Spot Reduction and Six-Pack Abs

Q: Hey how can I get rid of my love handles? I do hundreds of crunches, but they won't go away.


My Answer: Boy there is so much misinformation out there. People think that if you perform crunches or situps you'll burn the fat around abs.

That is a bunch of B.S. and yet keep buying into this garbage. When you're body is in fat burning mode, it will burn the fat from the limbs first, from the torso second, and (if you're a guy or a woman with a hormonal imbalance) from the waist LAST.

The amount of calories you burn with crunches is so low, that if you did a 100 crunches a day and nothing else, you'd end up with a distended gut: toned six pack underneath a layer of fat.

You can't burn fat off your loves handles with just ab work. You have to diet, do cardio intervals, and do whole body strength training. That will burn off fat from your entire body and eventually your love handles. There is no such thing as spot reduction.

OR IS THERE? Although I don't have the scientific data to back it up, it is possible to have spot reduction if the conditions were right.

The scientific community has pretty much shot down the the idea of spot reduction because for one thing, spot reduction on the abs is close to impossible. This is because the range of motion for most ab exercises is so short, that they don't burn enough calories by themselves.

The second thing is that waistline fat is stubborn fat and is the last place to be burned off on men. BUT I've seen spot reduction occur pretty much everywhere else. Most other muscles are larger than the abs and their exercises have greater ranges of motion, so they burn a lot more calories. So you may do a high rep deltoid exercise and find that over time you'll see the striations on your delts. But your abs are a different story.