Can you control where you lose weight on your body?

Spend some time scrolling through social media and you’re almost guaranteed to see an ad promising to help you lose fat in a targeted way. These ads promote a concept known as “spot reduction,” claiming that you can burn fat in a specific area of ​​the body, usually the stomach, with specially designed exercises or workouts.

It’s also common to see advertisements touting special diets, pills, and supplements that will blast fat in targeted areas. These ads – which often feature impressive before and after photos taken weeks apart – may seem credible.

Unfortunately, spot reduction is another weight loss myth. It is simply not possible to target the location of fat loss. Here’s why.

1. Our body is programmed to access and burn all of our fat stores for energy.

To understand why spot reduction is a myth, it is important to understand how body fat is stored and used.

The fat stored in our body takes the form of triglycerides, which are a type of lipid or fat molecule that we can use for energy. About 95 percent of the dietary fat we consume is triglycerides, and when we eat, our body also converts any unused energy consumed into triglycerides.

Triglycerides are stored in special fat cells called adipocytes, and they are released into our bloodstream and transported to adipose tissue – tissue we more commonly call body fat.

This body fat is found everywhere in our body, but it is mainly stored as subcutaneous fat under our skin and as visceral fat around our internal organs.

These fat stores serve as a vital energy reserve, with our body mobilizing to access stored triglycerides to provide energy during periods of prolonged exercise. We also draw on these reserves when we diet or fast.

However, contrary to what many spot reduction advertisements would have us believe, our muscles cannot directly access and burn specific fat stores when we exercise.

Instead, they use a process called lipolysis to convert triglycerides into free fatty acids and a compound called glycerol, which then travels to our muscles via our bloodstream.

As a result, the fat stores we use for energy when we exercise come from everywhere in our body, not just the areas we target for fat loss.

Research reinforces how our bodies burn fat when we exercise, confirming that spot reduction is a weight loss myth. This includes a 12-week randomized clinical trial that found no greater improvement in abdominal fat reduction among people who undertook an abdominal strength program in addition to diet changes compared to those in the diet-only group.

Additionally, a 2021 meta-analysis of 13 studies involving more than 1,100 participants found that localized strength training had no effect on localized fat deposits. In other words, exercising a specific body part does not reduce fat in that body part.

Studies claiming to show the benefits of spot reduction involve small numbers of participants and provide results that are not clinically meaningful.

2. Our body decides where we store fat and where we lose it first

Factors beyond our control influence the areas and order in which our body stores and loses fat, namely:

Our genes. Just as DNA indicates whether we are short or tall, genetics play an important role in managing our fat stores. Research shows that our genes may account for 60 percent of where fat is distributed. So if your mom tends to store and lose weight on her face first, chances are you do too.
Our sex. Our bodies, by nature, have distinct fat storage characteristics depending on our gender, including women having more body fat than men. This is mainly because the female body is designed to retain fat stores to support pregnancy and breastfeeding, with women tending to lose weight in the face, calves and arms first as this are those that have the least impact on pregnancy, while retaining the fat stored around the hips. , thighs and buttocks.
Our age. The aging process triggers changes in muscle mass, metabolism and hormone levels, which can impact where and how quickly fat is lost. Postmenopausal women and middle-aged men tend to store visceral fat around the midsection and find it a difficult place to move.

3. Over-the-counter pills and supplements cannot effectively target fat loss

Most advertisements for these pills and supplements – including products claiming to be “the best way to lose belly fat” – will also proudly claim that their products’ results are backed by “clinical trials” and “evidence”. scientists “.

But the reality is that a multitude of independent studies do not support these claims.

This includes two recent studies from the University of Sydney that looked at data from more than 120 placebo-controlled trials of dietary and herbal supplements. None of the supplements examined resulted in a clinically significant reduction in body weight in overweight or obese people.

The essential

Spot reduction is a myth: we cannot control where our body loses fat. But we can get the results we’re looking for in specific areas by targeting overall fat loss.

Even though you can’t lose weight in a specific location when you exercise, any physical activity helps burn body fat and preserve muscle mass. This will lead to a change in your body shape over time and will also help you manage your weight in the long term.

This is because your metabolic rate – the amount of energy you burn at rest – is determined by the amount of muscle and fat you carry. Because muscle is metabolically more active than fat (meaning it burns more energy than fat), a person with higher muscle mass will have a faster metabolic rate than someone of the same body weight but with higher body fat.

Successful long-term fat loss requires losing weight in small, manageable portions that you can maintain – periods of weight loss, followed by periods of weight maintenance, and so on, until you reached your goal weight.

It also requires gradual changes in your lifestyle (diet, exercise, and sleep) to ensure you form habits that will last a lifetime.

Nick Fuller is Research Program Manager at the Charles Perkins Center at the University of Sydney. This piece first appeared on The conversation.