The Truth About Spot Reduction: What You Need to Know
If you’ve ever searched for ways to lose fat in a specific area—whether it’s your stomach, thighs, or arms—you’ve probably come across countless products and workouts promising to “target” fat loss. But let’s get one thing straight: there is no magical exercise or supplement that will make fat disappear from just one area of your body.
Can You Really Target Fat Loss?
The short answer? No. Your body decides where it loses fat first based on genetics and hormone levels. Some people lose fat from their upper body first, while others notice changes in their lower body before their midsection starts to lean out. It’s completely individual. The only way to lose fat is to be in a caloric deficit—meaning you burn more calories than you consume.
While you can’t control where fat comes off first, you can control the habits that lead to sustainable fat loss. And that starts with consistency in your nutrition and training.
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The Role of Stress in Fat Loss
One thing many people overlook in their fat loss journey is the role of stress. When your body is under high stress, it goes into survival mode, holding onto fat instead of burning it. This is why managing stress and improving your mindset is just as important as your workouts and diet.
A few ways to reduce stress and support fat loss:
- Prioritize quality sleep
- Incorporate relaxation techniques like meditation or journaling
- Find a workout routine that you actually enjoy
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Strength Training for a More Defined Look
Even though you can’t choose where to lose fat, you can build and define muscle in specific areas. If you want more prominent abs, for example, strength training is key. Work on core exercises that build muscle density and pair them with a consistent caloric deficit to reveal definition over time.
The process is like peeling away layers of paper towels—at first, it might not seem like much is changing, but with consistency, you’ll see results.
Need a structured workout plan? Check out my Build Your Own Workout Workbook to customize a strength training routine that fits your goals!
The Bottom Line
If you want to lose fat and build a strong, defined physique, focus on:
✔ Staying consistent with your nutrition and training
✔ Managing stress and prioritizing mindset
✔ Strength training to enhance muscle definition
✔ Giving your body time—results don’t happen overnight!
And remember, no supplement will replace hard work. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
If you’re ready to take your fitness to the next level, consider booking a Fitness Intensive with me. We’ll create a personalized game plan to help you reach your goals efficiently and sustainably.
Got questions? Drop them in the comments—I’d love to hear from you! And if you haven’t already, tune into my podcast, Be Unapologetically You Radio, for more real talk on fitness and mindset.
Let’s keep making progress together!
Episode Transcript
This is something that I see a lot on a lot of forum boards. I get a lot of questions about, and I just want to try to provide some education for you guys on this topic. One thing that you see, you see a lot of people touting products that could reduce the fat in a particular area, or make it less visible depending on what it is.
And one thing I want to just clear up right now with that thing said, there’s nothing that you can do to reduce the fat or cellulite in a particular area. Now there are things that you can do to make its appearance less visible, but doing all the reps you can in a particular area is not going to help you reduce the fat in that particular area. So you’re not going to get six pack abs by just doing ab workout.
It takes so much more than that. Some things I just want to make very clear is that when you are wanting to show muscle in an area, then you need to start by being in a caloric deficit. So you can start losing fat as a whole.
Now, where you start losing fat from is going to be determined by your genetics and your hormone profile. So for example, I lose my fat from from top bottom in route. Some people will lose it from their legs up, and they’ll lose it from their like bellies or things.
Last, it just depends. Everybody is just different. Everybody’s genetics is different.
Something else that plays a big factor in your fat loss is the amount of stress that you have in your life. If you are super stressed out and you’re trying to maintenance your body is going to go into a survival mode because our bodies used to be stressed in earlier times when we were trying to survive. So your body is going is acting like it’s it’s trying it’s going to die.”
So it’s going to try to hang on to everything it can because it doesn’t know if it’s going to go into famine or anything else. So you have to work on controlling your stress, which is why it’s so important to work on improving your mindset from the day from day one. Because if you cannot improve your mindset and work to control your stress, you may be doing all the other factors, right?
But if you can’t control your stress, your body is not ever going to be in that kind of happier space where it can actually lose fat. Okay, something else that I really want to emphasize is that you actually can lose fat in those areas, but you’re going to lose it in layers. Showleaf did a picture of paper towels that you just have to be consistent.
And over time, you’ll actually start to see the progress that you’ve made. It’s very different. You move a paper towel once a day and doesn’t seem like you’re making it far, but all of a sudden you’re at the end of the paper towel roll.
So it works the same way when you’re doing a fat progress, fat loss stage, okay? Something else I want to tell is that if you want to make an area more prominent, then you need to work on improving that area, whether by doing more hypertrophy work, which is where you can gain size, or you try to make that muscle more dense by strength and some size. So if you were really wanting your abs to be more prominent, then you should be doing ab work to make sure that size is there and also be in a caloric deficit, which is where you’re eating less calories than your body needs to maintain at its current level.
So I don’t mean to break anybody’s heart or anything like that about not being able to lose fat from a particular area. I want to be honest, and I want you to understand how that works because it’s just as frustrating for me just like it is for anybody else. Okay, so some things you can do to improve your fat loss, no matter where you are in the game, is one, is be consistent with your diet and training, okay?
I mean, no matter what supplement you take in the world, it’s not going to help you lose fat. And if you are taking something and you’re losing fat, it’s most likely drugs. So please be very careful about what you put in your body.
Focus on consistency with your training and nutrition. Those are going to be some of the biggest factors. And nutrition over training, okay?
If your nutrition is not in a good spot, you’re not going to be in a caloric deficit or making progress towards your goals. So find ways to make that more consistent on a daily basis and the weekend, so that way you can work toward those goals, okay? Work to improve those areas that you want to become more prominent, so that way as you enhance your body and you make progress, those areas are going to become more prominent as you start to lose fat, okay?
And then focus on your stress level. Find a way to create a positive mindset. Find a way to manage your stress, and you’ll get there in the long haul, okay?
So, start from the inside and it’ll come its way out, okay? I love you guys. I’ll see you guys in the next video.
If you have any questions or you’re going to expand upon anything that I talked about today, please leave them in the comments below, and I will catch you guys in the next video.”
From Be Unapologetically You Radio: Episode 1: How to Lose Fat From a Specific Spot, Jan 30, 2018
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