How does your body know which areas you consider to be “stubborn” fat? Why wouldn’t it just mobilize fat from any convenient area, maybe the ones with the most blood flow, or the ones closest, or the ones last filled…
The way i see fat loss on bodies is like peeling an onion. You can naturally remove layers of the onion, but you can’t remove fat from a specific part of said onion without cutting in (surgically). As you work harder, get good caloric balance, adjust your macros, etc etc you will start peeling off layers.
While those pills, or tricks might HELP, we’re still looking at marginal gains. Apple cider vinegar or capscium, will help or maybe accelerate by a small percentage. Same goes for the horrible fat burners being sold with the equivalent of 6 coffees in them lol (tried them twice for a month or so, they are nooooot good for you, the withdrawal was awful lol).
Different approaches will have varying results on different people.
TL;DR: The main work still has to be done by you, those little “hacks” might help you add a small fraction of gains to your effort
The fat stored in ‘stubborn’ areas for both men and women are much, much higher in alpha-2 adrenoreceptors than beta-2 adrenoreceptors. Areas with lots of beta-2 adrenoreceptors are easily mobilized (once mobilized, you then need to burn them, otherwise they’ll just happily go back in the cell), but areas with lots of alpha-2 adrenoreceptors are much, much harder to mobilize and are in areas on the body where fat is preferentially stored. (This is coming from the book - please PM me if you want it!)
There’s a lot of evolutionary reasons for why we want areas of fat to be harder to burn than other areas and it often is to do with protecting vital organs (or, thought to be like that anyway). The fat around your hips and belly is protecting a lot of really vital stuff!
This is also really true - attempting to burn areas of stubborn fat, though, will result in a more even distribution throughout the body. It’s possible to mobilize fat from areas high in beta-2 adrenoreceptors (easy fat, if you like) and then have the body not burn it, then store it in ‘stubborn’ areas! While eventually yes, if you keep peeling the layers of the onion, you’ll end up with very low levels of fat… that might not be great for your hormonal balance, etc. Fat is an endocrine organ in its own right. I’d like to keep some of it around, but would also like to not have love handles.
And again, I’m talking like - you’re burning 40-50 grams of the stuff at a time doing one of these stubborn fat protocol workouts. The book is designed for contest bodybuilders and I wouldn’t necessarily recommend following the workouts (calls for Yohimbine as well which helps stimulate alpha-2 adrenoreceptors and is undoubtedly on the banned substance list), but… for me, it’s interesting to learn this stuff and to attempt to kind of do it a little bit, even out the fat. Especially as I’m now getting to the point where, personally, I’m pretty lean everywhere except the bottom two ab-area and my hips.
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I was reading a long Twitter thread in Spanish about spot reducing. The protocol was similar but it involved working the problem area. I’ve actually been trying it and definitely lost an inch in my waist without losing any total body weight.
I don’t read Spanish but I used the translate feature. There are several studies linked.
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I think weight loss surgery and liposuction are the only way to target specific areas, and there’s no guarantee that weight won’t build back on afterwards. I like the ‘deep end of the swimming pool’ analogy.
Haha this was the most effective thread revival I have ever seen, you should get a job in a morgue bringing people back from the dead! Thanks for the new information though. So you really mean 2-3 minutes followed by z1/2? As opposed to 20-30 minutes?
You could also try doing crunches or sit ups before getting on the bike if your goal is to stimulate blood flow to the ab area.
Thanks for the extra suggestions, never heard of the book before!
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So how does this protocol preferentially mobilize fat with alpha-2 adrenoezeptors? From all you’ve said above, it seems like first the fat with beta-2 rezeptors will get mobilized, and not the “stubborn” fat?
The prevalence of a2 receptors does all the stuff that makes it extra hard to mobilize that fat - warming the area and promoting blood flow to the area help those areas of fat get mobilized. The fat around your hips and abdomen still has b2 receptors, it’s just easier to mobilize fat around your upper body. When you start getting sub-10% levels of fat you’ll likely start to have almost none in your upper body. Basically the protocols for burning stubborn fat aren’t miracles, and it will eventually all burn anyway, but every little helps!
My understanding is that about 10 minutes of intervals or, say, 8 sets of 10 crunches will do the trick.