From the Trainer: How To Burn the Fat From Those Trouble Areas

How To Burn the Fat From Those Trouble Areas

I know a lot of people want to know the secret to this topic. I can’t count how many people I have ask me, “How do I lose the flab on my stomach?” And usually they may follow that up with how many crunches and situps they do to no avail. I also get baffled looks when I tell people that we do not do crunches or situps with our clients and they get worried that they will not “flatten” their stomachs then because they aren’t “working” those muscles. I’ll share the big secret with you here.

The secret to burning fat from your body is not isolating that area of the body and just doing countless repetitions. You will just tire yourself, become bored very quickly, and possibly even injure yourself. The only thing you may do when isolating parts of the body that way is build more muscle; which yes, that is very useful and will help turn your body mass index (BMI) in a positive direction but it will not get rid of the fat. The only way to “burn” fat is to get the heart rate up and keep it up. Cardio is the best known method and you can do cardio by running or by lifting. Doing intense intervals with lifting where you are moving quickly is a great way to build muscle and to help burn fat from the body.

Performing cardio helps to boost the metabolism in the body and you will burn more calories throughout the day. Doing a countless number of situps will just tire your abdominal muscles out and you may not even burn the fat from that area as it may actually burn fat stores from a different area of the body. So those gimmicks that you see that “target” your “troubled” areas (the shake weight, the countless ab workouts such as the crunch machines and electrode (shock) methods) do not work.
He didn’t get like that with a shake weight! He used strength training and good nutrition habits!

Typically our body “burns” fat in reverse order of how we store it. How we store it is genetic and cannot be changed. For instance, males usually store their fat around the midsection first and females generally store around the hips and thighs. Unfortunately, those will be the last places you lose your fat. So, don’t get discouraged too soon!

Lifting weights and building muscle will increase how many calories you burn throughout the day as well since it takes more energy to work muscles; compared to fat which takes very little energy. Doing cardio through lifting will build muscle and boost your metabolism throughout the day. So, cardio through lifting is a win-win if you want to get stronger and lose weight! You can still do your running, if you enjoy doing that, between your workouts.

It’s also good to keep in mind that 80% of how you look is your nutrition! You can do the best workouts ever and have the best trainer ever, and you won’t make progress on losing bad weight.

One last bit, a trainer who knows his/her stuff gets very annoyed when you say you want to “tone” your muscles. Tone refers to the amount of tension there is on the muscle and does not in any way describe how a muscle looks. Use “defined,” “lean,” “chiseled,” or “ripped” to describe how you would like your muscles to look!

-J.McDole