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Is Spot Reduction a Myth?

Hi,

Everyone knows you can’t spot reduce, right?

After all, all the research for years and years has “proven” that it is not possible.

So, me and my fitness buddies from my college days wondered why it was so easy to gain fat around the waist and not on the arms.

I said, well you are always moving your arms constantly all day long.  And even though we were all active, we realized that we did not exercise our mid sections like we did our arms. 

Was it possible to do thousands of situps a day and burn off that fat around the middle?

Well, back then there weren’t any answers – except that spot reduction did not work.

Move to today and maybe we were on to something back then. 

Some research done in 2007 showed that it might be possible to do a little spot reduction for subcutaneous fat only. 

This study showed that spot lipolysis can occur with an “acute” bout of exercise.

This means that you can burn adjacent fat with intense exercise of a specific muscle. 

Now this is different from what I had guessed in my college days.

This says that you have to have intense exercise for that muscle in order to effect subcutaneous fat around that muscle.

I guessed that constant exercise would do the same.  Who knows maybe a later study will show this to be true also.

The problem of course is that most people won’t do continuous exercise.  After all who wants to do 1000 sit ups a day?  Not many.

And the intense exercise is also a problem.  Who wants to put a 100 pound dumbbell on their chest and then do sit ups until they can’t budge?  Not many.

I think there is a way to combine both in order to get the best of both worlds.  But, that will remain a secret until my program comes out, sometime in 2011.

In the meantime, if you have too much fat around a specific area, continue with your fat burning routines (read previous posts to find out more) to burn more fat overall.

Then take a few minutes and concentrate on your specific area. 
Do those two things and you will have a fat burning routine that lasts all day.  You will get overall fat burning and spot reduction at the same time.

Thanks,

Mike Val

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