronutrients (i.e. proteins, fats, carbohydrates), you won’t lose belly fat. Instead, you’ll end up messing with your metabolism. Essentially, you’ll end up slowing down your metabolism and stopping your fat loss before it even starts.
So, to really lose belly fat, you can’t try to spot reduce it away. Spot reduction does not work. Instead, you must focus on fat loss in the body as a whole. You have to include compound exercises, and high intensity cardio.
Resources On Why You Can’t Spot Reduce To Lose Weight:
the Mom Buzz: Can you Spot Reduce Fat? – The answer is that you cannot spot reduce. Believe me, I wish we could too. There is so much misinformation out there. Every marketing guru promises to spot reduce with a new fitness machine, lotion or pill, but it’s just not possible. …
Weight Loss: Can You Burn Fat From All The Right Places? – The newest weight loss fads promise that you can “spot reduce”, that is, you can trim your body of fat exactly where you want to. It could be the love handles, the flabby arms, the sagging skin or the hips. But, as with most claims in …
Hey, I said you cannot spot reduce to get a flat stomach! – You cannot spot reduce! Any attempt to do so is not going to work, period. Why Can’t I Spot Reduce? The market misinforms the public of the benefits that can be expected from their so-called revolutionary products when in fact there …
1 Response to Why You Can’t Spot Reduce To Lose Weight
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March 2nd, 2009 at 1:48 am
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