What every woman should know about stubborn weight loss...
A recent study has confirmed what women have known about stubborn
weight loss for years — you lose fat faster from different
parts of your body regardless of the type of exercise you do.
Stubborn weight loss
The study, published in the Journal of Applied Physiology,
tracked a group of 31 women during a 6 month training program. At
the beginning and end of the study, body fat levels were measured
using a sophisticated technique known as dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry
(DEXA for short). This allowed the research team to establish precisely
WHERE the women were losing fat.
The training program consisted of 90 minutes of training, five
days each week. Because the routine was designed to enhance the
performance of military-specific tasks, much of the program involved
various military drills, running, and multi-joint exercises (such
as the squat, bench press, and barbell press).
Despite the fact that the women exercised for almost 9 hours each
week for 6 months, they lost just 5.7lb of fat. This highlights
the importance of getting your diet right if you want a faster rate
of weight loss.
It's also interesting to note that of the 5.7lb of fat lost, 2.9lb
came from the trunk. The rest came from the arms, even though the
women did NO specific exercises designed to "tone" their
arms (such as tricep kickbacks).
Moreover, despite the high volume of work performed for the legs,
there was no reduction in fat content — providing more evidence
that performing hundreds of repetitions for a certain bodypart will
not reduce fat from that area alone.
Based on these findings, the research team proposed a "hierarchy"
of fat loss that differs according to gender.
• Men lose fat first from their trunk, then their arms,
followed by their legs.
• Weight loss in women appears to be greater in the arms,
followed by the trunk, then by the legs.
The term "trunk" simply refers to the parts of your body
that aren't your head, arms, or legs.
Firstly, it's clear that "spot-reducing", that is, trying
to lose fat from isolated parts of your body by performing hundreds
of repetitions for that area simply doesn't work. If it did, the
women in this study would have lost the majority of fat from their
thighs.
Spot reduction
Yet the results showed the opposite was true. Average fat loss
over the 6 month study was greatest in the arms — despite the
fact the women did no specific arm exercises.
Second, although many women want to lose fat from their hips and
thighs, that's actually the last place it goes from. One of the
main reasons concerns the ratio of beta and alpha receptors on fat
cells in different parts of your body.
Just like a car, your fat cells have a series of brakes and accelerators.
The parts of a fat cell that accelerate the release of fat are called
beta receptors, while the parts of a fat cell that put the brakes
on fat loss are known as alpha receptors.
The distribution of brakes and accelerators on each fat cell explains
why certain parts of your body lose fat faster than others. For
example, there are more brakes (alpha receptors) on the fat cells
in your thigh than your stomach.
Although there are supplements that take the brakes off fat loss
by "shutting down" the alpha receptors (yohimbine being
one example), there are only a handful of studies evaluating their
long-term effectiveness.
Short of surgery, the only solution to losing "stubborn"
fat is a blend of hard training, good nutrition, intelligent supplementation,
and a good dose of persistence.
Reference
Nindl, B.C., Harman, E.A., Marx, J.O., Gotshalk, L.A., Frykman,
P.N., Lammi, E., Palmer, C., & Kraemer, W.J. (2000). Regional body
composition changes in women after 6 months of periodized physical
training. Journal
of Applied Physiology, 88, 2251-2259
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