Genetics and Fat Storage
To explain energy in – energy out, I’ve often
likened the body to a bank account when referring to caloric
energy deposits. Ironically, however, the body is NOT at
all like a bank account with respect to fat withdrawals.
You could deposit 20 five dollar bills, 10 ten dollar bills
and 5 twenty dollar bills in that order, and you’d
have $300 stored in your account. If you wanted to take
out $100, you could selectively withdraw the FIRST $100
you deposited - the 20 five-dollar bills. Body fat cannot
be withdrawn this way.
Fat storage patterns have a genetic component. The first
place you store fat is where you’re genetically predisposed
to deposit it. Over the years, I’ve measured body
fat on thousands of people. It’s always been interesting
to see the disparities in the places that individuals store
fat. I’ve seen women with very small iliac crest (hip
bone) skinfolds of only 4-5 millimeters in thickness, but
they have very large tricep skinfolds (20 millimeters or
more). I’ve seen guys with arms and legs that were
ripped and veiny, with 3 millimeter skinfolds, while still
having a roll of lower ab fat. It’s very frustrating
for many people to be lean in most of their body while still
storing fat in one localized spot, but it’s actually
more common than having fat spread evenly throughout the
body – its normal!
Most men store fat first in the lower abdominals, sides
of the waist and lower back. Women tend to store fat first
in the hips, upper thighs, and often the back of the arms.
As body fat percentage increases further, you will continue
to deposit fat in those spots and everywhere else on your
body - even your face and fingers. Once deposited, you can’t
selectively choose where you withdraw the fat – you
will lose fat all over your body and it will more or less
come off in reverse order: The first place you put it on
will be the last place it comes off.
Losing fat is like draining the water from an in-ground
swimming pool: When you fill the pool, the water always
goes to the deep end first. When you drain the pool, the
water always leaves the shallow end first and the deep end
last. No matter how badly you want to drain the deep end
before the shallow end, you just can’t do it.
Spot Reduction STILL Doesn't Work
Many people wish they could lose fat in their most concentrated,
localized fatty spots first. In fitness lingo, we call this
“spot reduction.” Almost every year, promotional
articles and advertisements come out claiming that a breakthrough
has been made and spot reduction is “now possible.”
However, there are still no products that have been scientifically
proven to spot reduce body fat.
The infamous “cellulite cream” is one spot
reduction scam that never seems to go away – it keeps
popping up with a new name wearing different clothes. Other
spot reduction scams include abdominal machines, ab rollers,
ab wheels, electronic stimulators, pills, soaps, wraps,
girdles, and so on – all of which claim to remove
fat from the stomach, thighs or other specific areas first.
Some of the exercise machines are effective at developing
the muscles underneath the fat, so they aren’t totally
worthless, but the claims of local fat loss are where they
fail.
No matter how many times we fitness professionals give
this speech: “Spot reduction doesn’t work –
it’s a myth,” people still want to believe so
desperately that it IS possible, that they keep plunking
down their hard-earned cashola, scam after scam, hoping
that science has finally produced the real McCoy.
I’ve read the ads for some of the newest topical
fat burners and they can be extremely persuasive. They give
long lists of scientific studies, but the ironic part is
that none of the studies quoted were conducted on the product
that was advertised.
Even if someone invents a legitimate gel or cream that
really does spot reduce, you're now talking about taking
a transdermal drug, and you would only be treating a symptom
(fat) and not the cause (inactivity and poor nutrition).
Keeping the fat off for life will still boil down to changing
your lifestyle and burning more calories than you consume.
A topical can never work independently of a caloric deficit
produced through diet and exercise.
The good news is that if you learn the physiology of fat
loss –which is really quite simple – and if
you work with your body naturally, you can lose ANY fat
without taking drugs. All you need is a little bit of patience,
persistence, some strategy and good old-fashioned hard work.
The Truth About "Stubborn" Fat
Here’s why these fatty areas appear “stubborn”
and why people continue to call it "stubborn”
fat: By the time someone loses enough fat overall to be
down to that last localized “pocket” (the place
they put it on first), most people have caused metabolic
and hormonal damage from overly restrictive dieting. THAT
is what makes the last fat harder to lose; not because the
thigh/butt/tricep/ab fat cells themselves are more stubborn,
but because you’re simply not burning as many calories
as you used to.
For example, if a you’re a guy with a total daily
energy expenditure of 2800 per day and you stay on 1500
calories per day for 90 days (starvation diet), then according
to the mathematical calories in versus calories out calculations,
you’ve accumulated a 117,000-calorie deficit. With
3500 calories in a pound of fat, that means you should have
lost 33.4 pounds of fat. But you didn’t!! You lost
maybe 19 pounds and then got stuck at a plateau with that
last bit of lower ab flab still defiantly clinging to your
waistline. Why? Because you’re no longer BURNING 2800
calories per day!!! Your metabolic fire has dwindled to
a weak flicker. There is no longer a 1300 calorie per day
deficit.
In other words, you hit a plateau – metabolically
and hormonally. Your fat-burning hormones and enzymes have
decreased. Your metabolic rate is depressed. You’ve
lost lean mass, which has slowed your metabolism even further
(and permanently so until you put that muscle back on through
weight training and eating like a human being instead of
a mouse). Last, but certainly not least, your appetite has
gone haywire and you seem to get constant cravings that
are practically irresistible.
If you had not slowed down your metabolism and created
an unfavorable hormonal environment due to improper dieting
and lack of exercise, you would not be stuck and that last
bit of fat would just continue to come right off just like
the rest of it did – it would be the very LAST place
to come off, but it WOULD come right off.
Your solution for losing the last bit of localized fat
is to avoid metabolic slowdown in the first place and then
to patiently and persistently follow through until you’re
as lean as you want to be. In part two, I’ll reveal
the all-natural methods you can use to lose even the very
last bit of localized fat – even if you’ve tried
everything and have never been able to lose it before. Stay
tuned. (In the meantime, you can get more information on
my complete natural fat burning system here:
>>
Click here for Tom's Burn the Fat Feed the Muscle program
Continue to part 2
About the Author
Tom Venuto is an NSCA-certified personal trainer, certified
strength and conditioning specialist, lifetime natural bodybuilder,
and author of the #1 best-selling e-book "Burn the
Fat, Feed The Muscle" (BFFM). Tom has written over
170 articles and has been featured in IRONMAN Magazine,
Natural Bodybuilding, Muscular Development, Muscle-Zine,
Olympian’s News (in Italian), Exercise for Men and
Men’s Exercise. For information on Tom's "Burn
The Fat" e-book, click
here.
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