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Losing Fat from your Problem Areas

Everybody has those areas of their body they don’t like. For men it’s usually the abdomen, for women the ass. Attempting to burn more fat from these areas than others by targeting workouts on these areas is called ’spot reduction’ and has always been considered a myth. Basically, conventional wisdom has always said that in order to lose fat from one area of your body you have to lose it from all over with cardiovascular exercise. It was always seen as just wishful thinking that you could melt fat from your waist or butt without having to lose overall weight. Now a new study shows that spot reduction can and does occur!

Spot Reduction

Spot reduction basically says that if you want to lose fat from a specific body area, work the muscles around that area. So if you would like six-pack abs, work the abdominal muscles to target the fat on that area. I have to admit that I would have told you that this was rubbish myself until recently. Scientists from Denmark have just completed a study (Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. 292:E394-9, 2007) that has concluded that active muscles use the fat stores adjacent to them to fuel workouts - That’s great news! Bear in mind that this isn’t just during exercise but afterwards well. These hungry muscles require nutrients to recover from the battering they have just taken.

This study was carried out using the thigh muscles of the participants and as we know that the legs can expend a huge amount of calories because of the sheer size of this muscle group, results would not be as dramatic for the midsection. However, this is a breakthrough in our understanding and should be welcomed especially by those wanting to lose fat from their problem areas, e.g. bum, midsection, legs, arms etc. So get crunching folks!

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