In my recent blogs I’ve talked about one of my most frequently asked questions. It goes something like this: The person grabs some part of their body (usually one that is soft and undesirable) and asks, “Can you give me an exercise to get rid of this?”
This common question brings up two important topics: body shapes and where body fat is stored (covered in Parts 1 and 2 of this series) and that all-time favorite subject, “Spot Reducing.” Hint: It’s in quotes because it doesn’t really exist.
You can find claims about spot-reducing everywhere. There are suggestions all over the gym, exercise videos, and in many workout manuals. It seems like common knowledge, but instead is an ancient urban myth. You cannot tell your body where to burn fat when you make your muscles hungry. Your body has an intricate plan that’s set deep in your survival genes. The plan is to put any extra food you might be lucky enough to find, in a storage compartment (adipose tissue cell) in a safe location on your body. Just imagine hundreds of years ago, when life was much more dangerous, that if the plan had been to store our extra groceries on our calves or out on our wrists (instead of safely around our middles). There would have been many mishaps that would have caused our essential food stores to be lost due to cuts, slashes, breaks or loss of our appendages. It just wouldn’t have been as good a plan to put our food way out there on our limbs. Instead there are 3 or 4 typical patterns of how human bodies store their fat. These patterns are the ones that have worked over time and have helped us survive in times when we couldn’t find enough food.
So our bodies are set-up for survival of the human race over the ages, not beauty according to the latest fashion whim. Sure thin waists are popular now, but it was a sign of poverty in the not-so-distant history.
So, with your body possessing this pattern of fat storage it also has a plan for the order in which your fat cells will be drained. It doesn’t involve draining the fat cell closest to the muscle that is hungry. It’s developed around draining the fat cell that is most “at risk” of being drained first. So if I do lots of sit-ups, I’m going to get stronger abdominal muscles and that will help my back be less vulnerable. But I’m not going to see the fat melt off my abs just because I worked them out. Nor will the fat “turn into” muscle. The fat to fuel this new work (doing the sit-ups) will come from the last fat cell I filled up (maybe behind my neck, even though I’ve barely even noticed that fat yet) and the fuel (that’s what fat is) will travel in the blood stream to the exercised muscle to enable it keep working.
Beware! Spot-reduction claims are a sure way to know that someone’s trying to trick you! No new exercise or apparatus can make your body re-direct fat cell drainage. Just stick to the full-body exercises that burn a lot of calories and eat the foods that will help you stay in a good mood.
Alice Lockridge,
Physical Activity expert, MS PhysEd, Exercise Physiologist