The belly fat myth and how to avoid this common fitness pitfall

The chances are that your Instagram feed is packed with exercises that promise quick routines that can shave inches off your waistline in record time. A quick search on YouTube yields thousands of videos, with many claiming rapid results; “lose your belly fat in one week” being a prime example. A common theme seems to be follow-along classes crammed with bodyweight abs exercises – crunches, flutter kicks, sit-ups and so on – with the theory being that working the stomach muscles will strip away fat from the surrounding area. But, in truth, this is more of a marketing ploy than an effective exercise approach, according to experts.

“Spot reduction is the theory of reducing body fat in a specific part of your body by exercising the muscles in that area,” says George Studd, lead athletic performance coach at the University of Bath.

“Taking advantage of people’s existing insecurities about their body, it is often promoted by advertising for specific exercise programs such as ‘flat stomach ab workouts’. However, the research suggests that it is almost definitely not worth the effort.”

He points to the example of an overweight tennis player to demonstrate this point. While it’s true their dominant playing arm will likely have more muscle, spot reduction would also mean this arm carried less fat.

“Just because you are working the muscles in a particular location, it does not mean the fuel for this exercise is coming from the fat that is stored next to it,” adds professor of human physiology Dylan Thompson, from the department for health at the University of Bath. “Given the anatomy of the body, including the blood vessels supplying muscles, this is highly unlikely.”

How to make a belly fat workout work for you

“Popular ‘belly fat workouts’ aren’t going to be any more effective at reducing belly fat than any other approach, unfortunately,” says Studd. “However, in most cases, any exercise is better than no exercise.”

If they encourage you to move more than you would normally, doing these workouts can increase your daily energy expenditure or calorie burn. Paired with an appropriate diet, this can create a calorie deficit – burning more calories than you consume – which is the fundamental process behind weight loss.

Strengthening the muscles of your core can also hold other benefits, such as supporting posture, improving stability and even boosting balance. However, if you want to lose belly fat and experience the many benefits of strength training, there are more effective ways to achieve this (see our expert-approved approach below).

When searching for an exercise plan, it’s also important to be wary of snappy taglines. Not only does the instructor not know your starting point – higher levels of body fat will generally take longer to lose – but the class in question is only 16 minutes long. That leaves 1,424 minutes of the day unaccounted for, in which time you could eat and exercise as much or as little as you liked – variables that will determine the effectiveness of your exercise efforts.

“If you are expecting a miraculous change to your body [from belly fat workouts], then you are more likely to become disappointed with your progress and lose motivation to continue,” Studd concludes.

What determines where you store body fat?

Genetics is one of the main factors determining where an individual will hold body fat. Some people may store more fat around their stomach, while others will see a greater presence in their back, thighs or buttocks.

Sex hormones also play a role, according to Thompson. He illustrates this with the example of how women’s body fat distribution changes after menopause.

“In younger women, fat tends to be stored in the lower body – the hips and thighs. After menopause, women tend to accumulate more fat around the abdomen. As genetics also play a major role, some women will be more prone to accumulating body fat around the abdomen, even before the menopause.”

Get your energy and muscle balance right

Fat loss is complex, with many bodily processes at play, but one fundamental principle underpins it all: energy balance.

“If you consume more energy than you expend, then, according to the laws of thermodynamics, the energy will be retained and stored,” says Thompson.

“Fat is a great way to store energy, and adipose tissue is a highly specialised tissue for energy storage. If there is an energy deficit, then your body will dip into energy (fat) stores to sustain metabolism and you will lose weight. Lifestyle factors that influence energy balance will ultimately influence how much energy is stored in the form of fat.”

The most important lifestyle factors are how much you eat and how much you move, but other variables can play a role.

“Building lean muscle mass increases energy expenditure,” says Luke Wilkinson, a strength and conditioning coach with Team Bath. Muscle is a more metabolically active tissue than fat, so the more muscle you have, the more energy your body uses each day simply sustaining itself. It’s only a few extra calories per pound of muscle per day, but this can add up over time.

“Another additional factor is sleep,” he adds. “Having good sleep – seven hours per night – can regulate hormones aiding fat loss.”

How to lose belly fat

The best approach for losing belly fat is the same one for losing body fat in general. When working with clients, performance coach George Studd uses a five-step approach:

1. Measure

“It’s really difficult to know if you are making progress if you aren’t measuring your progress,” says Studd. Regularly weighing yourself is perhaps the simplest option, although this doesn’t account for daily fluctuations and other variables such as muscle gain. He suggests taking before and after pictures or tracking food as similarly accessible alternatives.

2. Diet

In this scenario, the term diet doesn’t mean sticking to a rigid set of rules like you might have seen with the keto approach. It simply refers to the foods you habitually eat.

“Aiming for a diet that is high in protein, consists primarily of ‘whole’ or ‘unrefined’ foods, and consists of a balance of fat and carbohydrates that fits your lifestyle will work better than pretty much anything else,” Studd says.

“As a starting point for people looking to lose fat, if you are gradually losing weight, then you are eating the right amount. If you are maintaining or gaining weight when you don’t want to, eat slightly fewer carbohydrates and fat. Where possible, try to keep protein high and consistent.”

3. NEAT

NEAT stands for non-exercise activity thermogenesis, and simply refers to any movement you do each day outside of formal exercise.

“Non-exercise activities like walking, going up and down stairs and standing up increase the amount of energy you are burning while you are awake,” says Studd. “They fit into your normal day-to-day routine and usually don’t increase your appetite significantly, making the diet part of the equation easier. Try your best to move more through the day and increase your daily number of steps gradually over time to burn more fat.”

4. Resistance Training

“Your body will take energy from the most available source first,” Studd says. “A high protein diet and resistance training will ensure that metabolically active muscle is preserved, helping you lose fat instead of muscle.”

5. Aerobic exercise

“Aerobic exercise [think activities that raise your heart rate like running, cycling and swimming] is fantastic and has a multitude of both mental and physical benefits,” says Studd. “However, purely for fat loss, both continuous and intermittent aerobic exercise burn fewer calories and cause a much smaller ‘afterburn’ effect than you would like. Aerobic exercise will also cause an increase in appetite, which often offsets the calories burned.”

The exception to prove the rule

Workouts that claim to target belly fat are unlikely to be worth your time. However, there is evidence to suggest that different types of fat deposits may respond differently to a calorie deficit, Thompson says.

There are two main types of fat deposits. Subcutaneous fat is found just beneath the skin, and it’s the type you can feel. Visceral fat is found deep within the abdominal cavity, surrounding vital organs including the stomach, liver and intestines. It’s linked with many health issues, including diabetes, stroke, dementia and heart disease.

The latter could technically be described as “belly fat” due to its location, however, it’s unlikely this is what most people are referring to when they say they want to “lose belly fat”.

“The visceral adipose tissue compartment will often respond or shrink more than other deposits [as a result of an energy deficit],” Thompson explains. “Similarly, there is some evidence that subcutaneous adipose tissue around the waist is reduced more during an energy deficit than subcutaneous adipose tissue in other locations such as the hips and thighs.

“So, in this sense, some areas will experience more fat loss than others following a given energy deficit. but this is not the same as spot reduction because it cannot be controlled or targeted – it is just that some spots will change more than others [as a result of] the same energy deficit.”