Weight Loss | Exercise | Lifestyle | Science

Do You Want To Lose Belly Fat?

I write a weekly column about health and fitness. I addressed the belly fat recently. I’ll share it with you as well

The column I write is more of a Question and Answer type of format. So, I’ll keep it that way for this story. Enjoy!

Q: I need to lose my belly. It seems all my weight gain is in that area. I need to do exercises which focus on my midsection. What do you recommend?

A: Thanks for the question! But before I get to the answer, let’s talk about your body and how it uses up fat.

Let’s just keep things simple. Assume that every cell in your body stores some kind of fat. Some fats are good, some not so good.

The human body is constantly burning these good and not so good fats, even if you’re just laying around on the couch eating bon-bons all day.

Obviously, what you need to do is to start burning more fat than just your every day bodily functions consume. Once you start burning more fat, naturally, your body should get smaller.

So, in order to make your belly smaller, you have to burn the fat around the belly. So far so good?

BUT, the way the human body burns fat, it doesn’t just do it in specific areas. Each person holds body fat in different areas of the body. Age is one factor which has a lot to do with it . The older we get, the more the body wants to store fats in different areas. Areas we would prefer not to have it stored!

Here’s the part that you need to understand, the fat a body uses comes from all over the body, not just in the area where a specific exercise targets.

Think of it this way, have you ever heard of anyone saying they have 20% body fat in their arms, 10% in their legs and 30% around their waste? Nope. Body fat % is just that, the whole body as one unit!

Understanding this will help you understand you cannot target fat loss to a specific area of your body. Sure, you can build muscle in a specific area, but the fat which is used for that particular workout for that particular muscle comes from all over the body.

So, to answer your question, to reduce “belly fat”, doing just belly type exercises (such as sit-ups or crunches) will NOT burn fat just in that area. Sure, you’ll be working and strengthening the muscles in that area, but the fat being burned comes from all over the body.

I did a YouTube video on this as well.

If you want to lose belly fat, stick to the tried and true method:

Do some sort of physical activity 3–5 days a week 45ish minutes at a time AND eat healthier.

I won’t get into which activities and which foods this time, but I’m sure I’ll get questions about it in the future!

Thanks for the question! Keep them coming!

Andrew runs Top Fitness Strategies, which focuses on the Over 50 years old crowd.

He also writes in categories such as Family, Lifestyle, Humor, Business and of course, Health and Fitness. A few of his stories are linked below.