THE TRUTH: Reducing fat on your Stomach!

Dr. Gabe Mirkin's Fitness and Health e-Zine
August 19, 2007

Spot Reduction Exercises are Not Effective

Many people believe that if they do enough sit-ups they
will get rid of belly fat, but your body does not work that way.
Exercising a specific muscle does not get rid of more fat over
that muscle in comparison to the rest of your body. If it did,
tennis players would have less fat in their tennis arms, and this
does not happen. Strength training strengthens weak muscles,
but it cannot remove fat specifically over the strengthened
muscle
A recent study from the University of Connecticut
showed that men who exercised one arm against heavy
resistance for 12 weeks appeared to lose more fat in their
exercised arm than their inactive one when fat was measured
by a caliper that calculated skin thickness (Medicine & Science
in Sports & Exercise, July 2007). However, when the same
authors used an MRI machine to measure fat underneath the
skin, there was no difference between the exercised and non-
exercised arms.
When you take in more calories than your body burns,
you store the extra calories as fat. More than half of the fat in
your body is stored underneath your skin and over your
muscles. Your stomach will look better when your belly
muscles are strong, but sit-ups or crunches will not remove
extra fat from your belly. The only way to lose fat from a specific
part of your body is to lose weight overall.




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