"Spot reduction" is perhaps the biggest lie in the fitness industry

I was perusing various areas dedicated to diet and fitness on the internet the other day and came across some of the usual fitness advertising that is just so common in those circles and the promise of being able to reduce fat in certain parts of the body are all over the place the same as they always have been. As someone that has been really active his entire life, hangs with fitness professionals, and does real research before taking on a new program or even worse, a supplement, I know that almost all the time these promises made by trainers and people who make snake oil are all lies.

How do they get away with it? Well that is because the fitness industry and the supplement industry are for the most part, completely unregulated. Therefore, unlike with food you are buying or pharmaceuticals, the people who peddle these products and services can say whatever the hell they want to with impunity.

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Just type in "lose belly fat fast" into a search and you will be inundated with horsecrap information coming from all angles. Even semi-respectable individuals and organizations have been forced by an industry filled with lies to jump on the bandwagon even though I am sure that most, if not all, of the people involved in this are aware of the fact that what they are saying, outside of some sort of weird anomaly that they will use as an "everyman" example, is all hokum.

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This is what they promise you and they promise it really fast too. Now I'm not going to say that there is NO WAY to lose your belly fat or fat anywhere else that you have on your body but the problem with what they are selling is that they are preying on people's insecurities and robbing them of money in the meantime. One thing that very few fitness influencers will be honest about is something that every trainer and anyone who takes fitness seriously already knows: It isn't possible to target fat on any particular part of the body unless you get liposuction.

I don't recommend that people get liposuction but if you are faced with spending $1000 on bogus internet products that aren't regulated and are filled with lies, I would say to just get the liposuction, at least then you are guaranteed results the likes of which are promoted by supplement companies but rarely delivered upon.

If you have a belly, and despite the changes I made in my life I still have somewhat of one, you cannot "spot reduce" belly fat. Unfortunately the body just doesn't work like that.

I see it all the time. People will take on a vigorous abdominal exercise cycle thinking that if they just work out their belly really hard, that the fat will, I dunno, decide to just magically go away. What is really going on though is that a vigorous abdominal exercise cycle will actually make your belly appear larger if this is the route you take. I'm not saying to NOT do ab exercises, you definitely should, but if you are doing it in the hopes that you will get movie-star 6-pack from doing it, you are never going to achieve your goals... and the people selling these products and services are very aware of this.

The uncomfortable truth of the matter with all fat loss is that your body doesn't pick and choose where it is going to attack this stuff. You cannot trick it into only taking it from your belly (for me) or from the bottom of your arms (for women). Spot training those areas is not going to change this either.

What can be accomplished and what I and any other serious trainer recommends is that someone focus very heavily on their diet because a caloric deficit is the only thing that is going to reduce body fat. The bad news out there for anyone looking for a quick fix is that this takes a long time to accomplish as well. Think about it ok? If you have a belly or some fatty triceps, this didn't happen in a day, a week, a month, or even a year. It happened over the course of many years and slowly crept up on you. The reverse is going to be largely the same.

People need to embrace that being physically fit isn't some glamour shoot thing that you do for just a month and then walk away with a perfect body: It takes life-long dedication and I have bad news for you people out there, it is even harder once you are older because the body doesn't respond as well and you are more susceptible to injury the older you get. Recently my own father decided to get into pickleball for some exercise and screwed up his knee just one week into it. Someone in their 20's or 30's would have just shook this injury off.

The important thing to remember is that all of these magic solutions that are promised all over the place don't work for a vast majority of people that use them. Making gradual and lasting life changes that result in a caloric deficit has worked for literally everyone that has ever done it. If you don't have time for exercise (a very common excuse / lie) then perhaps you have time to be a bit more choosy about what food you put into your body because that is the main problem.

Almost all trainers who aren't trying to sell you something will agree that targeting belly fat isn't possible and the only way that someone can lose fat at all is to burn more calories than they take in. That's just the reality of it all. If you want to lose belly fat, sorry but you are going to have to lose it everywhere else as well. You cannot trick your body into only going after that which is in a particular area.

_{from athlete to fatty and back to athlete over the course of 20 years. Most of what I know comes from doing things wrong but you can turn it around if you really want to}