No. You cannot target areas to lean out. This also holds for exercise: doing sit-ups will not burn the fat off your abs. The fat will also not necessarily come off evenly. Sometimes it does, sometimes the saddlebags stay until the bitter end even when your ribs are clearly visible. Genetics does play a role, but it can be dealt with.
(I'm a trainer and physiologist and helping people to lose fat is something I do.)
It's true that doing sit-ups won't help you target your belly fat, but it does make your abdominal muscles stronger and more able to keep your belly from protruding, so in effect it can make your belly look much flatter even without losing the fat.
Agree: for most people, the beer gut is more pronounced because of the laxity of the front abs (also causing a hyper extended spine which causes back pain), it's not all just fat. So, proper training and strengthening of the abs will help pull those things back in line, but won't do much for burning off fat.
also causing a hyper extended spine which causes back pain
I'm a massage therapist for context. If I had a dollar for every client I've had that I wish I could tell "Your back would feel better if you had any strength in your abs and something more than a Hank Hill ass" I'd be able to afford a very long vacation
It's so confusing when the OP puts opposite questions in their title and their post.
I just read the title, then saw your comment, and was confused why you said "No" then explained how the answer is "yes". Then I read the post to see OP mixed things up, lol
so they do whatever?
It’s different for everyone. There’s no real way to control it, and anyone telling you otherwise is full of it.
Not by diet or by exercise.
By liposuction!
Well, the can also harden and mold said fat now.
Looks weird as hell, though.
BS Biology, former ISSA trainer: The simple answer is - fat mobilizes globally, prioritized by access to circulation. The last 3.5% of body fat is brown adipose, which you can't lose, but if you could, you'd die from hypothermia.
Cool, I've got a related question. Do people have varying amounts of brown adipose and can they develop more of it through training? I've heard that exposure to cold for long periods of time causes your body to produce more brown adipose fat.
Good question. It's very likely safe to assume that we have an adaptive variance for these kinds of things, but it would still be a very small range. If you've heard it, it was probably supported by a study that indicates that correlation. For the most part, it's something you'll almost never even see. Iirc, the minimum healthy, functional bmi for men is 5%, 12% for women, as I was taught years ago. Anything below those ranges and things start to get weird, or it would take great effort and water/diet restrictions to maintain. The point being, anyone who says they're 0%, or even like 3%, has no idea what they're talking about. Thanks for having this discussion with me!
I think that some bodybuilders get to close to that minimum at competition, but they're also really close to death. And a few have died due to the side effects of the drugs they take to get down that low (esp. diuretics). This might be different now though; HGH has been doing weird things to pro-level BBers. Used to be that they'd use shit like 2, 4-dinitrophenol (DNP), which does really weird shit to your metabolism and can very, very easily kill you if you dose too high. Especially since it takes about two weeks for that dose to catch up to you.
I was at 7% (measured on a fancy scale, not the bathtub method) as a male high school long distance runner and I was basically a fastish skeleton. I don't think that would be a healthy BMI for me twenty years later, even if I could maintain it!
I was advised by a doctor to turn the water to cold periodically in the shower to increase the amount of brown fat the body produces. I take it with a grain of salt, but cold tolerance does seem to be a thing and that could be a mechanism for it.
Why hypothermia? I thought fat is needed for hormones to work correctly and going below 4% will deregulate your entire system.
You kind of answered your own question. There are a lot of conditions and feedbacks needed for stasis. As any are pushed to or beyond their limits, a cascade occurs, having catastrophic effects. Body temp regulation is one of the most dire, as we can't survive for long below a certain temp. Regarding that, burn victims can actually die from hypothermia if not treated immediately following 3rd degree burns, due to the amount of fat and skin cells lost to burns. I hope some of this made sense. I'm digging deep to remember, but it's been a while. Cheers
Usually on diets where you go from a carb heavy regimen to less carbs:
first you lose water weight as electrolytes start to balance due to the change in insulin levels
the body removes fat from organs as first priority (sometimes called visceral fat). The body does not want to store fat in organs, but it does so only if it can't put fat anywhere else. Once you start to lose weight it comes from here first.
then we are at generalized weight loss, which is different for everyone.
Source on carb count making a difference?
The body spends "easy" energy first (carbohydrates) and resort to burning fat when it really has to
Thats a myth, here are some videos by a guy with a PhD, any sort of calorie deficit will result in fat being burned, unless you manage to break the laws of physics and create energy from nothing.
https://youtu.be/ot8Q8YceRNo?si=Lu7XR1DFNPnKcCft
calorie deficit
Eating enough carbohydrates to cover your energy need isn't a deficit. I meant what I said, the body uses what it has available but prefers "easy" sources
i have no idea what are you talking about at this point, the question was if there is a way to target weight/fatloss, there isn't one.
https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/keto
Here's a good summary article, hover over any of the circles in the article to see the scientific sources
If you prefer just the data this is a better article
You can somewhat target certain types of fat if you're a heavy drinker and stop drinking.
Especially soda. Men literally drop pounds after stopping within weeks.
Does soda really cause the same build up as alcohol? Lol
At 40g of sugar for 12oz/355ml you bet. It’s way worse than people realize.
Yes, but alcohol causes a specific type of fatty build-up around the liver area IIRC.
Just having a lot of sugar wouldn't do the same thing in the same way
Depends on your DNA AFAIK and you can’t really decide
It is to some extent a last in, first out inventory system. So if you only recently put on weight in the middle then yes likely you will lose that first.
If you only/mostly have excess fat in your belly, yes you will lose more of that, but no, you can't for example keep the fat on your boobs and ass and lose it only in your belly. No.
There is some research that shows that aerobic exercise can have a positive effect on visceral fat:
But it's not all too straight forward
There are probably more studies that show both positive and inconclusive evidence for exercise and changes in visceral fat because that kinda how science is...
In general, what went on first, comes off last.
No, what's on second.
Who's on third.
I don't know.
Third base.
Who's there.
Last*
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!