I was recently speaking with a client about cognitional, false assumptions, priming, and various techniques used to swindle people out of their money. The discussion turned to the marketing and advertising scams, usually perpetuated through late night television, which relate to fat reduction and body sculpting. Specifically, it was the products that supposedly “target” body fat in a specific area and allow any overweight person to attain a finely sculpted body. I expressed my bewilderment as to how any rational person could be suckered by these scams. But my client was not as overwhelmed by that feeling as I was and queried me on the issue.
Sometimes you can be so close or knowledgeable about an issue that what may seem obvious to you isn’t to others. Apparently this is one such instance. So here I will briefly explain.
Body fat is stored in fat cells comprising adipose tissue that is subcutaneous throughout the body, traverses muscle tissue, surrounds organs, and may also coat the inside of the circulatory system in the form of plaques rather than adipose tissue. Look at a cut of pork or beef meat to see the fat surrounding and traversing the meat. There is generally a fat layer surrounding the muscle [meat portion] but also some veins of fat within the muscle.
Fat is a store of energy at about 3500 calories per pound. Depending upon your evolutionary ancestry the predisposition to fat retention and placement has largely been decided upon by the survival of the most adaptive theory. Peoples from northern arctic areas will be more likely to have a metabolic setting that encourages fat retention as their ancestors likely had a higher appetite and lower metabolic rate and thus were more likely to engorge themselves in times of feast which allowed them to survive during the times of famine.
In our modern society there is evolutionary pressure to reduce fat retention as food supplies are ample as is heating in cold climates. Thus, there is no longer a survival benefit to sacrificing longevity for the benefit of immediate survival and reproduction.
Unspent processed calories are sent to the adipose tissue by the blood stream and stored as fat. The calorie calculation is very simple: calories processed less calories expended equals the net gain or loss. Here is the important part as it relates to those products that supposedly target specific fats. The blood does not select where to store the fat.
Here are two ways to think of it. For adding fat, imagine dumping a bucket of water on dry ground. The water will flow across the surface filling in cracks, depressions, and other porous areas until it has been reduced to the point that procession ceases. It proportionally filled areas of deficit. The bucket doesn’t decide to fill one depression completely while only filling a crack half way before having the water flow past to some other selected crack. For reducing fat try a straw in a glass of water. Suck differing amounts of water from the bottom, a side, the middle, and near the top. You will notice that there are no pockets of air where water used to be in the glass. This is because the water is uniformly removed regardless of from where in the glass it is taken. These scenarios do not apply to adding or removing fat from the circulatory system.
So think of using a specific muscle to the point that it’s energy requirement exceeds what is in the blood stream. Let’s use legs as an example - hiking. Now think of this in evolutionary terms. There were two hikers traversing a path through a blizzard for days upon end without food. One had a metabolism that only took fat from the muscle in use and the surrounding tissue to convert to energy. The other had a metabolism that took fat uniformly from any adipose tissue the bloodstream encountered which most efficiently delivered it to the cells needing energy. Who do you think survived and reproduced?
Thus, fat reduction becomes very simple. If you want to lose 50% of your belly fat then lose 50% of the fat in your body. You won’t ever need to do a sit-up to accomplish it. Just observe that simple equation: calories processed less calories expended. In an upcoming post I will explain more about the calories processed less calories expended equation.
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