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this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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I tell you what my personal trainer told me about weight loss: When it comes to losing fat, you have to view it as you would see a puddle drying up. The areas of water on the edges will be the first to go, then slowly it will dry up until the center is left, that being the deepest part of the puddle. That's how fat loss goes. The area with the most fat will be the last to go. You cannot target special areas for fat loss, so if you think doing more sit-ups will make your gut magically disappear, sorry, it's doesn't work that way.
…but if i put some ab musculature on there, shouldn’t the fat be less visible, I know you can’t spot reduce, but I thought if you had low muscle, the fat is just gonna be more visible
To summarise, musculature won't hide fat because the fat layer of the belly is on top of the abs, fat hides abs.
I've been a rower in the past and some of my colleagues were able to show abs easily. Others like me, literally had to follow a very harsh routine for a 17 yo kid to even be able to. I was plenty healthy, I just wanted to get abs because of course a 17yo wants to.
The issue? Genetics. Some people accumulate fat in the belly first, so it will be the literal last place where it will go away. This means that even though I was the strongest of the club, with best times on competitions, I had a (very minimal) fat layer on top of the abs I obviously had given the competition results, and it covered the abs themselves.
Now, this is an extreme example, but I think that it shows why sometimes we must accept that "taking out the belly" is a marathon, not a sprint. And it does not really matter which part of your body you exercise in regards to weight loss, since your body moves fat around to compensate for it. Yeah, you will build muscle and volume in the places you exercise, sure, but that won't make belly fat go away by itself.
For example, I recently started exercising and dieting and went down from 128kg to 114kg, aiming to be back at 95ish. My belly has reduced a lot, fat too, all around my body. All I did was some intense static bike and dieting, no lifting until a while because I felt embarrassed with my body. In any case, it worked, literally anything works IF you keep up with both diet and exercise.
Thanks a lot! I think maybe not just abs but just generally having bigger muscles will still make your belly look better, you see dudes with a high amount of body fat but they still have some abs poking through and in general look way better than your average fat guy
Anyways, good luck on your journey!
Thank you too! About the feel you have that you "wasted" your time, don't think like that, you created a habit of exercising and conscious eating, in the long run that's the hardest part. As others have said, maintaining those habits and slowly increasing the intensity as you feel comfortable with it will always yield results, albeit slowly. For faster results you should go to trainers for sure though. Best wishes with your journey!
In practice not really. Just look at power lifters.
I had already internalised the fact that it's not possible to target areas for fat loss, but this analogy is really helpful to me. I used to be much stronger and leaner than I am now, and I think this framing will help me because at peace with my puddle as it shrinks. Thanks for sharing.