“I just want to lose fat HERE!”

*points to triceps area*

The triceps. The stomach. The lower back or love handles. The inner thighs.

There are a number of spots on the body from which folks typically wish they could just strip the fat.

Unfortunately, this just isn’t how it works.

There’s an old maxim in the bodybuilding world: you probably need to add 10 pounds of muscle to your overall frame to see a one-inch growth on your biceps.

And although it’s quite difficult to spot-add muscle, it’s even more challenging to spot-reduce fat.

Of course, weight loss or gain isn’t the entire picture either, as weight loss can manifest as muscle loss (and therefore render us smaller, but not necessarily less fat) and weight gain can show up as fat gain (so you’ll fill out your t-shirts better, but it won’t necessarily be with muscle).

Nevertheless, we can probably invert this adage, revealing a ten pound fat loss in order to take one inch off of most of these problem areas.

So you can try all the tricep extensions, crunches, supermans and oblique extensions, and reps with that weird machine where you sit down and squeeze your legs together, as you want.

It doesn’t mean you’ll be burning the fat off of that specific area.

The truth is that spot-fat-reduction isn’t necessarily wrong, scientifically speaking. In fact, doing seven million tricep extensions may help reduce local fat stores.

But this process is exceedingly slow.

Instead, you’ll see better results from losing fat across your entire body, some of it coming from the area you’re most frustrated with.

It may also be worth mentioning that genetics play a role in fat deposition and a stubborn area on one person may not be stubborn on another.

As you lose fat across your entire body, the stubborn areas will hold on to fat longer and may even appear worse as fat decreases in other areas.

Don’t get disgruntled; stay the course.

Here are a few more tips when it comes to losing fat from the most stubborn areas:

• It may take longer than you think. Most folks have considerably more fat on their body than they think they do and it can take a little longer than expected to reach your goals. Be patient.
• Keep strength training. Strength training is what maintains muscle mass and muscle mass is important for a gazillion reasons, including giving your fat greater surface area to spread out over, helping you appear leaner.
• Remember that fat is not the enemy and genetics play a role. You can’t remove every ounce of fat off your body. That would be inadvisable and unhealthy. Work to find the intersection of body composition and lifestyle that works best for you personally.