Spot reduction is a myth. Your body loses fat in reverse order of where it put it on. In the inventory control world we call this LIFO. Last In First Out. Here is a blurb:
On the surface, spot reduction sounds logical, and this is probably why this myth has survived so long. If you want flat abs, do abdominal exercises. If you want slim arms, do arm exercises. If you want skinny thighs, work out your legs. But as many frustrated exercisers have discovered, spot reduction does not always work. Despite hundreds of tricep kickbacks, they still have fatty arms. Even if they do half an hour of crunches a day, they still have a jiggly belly.
The truth is specific localized exercises like leg lifts and ab crunches will make the muscles being exercised stronger, firmer and harder, and if you lift weights heavy enough, even bigger. But the fat in that area will not necessarily become smaller. A 1971 experiment done on tennis players showed that the athletes had approximately the same amount of fat in their dominant and non-dominant arm. The muscles in the arm they used the most were bigger and stronger but the fat was the same in both arms. If spot reduction was possible, then the dominant arm should have less fat than the non-dominant arm.
There are a few reasons spot reduction is a myth. One, spot exercises by themselves do not burn enough calories to make a dent in fat loss. So, if all you are doing to achieve your goal of a flat stomach is hundreds of crunches a day, you will get strong hard abdominal muscles but you may still have a sizable chunk of belly fat.
To see a significant change in your appearance, you have to burn a considerable number of calories (3,500 calories for one pound of fat), and spot exercises alone are not going to do it. Spot exercises should be part of a total program to reduce body fat-aerobic exercise, resistance training, a sensible diet and an active daily lifestyle.
Aerobic exercise is any kind of exercise that uses large muscles of the body in a continuous rhythmic manner like walking, running, cycling or aerobic classes. Resistance training is exercise using some kind of resistance like weights, rubber bands or body weight. Examples of body weight exercises are those done in yoga and Pilates.
The second reason spot reduction doesn't work is that even if you could burn the appropriate number of calories by doing spot exercises for your "problem" area, you have no control over where your fat will be burned.
In a 1984 study conducted at the University of Massachusetts, male participants did the equivalent of 5,000 sit-ups for 27 days. Fat was measured in the abdomen, buttocks and upper back. According to the spot reduction theory, fat should have been reduced only in the abdominal area because the buttocks and upper back are not actively involved in doing a sit-up. Researchers found that fat was reduced in all three areas.
It would be nice to lose fat only from our "problem" areas, but it doesn't work that way.
Whether we like it or not, our bodies respond to fat loss or gain in different ways depending on our gender, age and genetic make-up. In general, men usually store fat in the mid-section while women tend to store fat in their hips, buttocks and thighs, although some women have apple-shaped bodies (more fat in the trunk and arms compared to the legs) and a few men are pear-shaped (more fat in the lower abdomen and buttocks).
You will lose fat in the reverse order that you tend to gain it. This is called the "first on, last off" theory. If you are the type who gets fat in the lower abdomen when you gain weight, then that is usually the last place the fat will disappear from when you lose weight.
