Lose Belly Fat–why You Can’t Spot Reduce

For those of you looking to lose belly fat, it’s important that you have the right information in order to achieve your goals. If you’ve been doing countless sets of crunches, leg raises, or any other direct abdominal work in attempt to lose that spare tire, then you have the wrong information.

In this article, I am going to show you why it’s impossible to lose belly fat no matter how many crunches or leg raises you do, and I’m going to reveal the right way to go about it.

It’s really quite elementary, or so it would seem. If you want to lose belly fat, then you obviously have to work your abdominals. That’s what you’ve been told, so you go and hit the abs from all angles.

You do crunches for the upper abs, hanging leg raises for the lower abs, side crunches for the obliques. That should help you lose belly fat, right?

Wrong!

You’ll never lose belly fat by doing all of that abs work. Sure, you’re going to have strong abdominal muscles. You might even have a six pack, but you’re never going to see it until you lose that roll of fat covering them up.

The reason that you will never lose belly fat that way is that you just can’t spot reduce. By spot reduction, I mean that you’re only losing fat in one area of the body.

It is therefore impossible to lose belly fat, and then not lose fat throughout the rest of your body.

In order to lose belly fat, you have to have a total fat loss plan. Fat won’t just disappear from your abdominal region simply because you’re doing every imaginable abs exercise. That’s not the way it works.

Fat loss occurs in the body as a whole. That means that if you want to lose belly fat, you have to have a fat loss strategy that burns fat throughout your body.

To lose belly fat, you have to change your workout focus away from direct ab work, and instead start doing the types of exercises that really burn fat. That’s heavy, compound exercises like squats, deadlifts, presses and rows. These exercises work most of the muscles of the body, along with their stabilizers. This, in turn, helps to release the hormones responsible for muscle gain, and fat loss. You can’t get that from crunches, or leg raises, and definitely not from side bends. 

You also have to do cardio, but not in the way you’ve been taught. To lose belly fat, you have to do high intensity cardio. That low intensity stuff won’t produce a hormonal response the way high intensity, interval cardio does.

Simply put, high intensity cardio releases fat burning hormones, and revs up the metabolism in a way that slow, steady state, and long duration cardio never will.

Aside from heavy compound exercises and high intensity cardio, if you’re serious about losing belly fat you must also eat a healthy and well balanced diet to really lose that belly fat.

By healthy and well balanced I mean a diet that includes plenty of fruits and vegetables, lean meats such as chicken and fish, nuts (unsalted), and whole grains. Notice I didn’t mention anywhere that you must starve yourself. That’s not the way to lose belly fat, and it’s definitely not the way fat loss works.

If you starve yourself, or deprive your body of any of the macronutrients (i.e. proteins, fats, carbohydrates), you won’t lose belly fat. Instead, you’ll end up messing with your metabolism. Essentially, you’ll end up slowing down your metabolism and stopping your fat loss before it even starts.

So, to really lose belly fat, you can’t try to spot reduce it away. Spot reduction does not work. Instead, you must focus on fat loss in the body as a whole. You have to include compound exercises, and high intensity cardio. And, you absolutely must include a healthy and balanced diet.

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