No, Virginia, There Is No Spot Reduction

The other night one of my boot campers repeatedly ask me how to make her arms smaller. I kept telling her over and over that you can't spot reduce. I told her that as she continued to eat right and exercise her overall body fat would decrease but she persisted.

Was cardio the answer? Should she do more arm exercises on her days off from boot camp? Should she use lighter weights during boot camp so she don't build her arms?

Yikes, has she learned nothing from me? I guess I should be glad she didn't ask me about this stupid thing. ================>

Anyway, rather than writing up an entire article myself, I found this one that explains it...
You Cannot Spot Reduce and There is No Such Thing as Toning

Losing Fat is Like Draining a Swimming Pool...Why Spot Reduction Just Doesn't Hold Water

It's inevitable if you're a fitness professional.

When you take questions after a presentation...
When people find out you own a gym...
When you respond to online forum posts...
When people come in for a tour or inquire about personal training...

The first thing some people do in all of the above scenarios is to grab a part of their body and ask, "How do I get rid of this?"

Even though the smartest and most successful fitness coaches will tell you that spot reduction is not possible, magazine articles and late night infomercials convince people otherwise.

Here is one of the best analogies / explanations for why thousands of abdominal crunches or side leg raises will not remove fat from those areas, courtesy of Nick Nilsson.


Losing Fat is Like Draining a Swimming Pool...Why Spot Reduction Just Doesn't Hold Water
By Nick Nilsson

Want to lose stomach fat? Have a problem area you want to tighten up?

The bad news is simply training that area to death won't accomplish it! Learn why spot reduction doesn't work and what you CAN actually do about those problem areas.


"How can I lose my gut?"

"How do I stop my arms from flapping in the wind?"

"How can I get rid of this stomach fat?"

"How do I lose just the fat on my thighs?"

These are questions I hear regularly...the bottom-line question being asked is "how can I lose fat from one specific area?"

And I'm sorry to say, the quick answer is...

"You can't."

But don't panic! Just because you can't spot-reduce from one specific area doesn't mean you'll never lose that fat! It just means you have to look at things a bit differently when it comes to fat loss.

THAT is where the pool I mentioned comes in.

I would love to give credit to the person who I burgled this analogy from (if you're reading this, let me know!) but think of your bodyfat stores as a pool...

When you fill up a pool (i.e. bodyfat stores), the deep end fills up first, right? Of course! It's the deep end.

Well, the same thing happens in your body. Think of your stomach as the deep end. When you start putting on fat, your deep end starts filling up first.

So you're happily swimming along until one day you realize your swimming pool is too full and it's time to drain some water from the pool (i.e. lose some fat).

To spot reduce and lose that fat from the "deep end," you'd have to drain the deep end first. Not gonna happen. If you can think of a way to drain just the deep end of a pool, I'd like to know it!

This is what happens with fat loss. The stuff you put on LAST is the stuff that comes off FIRST. And generally speaking, the stuff you put on FIRST (i.e. problem areas like the gut and thighs) is the stuff that comes off LAST (because it's the deep end of the pool).

So what's the strategy?

You're going to have to drain more of the pool to get that deep end down.

In fat-loss terms this means you're going to have to lose fat from all over your body before the stuff you REALLY want to get rid of comes off.

I know...that's probably the LAST thing you wanted to hear but it's the unvarnished truth.

I'm afraid doing ten thousand crunches every morning won't get you the ripped six-pack you're looking for. And doing ten thousand leg-lifts (no matter how much you feel the burn) won't pull that fat from your thighs. It'll tighten up the muscles underneath that fat, but you won't really SEE much of a difference.

When the body switches on fat burning, it does so on a systemic basis. Going to back to the pool analogy, this would be like having multiple drains all draining water from the pool. The water level goes down evenly when you drain a pool, no matter how many drains you've got or where the drains are draining from.

So when you lose fat, even if you're exercising the heck out of your abs by doing ten thousand crunches, you could be pulling fat from your legs for fuel.

The REAL secret about spot reduction is that you can't pick your spots.

Your body picks the spots for you. Reducing ALL your spots is the only way to spot reduce.

So now that I've crushed your dreams about losing fat from just your stomach or thighs, I want to tell you that overall fat loss is not as hard as you might think!

Even small changes in your training and eating can really make a big difference in draining your fat pool. You don't have to go on a crash diet or train 3 hours a day to get results.

Eating better and training as little as 30 minutes, 3 times a week can get you moving in the right direction.

If you're interested in more information on how to lose fat, have a look at these articles:

1. How To Lose Fat NOW - A Basic Fat-Loss Program That You Can Put To Work Today! ==> Lose Fat Now

2. BASIC Nutrition - A Quick, Common-Sense Guide To What You Should Be Eating to Stay Healthy and Get Results Right Now ==> Basic Nutrition


And if you want to REALLY kick-start your fat loss be sure to check out my book Metabolic Surge - Rapid Fat Loss


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Nick Nilsson is Vice-President of the online personal training company BetterU, Inc. He has a degree in Physical Education and Psychology and has been inventing new training techniques for more than 17 years. Nick is the author of a number of fitness eBooks including "Metabolic Surge - Rapid Fat Loss," "The Best Exercises You've Never Heard Of," "Gluteus to the Maximus - Build a Bigger Butt NOW!" and "The Best Abdominal Exercises You've Never Heard Of" all available at BetterU. He can be contacted at betteru@fitstep.com.

Can You Handle the Truth?

There are a few exercise-related forums where I post and I sometimes wonder why. One message board in particular has a few fitness pros scattered about and you would think that people would appreciate a knowledgeable response to their questions.

Some do, of course, but others seem only interested in comments that validate their own beliefs or wishful thinking. So, instead of believing the personal trainer who is telling them to concentrate on compound exercises and cardio intervals, they listen to the poster who tells them that Tricep Kickbacks and biking around the neighborhood made all the difference for them.

How many times can a person read that you can't spot reduce and still start a thread asking for exercises to get rid of saddlebags, bat wings, "stomach", butt, etc.?

Yesterday, I saw a poster tell a fitness pro to "Chill out!" because she didn't appreciate his continued insistence that "light weight to tone" is a waste of time. Why get snarky with someone who is only trying to help you get the best results for your effort?

Regardless of how many times some of us stress the importance of strength training for weight loss, there are still people who spend hours doing mindless cardio and then start a thread asking why they're not seeing results or why their fat loss has stalled. Today, I saw a thread asking for routines that only included cardio and ab work.

Hey, if you want to spend your time using 2 pound pink dumbbells and doing hour-long elliptical sessions, be my guest. At least you're not sitting on the couch watching TV. But when you're unhappy with your results, try being open to the people who aren't just telling you what you want to hear.

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Random Thoughts

* Why do so many people still believe in magic fat loss pills and exercise gadgets that will transform your body in 5 minutes a day?

* I don't know about you but I'm annoyed with whatever marketing genius told people to triple and quadruple space their e-mails. (Probably the same one who told them never to write more than a one sentence paragraph.) I get a lot of fitness related e-mail and all that scrolling is a waste of time. I actually unsubscribed to one list because the spacing was so extreme.

* Why do people say they know you can't spot reduce but then ask, "What exercises can I do to get rid of my _________________ (insert body part here)"?

* Who decided that it's cool/necessary to reverse the images on TV? And, why? It's usually done during shows that are comprised mostly of interviews but it makes no sense, is totally unnecessary and annoying, and sometimes makes well known people look "off".

* Why are some people so resistant to new fitness methods even when they acknowledge that the "lots of cardio for weight loss" didn't work?


Feel free to leave a comment with your own.

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