The Most Effective Exercise For Fat Loss Is…
“What’s the most effective exercise for fat loss in [insert area]?”
Although not phrased exactly like that, that question in similar iterations is one many personal trainers get asked a lot.
People like you want to know what specific ab exercise will help them lose that jelly roll around the midsection that has all the police officers looking at them with greedy eyes wherever they go. The stomach is the most typical location that people request exercises to lose fat from but the back, glutes, thighs, and arms are also popular places that people want fat-burning exercises for.
So what’s the answer?
What’s the most effective exercise for fat loss in [insert area]?
Well, first of all, you shouldn’t worry about what exercise to do to lose fat in [insert area] if your nutrition isn’t on point. That is, if you’re not following a calorie-restrictive diet, then you’re essentially wasting your time with the use of exercise to slim down, as study after study has found that fat loss is primarily dependent on consuming less food and not so much on the performance of activity, though it helps to some degree in conjunction with a dietary intervention.
Now, if you are indeed pairing exercise with a dietary change, then I have some bad news for you. And that bit of bad news is that regardless of the exact place, the answer is all the same, which is that it’s not possible to lose fat from one area alone because human physiology doesn’t allow for it.
See, when the body stores fat, it stores it as triglycerides in adipose tissue. This reservoir of fuel can be used to supply energy to anywhere in the body and isn’t just restricted to providing energy to the area where the adipose tissue is located. As such, when you create the right conditions for your body to burn stored fat by entering into a calorie deficit, the body loses fat from all over with the desired area losing it faster or slower than other areas depending on a myriad of factors, one of which is your genetic predisposition to store fat. This is all to say that you can’t spot reduce, or target a specific area to lose fat in it.1My word is as good as law but if you need scientific evidence, a six-week study found no relationship between the performance of ab exercises and a reduction in stomach fat among all 24 participants.
Another study had 11 participants train only their nondominant leg on a leg press machine for upwards of 1200 reps per session. At the end of the study, the researchers failed to note a significant difference in fat mass between the nondominant leg that performed all the exercise and the control leg that wasn’t trained.
Yeah, that’s a bit of bad news.
All’s not lost, though!
There’s some good news…
While there’s no exercise that’s better than another to lose fat from a problem area, there are exercises that are more beneficial than others to help you burn calories and lose fat from all over the body in accordance with how fat loss actually works. These exercises are listed below and are mostly compound movements that involve multiple muscle groups rather than one working in isolation. As to what makes the recruitment of several muscles special, it’s the fact that the more moving parts there are in a movement, the greater the energy requirement that’s needed to execute it. All of that results in the burning of more calories. But just as exercise is for naught if it isn’t used in conjunction with proper nutrition, so too are “fat-burning exercises” if they’re not performed with the adequate intensity. That means that no matter how advantageous an activity is for fat loss, it’ll only help contribute to that task when it’s done in such a way that a greater energy demand is placed on the body. This essentially boils down to elevating the heart rate for cardio and using enough resistance to present a challenge when strength training.2Speaking directly to the matter of using enough resistance, there’s no truth to the idea that you should lift light weights for high reps when trying to lose weight. In fact, when following a calorie-restricted diet, it’s more important than ever to lift moderate to heavy weights to preserve as much muscle as possible. If doing otherwise, then the body sees no reason to hold on to muscle, a metabolically-expensive tissue that requires a lot of energy to maintain. That’s when muscle loss occurs and because you no longer possess as much of the calorie-burning tissue as you once did, you increase the likelihood of gaining any lost weight back and more when the diet ends and you return to a higher food intake.
EXERCISES
• Running3e.g. outside on the pavement, inside on a treadmill, etc.
• Sprinting4e.g. outside on a hill, inside on a treadmill at an incline, etc.
• Cycling5e.g. outside around the neighborhood, inside on an Airbike, etc.
• Stair Climbing6e.g. inside on the stepmill or StairMaster, running the bleachers at a local stadium, etc.
• SkiErg
• Rowing Machine
• Jump Roping
• Battle Ropes
• Kettlebell Swings
• Sled Push
• Burpees
• Mountain Climbers
• Bear Crawls
• Wall Ball
• Medicine Ball Slams
• Box Jumps
• Squat Jumps
• Squats7Basically any squat variation that can be performed on a machine or with dumbbells, kettlebells, a barbell, trap bar, sandbag, resistance bands, or bodyweight, such as barbell back squats, Pendulum squats, dumbbell suitcase squats, kettlebell goblet squats, banded overhead squats, and pistol squats, for example.
• Deadlifts8Basically any deadlift variation that can be performed on a machine or with dumbbells, kettlebells, a barbell, trap bar, sandbag, resistance bands, or bodyweight, such as cable deadlifts, dumbbell deadlifts, and Smith Machine deadlifts, for example.
• Lunges9Basically any lunge variation that can be performed on a machine or with dumbbells, kettlebells, a barbell, trap bar, sandbag, resistance bands, or bodyweight, such as stationary lunges, sandbag forward lunges, dumbbell reverse lunges, and barbell walking lunges, for example.
• Step-Ups10Basically any step-up variation that can be performed with dumbbells, kettlebells, a barbell, sandbag, weight vest, or bodyweight, such as barbell step-ups, dumbbell goblet step-ups, kettlebell lateral step-ups, and crossover step-ups, for example.
• Thrusters11Basically any variation that can be performed with dumbbells, kettlebells, a barbell, or sandbag.
• Loaded Carries
○ Farmer’s Carry
○ Suitcase Carry
○ Front Rack Carry
○ Waiter’s Carry
○ Bear Hug Carry
○ Overhead Carry
○ Shoulder Carry
○ Goblet Carry
○ Zercher Carry
• Bench Press12Basically any variation that can be performed on a machine or with dumbbells, kettlebells, a barbell, or resistance bands.
To repeat, fat loss isn’t a local event. That is, you can’t perform an exercise for a particular region and expect to lose fat there. On the contrary, fat loss occurs globally, as the fat stores that are burned during exercise are usually from places distant to the active body part. That being the case, the best exercise for fat loss is the one that helps you burn the most fat throughout the entire body by increasing the total energy expenditure. A few of the exercises that fit that billing are provided above.
When performed with the right intensity, the suggested exercises have the most fat-burning potential. So if there’s an exercise on the list that interests you, be sure to perform it at a pace or with a load that’s challenging but within your current ability and fitness level. That aside, when not being technical, the most effective exercise for fat loss ultimately comes down to personal preference and doing what you enjoy. When you like a particular activity or exercise, you’ll be more likely to commit to it and perform it with the consistency necessary to achieve or sustain fat loss. That means that you’re better off doing yoga, Pilates, or an isolation exercise like dumbbell curls if you’re partial to those forms of exercise rather than forcing yourself to do shit with an exceptionally high calorie expenditure that you hate and won’t continue doing for weeks and months to reap the full benefits of. Along that same line, you don’t have to limit yourself to traditional exercises and movement formats. Instead, you can expand your horizons to include activities like gardening, hiking, and playing basketball.
Lastly, it should be remembered that none of your physical efforts inside or outside of the gym will work if you’re not matching that same effort in the kitchen because fat loss can’t take place in the absence of a caloric deficit, with the decreased intake of food being the most practical way to achieve that requirement.13If you have all the time in the world to be active, then it may be possible for you to create a deficit by exercise alone. But for most people, it’s a hell of a lot easier taking the zero amount of time it takes during a week not to eat a certain amount of calories than it is to spend the hours necessary to burn that same number in addition to the extra calories that have to be burned afterward to actually tap into your fat stores. Only by lessening the amount of calories that are consumed on a daily basis can fat loss occur, which then opens the door for activities like cardio and resistance training to operate in support of it.
Glossary: abs, adipose, arms, barbell, caloric deficit, calories, cardio, diet, dumbbell, exercise, fat, fitness, genetics, glutes, intensity, leg press, muscle, muscle group, nutrition, personal trainer, reps, StairMaster, stepmill, treadmill, yoga
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