Trying To Target Belly Fat & Other Problem Areas?

Do you have “problem areas” that you need to get rid of? You’re not alone.

The #1 request new clients have for my team and I is to help them burn fat off a specific part of their body. Actually, here’s the list of the most targeted problem areas:

Belly
Waist
Butt
Arms

I’ll tell you what I told them: Spot-treating fat doesn’t happen. There’s a lot of “snake-oil” pushers out there that are more than happy to take your money and time while making false promises…but the truth is that improving your problem areas is a part of a full-body process.

Here’s what will ultimately determine what happens to your “problem areas”:

How many excess calories (i.e. fat) you’re storing.
Where you are genetically predisposed to storing/burning fat.

Truth vs Myth

You will burn off flabby arms, love handles, that belly fat roll, and thick thighs by taking a holistic approach to your fat loss.

It’s time to declare all excess fat as the enemy, not just the belly fat.

The Myth

As it stands, there’s a belief that if we do a certain exercises a lot, we’ll be able to lose fat in that area faster (e.g. crunches for belly fat loss). Just look at the millions of articles in magazines, pins on Pinterest, and posts on Instagram that promise “cure” exercises for flabby arms and bellies!

Ultimately, this myth exists because of a lack of understanding of how our bodies respond to exercise. The truth is that these “cures” are a half-truth at best, and complete lies at worst.

The Whole Truth

All of those articles, pins, and posts are wrong and it comes down to an annoyingly simple reason; your genes dictate where you store fat, not how you workout.

Your body uses calories for energy to survive. If you take in more calories than you burn, those excess calories are stored as fat. Your genes determine where your body will deposit that fat. A person’s genes may cause them to store fat primarily in their legs, others in their arms, and others on their abdomen. There is usually an order to this as well (e.g. fat first stored on the glutes then waist then belly and so on).

Most importantly, your genes also determine where you will burn the fat from and in what order.

So if we can’t control where we store and burn fat from, then we’re left with the only thing we can do: just burn fat. Just let your body decide where to burn the excess fat from. Let it do its thing until eventually, your problem area is next in line to start getting burned off.

And here is where we get to why I said the “snake-oil pushers” are selling you half-truths. Although you can’t dictate where your body burns fat from, you can develop your muscles in a certain area.

Let me explain.

How You’re Going To Burn Off The “Paunch”, Flabby Arms, “Junk In The Trunk”, And More

Just because we can’t burn fat in certain areas doesn’t mean we can’t get the results we ultimately want. We just have to do it properly by splitting our goal up into two separate pieces: muscle development and fat loss.

Exercises that focus on a certain body part or parts will have an effect on the muscles present there, not the fat. So if you’re doing crunches to target your abdomen, you’ll be developing the muscles in your abdomen…not the fat. The good news is that you really are developing the strong, sexy core of your dreams. The bad news is that it will stay covered by fat unless you do something about it.

The same goes for any other body part. For example:

Squats for fat located on the glutes
Side crunches for love handles
Tricep extensions or modified push-ups for the back of the arms

Although they are helping you tighten up the muscle and creating a firmer physique, you won’t truly see the benefits until you address the fat that’s there.

So getting rid of your “fat zone” is very much a 2-pronged approach.

Fat Loss

Using the healthy fat loss method I cover in this article on rapid fat loss, you can definitely begin the process of melting off your excess body fat.

If you haven’t read that article yet, I’ll boil it down to this: you must eat and drink less calories than you burn in a day WHILE ALSO paying attention to your macronutrient ratios and fitness level (you really should read that article, here’s the link again).

Now if you successfully do this, all the hard work you’ve been doing in the gym will become very apparent to you.

#FitnessMyth

This Fitness Myth is BUSTED. We cannot spot-treat or spot-reduce our problem areas, we can only get rid of fat in general. It will take time, dedication, and an effective program to get you there.

You can’t control where you lose fat, but you can sculpt what’s waiting underneath.

Try not to obsess over the “problem areas”. Just keep making incremental progress by doing better today than you did yesterday.

As you drop in body fat, you’ll see that your body is cutting away that stubborn fat, revealing the leaner & healthier body you’ve sculpted underneath.

Questions? Just leave a comment below, send my team a Facebook message, or call/email us!

Trying To Target Belly Fat & Other Problem Areas?

Truth vs Myth

The Myth

The Whole Truth

How You’re Going To Burn Off The “Paunch”, Flabby Arms, “Junk In The Trunk”, And More

Fat Loss

#FitnessMyth

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