Many people have the misconception that if you want to lose fat from say your abdominal region, you need to do sit ups or other ab exercises, or to get rid of those flabby arms you need to go work your biceps and triceps to specifically get rid of THAT fat. Now this is simply not the case.

You cannot choose where to remove body fat from your body by trying to focus on doing exercises which target those body parts.

In order to lose fat you need to be following a good diet full of the right amounts of protein, fats and carbohydrates for YOU, and exercising in the form of cardio and/or weight training at least 3 times a week.  In essence you need to be consuming less calories than you are expending.  Weight training does use up a lot of calories so it will contribute to you losing weight.

Ideally though, weight training can be used to stimulate, grow and maintain our muscles, and cardiovascular training can be used to help us lose fat and to keep our heart healthy. But, you can combine the two with high intensity weigh training.

Each person’s body is different and thus each of us will lose body fat in a unique and individual manner.

“What I am saying is that, once you start to lose fat, whether it is from exercising or eating right, YOUR body will lose fat from different places at its own rate.”

For example, let’s take two males similar in build and stature, male A and male B.  They both start eating right and exercising and start to lose fat over a few weeks.  Now male A will start losing fat on his arms and chest first, then as time goes on he starts to lose fat around his stomach.

But on the other hand male B starts losing fat on his legs and stomach first, and then only after some time starts to lose the fat on his arms, chest and face.

So we can see that if male A’s main focus was to lose fat around his waist, he would need to keep at it for a few weeks to eventually get the results that he wanted.  What can we take away from this?

There is really no way to predict exactly where you will lose fat first or last, it is pretty much genetically coded in you.  Although, for females the last and hardest place to lose fat most commonly seems to be the hips and buns.  And for males, the last place is normally that stubborn stomach fat right around those lower abs.

We all have muscles, but if you have a high body fat percentage, chances are your muscles will be covered by your body fat.  Now when you do exercises for a specific body part, let’s take the biceps in this example, you work that exact muscle, namely the biceps.  You do not burn off the fat which surrounds the bicep muscle, no, you stimulate and work that muscle.  Some people tend to think you actually turn your fat into muscle.

Fat is one thing, and so is muscle. The one cannot transform into the other.  By weight training your biceps you develop the bicep muscle.

The same goes for your abs.  When you do sit ups and crunches you work your abdominal muscles in order to develop and allow them to grow or even to maintain them.  Now you can do that every single day, working your abs as hard as you can, but if you have a layer of fat covering those abs you are not going to see any of that hard work.  And most ab exercises like crunches etc. do not use up a lot of calories, so they are not the best ‘fat burning exercises.’

So rather start running, or playing a sport or some form of cardio to help lose the fat, and then focus on developing those abs and other muscles with weight training.