No, Virginia, there is no spot-reducing. (Apologies to Francis Church.) Your little friends are wrong.
It’s curious that after about a thousand years’ worth of “myth-busting” articles that proclaim there is no spot-reducing, people still believe that the way to eliminate, say, stomach flab, is to do crunches out the wazoo. Within the last week, two friends have asked me whether doing X (exercise that targets a specific muscle group) would accomplish Y (reduce fat atop that area of the body).
Nope, sorry. It would be nice to think so.
Here’s the way it goes. When you create a calorie deficit–through exercising or eating less or both–stored fat is burned. But you can’t control the source of that fat–its location on your body. If you spend 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer and torch several hundred calories, the muscles of your lower body certainly benefit. But the fat you burn may be from your stomach or upper body or even your face.
The areas where we store fat are determined by our genetics and also our gender. Generally, as you’ve noticed, men store fat at the waistline. Women tend to store it on the butt and thighs, although individuals vary.
Here’s exercise physiologist Dr. Cedric Bryant’s summary (from the American Council on Exercise website) of a couple of studies conducted to examine the concept of spot reducing:
In one study, for example, the circumferences and fat deposits in the arms of high-level tennis players were compared. The investigators proposed that if spot reduction worked, the playing arm of a tennis player should have considerably less fat than the inactive arm. This prediction, however, was not the case. Despite the fact that circumference measures in the playing arms of the athletes were greater due to more muscular development, skinfold thickness measures revealed no difference in fat deposition between the two arms.
Arguably the most compelling evidence refuting the myth of spot reduction comes from a study conducted at the University of Massachusetts in the mid-1980s. In this investigation, 13 male subjects participated in a vigorous abdominal exercise training program for 27 days. Each participant in the study was required to perform a total of 5,000 sit-ups over the course of the research project. Fat biopsies were obtained from the subjects’ abdomens, buttocks and upper backs before and after the exercise program. Contrary to what spot-reducing proponents would have you believe, the results of the study revealed that fat decreased similarly at all three sites—not just in the abdominal region. These findings may help explain one reason why spot reducing sometimes appears to work. If the caloric expenditure is sufficient enough, it will cause fat from the entire body to be reduced, including a particular target area. Although fat is lost or gained throughout the entire body, it appears that the last areas to become lean tend to be those areas where an individual tends to gain fat first. In most men (and some women), the abdominal region is the most difficult area to trim, while the hips, buttocks and thighs tend to be the trouble spots for most women (and some men).
So how do you get rid of that fat on your waistline, upper arms, or around the knees? Keep working out; stick with your reduced-calorie food plan. As your body fat drops, all of your fat deposits will shrink, although genetics determine which problem areas will be the last to go.
