How to Lose Weight in Your (Stomach, Chin, Arms, Hips, Chest, Thighs…)

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Lose the love handles.  Get rid of those chubby cheeks.  Make that double chin a single.  See that six pack of abs before next summer rolls around.

These are a few of my our favorite things.

If you polled every trainer in America for the question that they receive the most, you’d probably hear something along the lines of “…I’m not too overweight and I really need to lose weight just in my stomach area.  How can I do that?”

Sure, I dreamed of targeting my stomach and getting a six pack of abs when I was obese, but I didn’t care about specific body parts at the time.  I just wanted to be smaller overall and be able to fit into normal clothes, chairs, and the like.  As I lost weight, and as I talk to other people who consider themselves around a “normal” weight, it’s all about trying to lose weight and fat in specific areas — chin, chest, thighs, arms, etc.  The area most wanting perfected, unsurprisingly, is the stomach.

Everyone wants that last bit of fat around the stomach to go away.

So, how do you lose weight in a specific area like your stomach, chin, arms, etc?  While this answer may be hard to accept, accept it — you cannot.  You can’t do a thousand ab crunches and see your abs.  Losing weight doesn’t work that way.  You remove the fat around your stomach and see your abs the same way you remove your double chin and the flab under your arms — by counting calories and losing weight everywhere, according to your genetics and body type.

You cannot perform exercises targeting one specific area expecting to see results specifically in that area.  End of discussion.

Well, it’s almost the end of discussion.  Men and women lose (and gain) weight around certain areas of the body first.  For men, the hardest, last bit of fat to go away is usually around the lower midsection.  While that’s true to an extent for women, women also have a harder time losing weight around their childbearing hips and thighs.  Genetics also plays a role in where a person loses weight last.  Unfortunately, barring some very extreme, unsustainable lifelong dieting, some people can never get to the point where they might see a six pack of abs.

None of this should discourage you, though, but instead motivate you to stop worrying about the details.   Stop obsessing over a particular area of your body or a self-perceived “flaw.”  You’re beautiful — stop comparing yourself to others.   It’s always fine to have goals in mind, or to see some areas that need a little bit of TLC on one’s body, but don’t get obsessed.  It’s unnecessary and not productive.

Keep counting calories and don’t worry about the things you can’t control.