This is one of the travesties that is making the weight loss industry millions of dollars a year.
If you are one of the many who have seen advertisements for weight loss products that promise to target belly fat, lower body fat, or (fill in the blank) fat and thought “Hey, that’s a good idea,” this post is for you!
Here are the real facts about fat loss:
1. First, it’s important to understand that when you work out, your body burns calories. Only a precious few of these calories come from your fat stores. This is because most of the calories come from the fuel that you have eaten during the day.
2. Unfortunately, there is no way to determine where the body will burn fat. I feel like I should write that again and then scream it from the rooftop. I will exercise restraint though. Where your body stores and burns fat is completely determined by your genetics. No pill or diet can change this.
3. A lot of diets claim that they can make it so that you don’t develop tummy fat, but like burning fat, you have no control over where your body stores fat. This is also decided by genetics. Women typically store fat in their lower bodies and men usually store it in their midsection.
Interestingly, where your body stores fat first is where it also burns fat last. That is why certain fat stores are more “stubborn” than others. They really do last longer than others.
4. If you see someone with a six-pack, it is because they have worked their booty off (literally). If they have lost enough weight in their midsection to see the muscles underneath, you can be sure that they lost the same amount of weight through the rest of their body.
5. So what does this mean to us? If you want a six-pack and are even 10 lbs. overweight, all of the crunches in the world won’t get you the abs that you want. The only solution is to do cardio to burn fat and do resistance training to develop muscles.
So the moral of all of these dry facts is that if you want a killer body, all the diet pills in the world won’t get you there. Hard work is the only thing that will help you lose your stubborn fat stores that seem to never diminish.