Spot Reduction – Myth or Fact?

I want a flat tummy so I go on doing 100 or maybe 500 crunches a day. I need to reduce weight from my lower body so I only workout my lower body. Love handles?? so only workouts for the love handles. But have you ever thought how would spot reduction happen??

First of all one needs to understand that weight loss happens when there is a calorie deficit. So when that weight loss happens, the weight would go from your body how it came. It would take time. There is no evidence to prove that doing one exercise would lead to weight loss in a particular body part.

The basic principle to weight loss hence is creating a calorie deficit, mostly from diet and little bit from the workouts you do. No matter how much you workout unless you watch what you eat, weight loss would not happen.

Do read this post I wrote about reducing weight without any fad diets. It helps clear the right approach to getting fitter.

Of course we get overwhelmed by videos and posts talking about getting that flat tummy or getting rid of those love handles. If they are talking about workouts, they only mean something to go along with your normal diet and deficit plan. Spot reduction as such cannot be made possible by just working a specific set of muscles.

You cannot just loose weight from a specific body part. It would go proportionately. Exercising would help in toning your body surely. It would build muscle and bring that part in shape a bit. Also exercise helps with your overall weight reduction goal by increasing your metabolic rate.

Doing a compound exercise instead like a plank, push up or a squat would help you more. A compound exercise targets many body parts at the same time and thus burns more calories. So it would be more effective for fat loss.

Also one needs to understand and respect their body type. We can only stretch our limits to a certain extent. Understanding your body type would help mitigate doubts with respect to what you can achieve . Fitness should be the key you look at. Overall fat reduction is a more appropriate goal. Genetics play a big role in determining your body shape.

Also when we talk of spot reduction we only work on the smaller muscles thus overall slowing down the fitness process. Working on bigger muscles makes our workout more efficient and helps loose fat. But remember no matter which muscle you work on, fat would leave your body in its own way. You cannot give direction to fat loss.

Spot reduction is a big misconception. One way to keep yourself from being deviated by these misconceptions is to have set fitness goals and benchmarks which are more realistic and measurable.

I’m participating in #BlogchatterA2Z and this post corresponds to letter S!