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What is body fat?
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Where is fat stored in the body?
Most people wonder where fat is stored in the body and whether individual areas such as the belly or bum can be targeted.
The answer is that fat is stored all over the body and individual areas cannot be targeted. To reduce the size of your belly or bum, you must lower your overall body fat percentage.
If your calorie balance is lower than your maintenance level (TDEE), you will lose body fat and hence weight. Fat will be lost from all across the body, although you lose more fat from certain parts of your body first. This depends on your genetic makeup and fat will always be lost in this order.
For most men, the stomach area is the first place for fat to start accumulating, followed by the arms, legs and face. The reverse is true when it comes to dieting with the stomach being the last area to be trimmed!
Almost all people who aim to lose belly fat target the tummy area. They do exercises that are designed to strengthen and boost the muscles in the abdomen thinking this will give them the 'six pack' abs they so desire.
The sad fact is that although these muscles will develop and become stronger, they won't actually show because fat is covering them up. The only way to obtain a 'six pack' is to reduce the overall level of body fat in the body.
In women, the buttocks, hips and thighs are the first areas to accumulate fat, then the stomach. As a calorie controlled diet and exercise regime is followed, the stomach will often be the first area to lose fat followed by the buttocks, hips and thighs!
The explanation
Fat is stored all over the body in fat cells, the total number of which is determined early in life, and the number of fat cells that your body has cannot be reduced.
These cells increase and decrease in size depending on how much fat they are storing. When body weight is increasing due to the calorie balance being in excess of the maintenance level (TDEE), these cells get bigger and when weight is lost the cells shrink in size.
You have no control over which cells decide to release their fat first for energy during exercise. In other words, performing sit-ups will not stimulate fat to be released from the fat cells that are the cause of flabby bellies. Fat from all over the body will be used to fuel your exercise.
Another way to think of it is that some people might have flabby stomachs, flabby chins, and flabby arms. If the body deposited fat last on the stomach, then as the overall body fat percentage drops, there is a high probability that fat from the stomach will be being burned first. If the chin was the second to last place that fat was deposited, then this will probably be the second place to reduce and so on.
How fat is used by the body
When the body uses fat reserves for energy, it breaks down the contents of the fat cell using enzymes to release glycerol and fatty acids in to the blood. These fatty acids are then transported to the muscle cells that require the energy - a chemical reaction then occurs within these cells to extract energy from the fatty acids.
Common myth answered: Can body fat be turned into muscle?
The simple answer is no - you cannot magically turn fat into muscle!
What you can do is replace fat with muscle, but at no point does fat change into muscle. It is important to understand that losing fat and gaining muscle are two separate things, yet both can happen simultaneously.
If you follow a calorie controlled diet and exercise regime and achieve a daily calorie balance of less than your daily calorie requirement (TDEE), you will lose body fat. Working out, be it on the running machine, exercise bike or using weights and resistance equipment, you will be developing muscle.
The overall effect, therefore, is that fat is replaced by muscle!