Spot Reduction: A Weight Loss Myth

Posted by: lucas on October 8, 2011 Under: weight loss exercise|

Lose three inches from your belly! Lose ten inches from your hips, buns, and thighs! If you’ve watched television late at night (or early in the morning), you’ve probably been exposed to a variety of weight loss programs and infomercials that claim to offer spot reduction through the use of a specialized exercise machine or a new fad diet. The truth is that spot reduction — the process of removing fat from specific areas of the body through exercise or diet — is a myth, unless you plan on going under the surgeon’s scalpel. Spot reduction is one of the most enduring fitness myths; thankfully, doctors and health experts are beginning to chip away at the foundation of the myth, which keeps dieters uninformed of the truth. So why is spot reduction so attractive, and why doesn’t it work?

Spot Reduction is Too Good to Be True

Wouldn’t it be great if you could use Thighmaster to slim down and “tone” your thighs? Or if you could eliminate belly fat just by doing crunches? To the untrained, it certainly seems like working your core would be a great way to burn the fat on your belly. However, human physiology simply doesn’t work that way. When you do crunches, you’re only exercising your abdominal muscles — the muscles that sit underneath your belly fat. In other words, you aren’t actually burning abdominal fat in any significant way: the muscles are receiving a workout, not the fat. You will burn a few calories, which can ultimately help in your weight loss goal, but you’d be far better off taking a run on a treadmill if you’d like to lose weight.

Infomercials and other scam diets and exercise programs take advantage of innocent people who simply want to lose weight, yet are uninformed about the physiology of exercise. They imply that abdominal fat (or some other type of body fat) can be burned through the use of a special exercise machine or technique. However, notice that these products are always referred to as “systems” or “programs.” This is because the exercise machine or technique is only one component of the product, used to make the offering seem more attractive. In most cases, the “system” uses a restricted-calorie diet to promote weight loss. Oftentimes the exercise machine doesn’t actually promote any weight loss at all!

Why is Spot Reduction a Myth?

Simply put, spot reduction doesn’t work because it doesn’t agree with human physiology. As we lose weight, we cannot control where the fat comes off. Generally, we shed fat in a reversed order from which we gained it: the layers of fat that were most recently added will be the first to come off. Men and women also lose fat in different areas first: men tend to shed fat from the abdominal area first, while women typically begin slimming down below the waistline. This means that your stubborn belly fat may be sticking around longer because it was the first to be added.

Unfortunately, we cannot control the areas of our bodies from which we lose fat. Fat loss is a total-body process, and it cannot be influenced through exercising a specific body part. Remember that spot reduction is a myth the next time you watch infomercials for weight loss programs that claim to burn fat from a specific trouble area.