Can you target your weight loss?

Increasing affluence is also accompanied many times by increased consumption of fatty foods, which may taste great but they are absolutely disastrous from the perspective of weight management. That’s one reason why so many people in the US and across the globe, especially in developed countries are seriously obese.

While we are on the topic of weight loss and management, one of the concerns of dieters is localized or targeted weight loss. There are some people who are quite unhappy with the amount of weight across their waist, like the belly fat. Many people have distinct beer bellies that are quite an eye sore when it comes to personal grooming and looks.

The quest for localized weight loss is not only limited to the desire to lose belly fat. There are others who are interested in losing weight from their legs or arms, which they feel are not proportionate in weight to their general body structure. Localized weight loss is not limited to the obese as a lot of generally thin and slim people also seek to target their weight loss in certain areas of their bodies, which they feel need to be trimmed or toned down. In fact, you may have seen slim persons with a high level of belly fat which looks so odd and unattractive.  

There are millions of folks around the world who feel that concentrated and localized exercises would do the trick in terms of losing weight locally. For instance, you would have heard of people doing a hundred of stomach crunches per day in the hope of losing belly fat, and others do exercises with dumbbells if they want to lose weight from their arms.  

The market is also teeming with products that claim to help in localized weight loss. There are belly and abs machines and ‘slimming’ products that are touted as miracle and wondrous products to enhance the chances of weight loss in some particular body area. Sometimes, this quest is taken to ludicrous levels as people even try certain creams which claim to rid you of that unwanted belly fat.

As much as I hate to burst the bubble and puncture one’s hopes, it’s a fact that the concept of localized weight loss is just a myth. By doing localized exercises, all you can achieve is better muscle tone in that area. If you do localized exercise, so if you do your crunches you would develop your ab muscles, but these would still exist only below the layer of fat that is already present there.

Studies and scientific research prove that the body loses fat last from the area where it accumulates it first. For instance, if you have a tendency to put on fat in the belly area, your fat from the belly area would be the last to be melted away due to exercise. Hence, localized exercises do not help in losing the belly fat at all.

The body’s weight loss mechanism is such that when you exercise, you lose weight from all parts of the body together, irrespective of where you are doing the exercise. The body’s increased metabolism due to exercise will increase calorie burning, but this is not localized or concentrated merely in the area in which you are doing concentrated and focused exercises. Rather, the body loses weight uniformly across itself.

If you want to lose weight in some part of the body, it makes sense for you to do general exercises that help you lose weight across the whole body including the area where you intend to lose weight. This way you have a balanced and healthy lifestyle and remain slim, fit and healthy.