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Spot reduction is simply the idea that if you work a specific muscle group you will decrease the amount of fat in that area. The most common example of this is how people focus on abdominal exercises in an effort to lose weight in their stomach area.

In theory, there is no such thing as spot reduction. You will never attain a flat stomach just by performing abdominal exercises. The reason for this is simple: a muscle does not own the fat that surrounds it. However, I have trouble accepting this and still want to prove that spot reduction is not a myth.

Sit-ups, for example, will definitely strengthen your abdominal muscles, but sit-ups alone will not get rid of the layer of fat that is covering the muscles. You can have the strongest ab muscles in the world, but you will never see them if they are covered by a layer of fat. So how can you remove this layer of fat?

Some people try to lose weight in their problem areas by either doing longer cardio exercises (such as an hour on a treadmill or an eliptical machine) or by doing shorter intense exercises (such as sprinting or Guerilla Cardio). Usually when they combine this with a proper diet and supplementation they find that this is effective for burning calories which in turn burns fat across their entire body. However, the majority of people will find that they lose fat everywhere except for their stubborn problem areas which are made up of localized pockets of fat.

However, regardless of how much dieting or exercise you do, you may find that you will never get rid of the fat in these stubborn areas.

You may notice that you sometimes lose fat in some areas more quickly than in others; this is simply due to a genetic selective pattern rather than a particular type of exercise. It is a well known fact that men tend to hold stubborn pockets of localized fat in their abdominal region, whereas women tend to hold stubborn localized fat in their gluteal region.

What causes Stubborn Localized Fat?

Stubborn fat is a slow-metabolized adipose (fat) tissue. To burn fat, a natural hormonal process has to take place. When a fat-burning process is activated, the adrenal hormones (adrenaline and noradrenaline) bind to special receptors in the fat tissues. There are two major groups of receptors in the fat tissues, alpha and beta. The beta-receptors are the more active ones, which respond to the adrenal hormones. Fat burning occurs when the adrenal hormones activate the beta-receptors in the fat cells. If these receptors are not activated, no fat will burn off.

Stubborn fat has a lower ratio of beta-receptors to alpha-receptors. As a result, it’s metabolized slowly and does not respond to the adrenal hormones. To make matters worse, stubborn fat has more estrogen receptors in the tissues. Estrogen (the female hormone), once bound to the receptors, causes even more fat gain.

Thus stubborn fat presents three major problems:

(1) It doesn’t have a high enough ratio of beta-receptors to alpha-receptors, so doesn’t respond to adrenal fat-burning stimulation.

(2) It has more estrogen receptors, which accelerates fat gain.

(3) On top of all this, stubborn fat doesn’t have a healthy blood circulation. These slowly metabolized fat tissues have fewer blood vessels than a normal fat tissue, and consequently this fat is slower to metabolize, and therefore more stubborn or difficult to remove.

So How Can You Attack These Stubborn Pockets of Fat?

Estrogen Reduction

There are prescription drugs and research chemicals out there which can effectively reduce your estrogen levels. If the fat distribution is due to estrogenic fat storage in the breast area for men (gynecomastia) or in the hips, buttocks, or thighs for women then lowering the estrogen levels in your body may be effective for lowering the bodyfat in these regions to a limited degree.

Arimidex (Anastrozole) is an estrogen reducing (anti-aromitase) drug can be taken in doses of 0.25 to 0.50 mg/mL a day for 6-8 weeks. Usually you will see results within this time if the fat is due to an excess of estrogen. Be careful to not reduce the estrogen too much which will cause joint pain and knee and elbow stiffness, due to drying out your joints. If this happens then reduce the dosage and it should go away within 3 days due to the long half-life of this drug.

Estrogen reduction can help reduce, but it will seldom totally eliminate the fat from these areas.

Transdermal Topical Fat Burners

Several companies out there make transdermal fat burning creams that are supposed to be able to burn localized fat by applying them to your problem areas. These companies claim that these transdermal gel that penetrates deep into the skin and dissolves your stubborn body fat on contact. However these fat burning creams have never been proven to be effective and based on my own personal experience they are not effective.

Anafit makes Yohimburn ES which is an alcohol free, aloe vera based Yohimbe gel that can be applied to any part of your body including your face. This stuff appeared to work slightly, but I found that this Yohimburne actually had a diuretic effect rather than a fat burning effect and it was only removing the water from the localized area and not the actual fat. As soon as you stop using this cream, the subcutaneous water will return to the area.

Avant Labs makes Lipoderm Ultra which contains Yohimbine, Caffeine, Lecithin, Sesamin,
Octopamine HCl, Synephrine, ALCAR, Ascorbyl Palmitate, and a high level of Benzyl and Isopropyl Alcohol. This cream appears to work slightly, but again it’s just due to a diuretic effect of reducing localized water rather than fat burning. Since this solution contains a high level of alcohol it will damage and dry out your skin after a few days. At least the Yohimburn despite being ineffective did not damage my skin.

NutraSport made Cutting Gel which has no active ingredients that could possibly result in localized fat loss, yet they spent millions in marketing and sold this at GNC to millions of people for years. Including me, who bought three bottles of this stuff for $90 each with zero results.

These transdermal fat burning creams reduce the amount of localized water and do NOT burn localized fat. They have very limited results and seem to be a waste of money. I tried over a dozen transdermal products over the course of a year and did not have good results. The problem is that I do not think these creams are capable of effectively penetrating the skin and reaching the adipose tissue.

Mesotherapy

Mesotherapy (also known as lipoderm or lipodisolve) is a non-surgical, 50 year old technique from France that involves injecting a fat burning solution of natural extracts, homeopathic agents, pharmaceuticals and vitamins into localized fat deposits. The active ingredient in this solution is phosphatidylcholine, which is present in all living tissues. When injected in fat and cellulite, however, the fat cells become inflamed and disrupted, and their contents (fat) gets carried away and disposed of by the body.

However, mesotherapy treatments in larger areas may require hundreds of small injections and several treatments spread several weeks apart. Mesotherapy can also cause swelling and bruising to occur in the treated areas.

Many plastic surgeons or dermatologists perform these procedures for around $300-400 a visit and usually 4-6 visits are required to treat an area, so to treat an entire area it might cost you as much as $2,400 which is not cheap.

You can purchase mesotherapy kits to do it yourself from Mesoone.com for around $65 a session or $299 for five sessions. This site offers top quality mesotherapy equipment and solutions with fast shipping and a 30 day money back guarantee. I would definitely recommend them.

The main disadvantage of Mesotherapy besides the swelling and bruising is that it removes the fat from cells rather than removing the cells themselves like liposuction. Thus it is possible for the fat to return to the area in several months later if you don’t keep up with your diet and exercise program.

Mesotherapy seems to be more effective with small fat deposits in areas like under the chin, but it is not nearly as effective in larger areas such as the stomach or hips. The bruising and swelling is rather severe when mesotherapy is applied to larger areas. Larger areas require liposuction.

Liposuction

I found the most effective solution for spot reduction to be liposuction. I tried all of the methods above to remove the stubborn fat from my stomach areas with little success. The anti-estrogen medications, transdermal creams, and mesotherapy only worked to a limited degree. I still was not satisfied with the results so I eventually broke down and paid a top plastic surgeon $6000 to have liposuction done on my abdominal area. I am finally pleased with the results.

The good news is that liposuction is permanent because the procedure actually removes the fat cells rather than break them down. I may gain fat in other areas in the future, but the area that I had liposuction in will remain toned.

It was well worth the money and I am pleased with the results. This turned out to be the only effective way to do spot reduction.