Can fat or cellulite be removed on a specific body area with exercise?

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• Spot fat reduction with exercise, spot cellulite removal with exercise and spot skin tightening with exercise are all impossible

• Why spot fat reduction with exercise does not exist: The physiological explanation

• Squats burn fat from all over the body

• Your thigh fat goes to be burned all over the body

• Fat molecules do not diffuse through tissues between fat and muscle

• Does spot skin tightening exist at least?

• Spot fat reduction: the clinical studies

• Study #1

• Study #2

• 29 years of intensive daily exercise to lose 2.5kg of fat via spot fat reduction with exercise

• These studies are not futile

• Plié squats and hip bridges for cellulite removal? Seriously?

• Real spot cellulite reduction with interval training plus a strong cellulite cream/treatment

• Are blood flow and lipolysis in subcutaneous adipose tissue influenced by contractions in adjacent muscles in humans?

• Subcutaneous fat alterations resulting from an upper-body resistance training program

• Check our professional consultancy in cellulite, skin tightening, ultrasound and radiofrequency

Spot fat reduction with exercise, spot cellulite removal with exercise and spot skin tightening with exercise are all impossible

At the time of updating this article (August 2022) there were about 5 million pages on Google dedicated to “cellulite exercises” and another 25 million pages on “how to lose fat from thighs with exercise”.

Clearly there is a lot supply and demand here for spot/topical fat reduction with exercise, i.e. for exercises that can help you lose fat from a specific body area, by exercising that area.

But are spot fat reduction exercises effective? Do they work? Are they based on biology or on myths? Is there any actual research on their effectiveness?

All these questions are answered in our detailed article below, including how the human body works and actual research on spot fat reduction.

But before that let us just explain that:

• “CELLULITE” is hypodermal fat, i.e. fat WITHIN the skin itself

• What we simply call “FAT” is subcutaneous fat, i.e. fat UNDER the skin

(This article is part of five that examine the relation between exercise and cellulite. The other four articles deal with ”so-called cellulite exercises”, interval training, fartlek training and vibration plate training.)

Why spot fat reduction with exercise does not exist: The physiological explanation

Looking for exercises to reduce cellulite/fat on a specific part of your body like your butt, thighs or stomach?

Well, stop looking, because those exercises DO NOT EXIST.

Forget what the tabloid newspaper, glossy magazine, Instagram post, exercise blog or YouTube vlog says. It’s all misinformation based on ignorance or just good, old, plain lying (sorry, I have to call it out as what it is: lying).

Very simply, it is physiologically impossible to reduce fat (including cellulite fat) from a SPECIFIC part of the body with exercise - any exercise. Of course, you can still reduce fat and cellulite with exercise, but throughout the body - NOT on a specific body part.

This is because fat tissue (from where fat is released during exercise) and muscle tissue (where fat burning occurs during exercise) are completely separated with thick connective tissue between them.

Squats burn fat from all over the body

For example:

• When your thighs muscles burn (oxidise) fuel during your squats, that fat is provided by the arteries

• Arteries bring blood from the heart which originates from all over in the body, including your fat deposits in your breast, face, stomach etc.

• This means that your thigh muscles do burn stomach fat, face fat, breast fat etc.

• If your thigh fat is, say 10% of your body fat mass, only 10% of what your thigh muscles burn during your squats will be thigh fat. The rest (90% of it) will be all over-the-body-fat.

• That’s why you cannot have spot/cellulite fat reduction with exercise

Your thigh fat goes to be burned all over the body

And vice versa…

• When fat is removed from your thigh fat cells due to exercise or diet, it is taken up by your capillaries and veins and ends up in the general circulation, reaching muscles and organs throughout the body, where it can be oxidised (burned) for energy

• This means that fat released from your thigh fat cells during overall exercise or diet may well be burned in your arms or your liver

• Again, if your thigh fat is 10% of your body fat weight, only 10% of what your arm muscles or your liver burns will be thigh fat. The rest of it will be all-over-the-body fat.

• Again, that’s why you cannot have spot/cellulite fat reduction with exercise

Fat molecules do not diffuse through tissues between fat and muscle

All in all, fat molecules do not cross through the several tissues that exist between thigh fat and thigh muscle or stomach fat and stomach muscle. This is impossible and it is the equivalent of you crossing through walls. When is the last time you crossed through walls like a ghost?

So you cannot burn fat on one area by exercising the muscle underneath that area. Spot fat reduction (including spot cellulite reduction) does not exist.

This practically means that you can do hundreds of squats and lunges every day and exercise your butt muscles until you set them on fire, yet only a limited amount of fat burned in those muscles will have originated from your subcutaneous fat / cellulite fat cells in your buttocks. Your butt muscles could easily be burning fat originating from your breasts or face - the least desirable areas for fat reduction.

However ironical this sounds, from experience you know that it is true. Squats, lunges, hip extensions, pelvic thrusts and donkey kicks do tone the muscles underneath the fat/cellulite, but they do not reduce that specific fat/cellulite itself - not at all.

Similarly, performing hundreds of sit ups or abdominal crunches per day will not do anything to reduce belly subcutaneous fat or belly cellulite fat. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. It ain't gonna happen. Ever.

Those exercises you see on YouTube are only good for advertising income by those who upload them.

Does spot skin tightening exist at least?

“Can I at least tighten my thigh skin by doing squats?”, is the next question that I see coming.

And the answer is still “NO”. Exercise overall has an anabolic effect on skin throughout the body, but exercising a specific muscle will not lead to you building more collagen on the skin on top of that muscle. That’s not how the body works.

Exercise is still important for whole body cellulite and fat reduction, as well as for whole body skin tightening. Just don't expect spot cellulite/fat reduction or spot skin tightening.

Spot fat reduction: the clinical studies

The above mentioned biological principle behind the inability of exercise to offer spot cellulite reduction is very simple.

Still, two different research groups tried to disprove it, and in both cases the result was the same: topical fat reduction and topical cellulite reduction do not exist.

Study #1

The first peer-reviewed study examined an equal number of men and women (104 subjects) who trained one arm with weights and then examined the subcutaneous fat of both arms.

The study found the following: "MRI found a generalised subcutaneous fat loss [throughout the body], supporting the notion that spot reduction does not occur as a result of resistance training.”

Duh!

Study #2

In the second peer-reviewed study researchers examined the topical fat reduction that occurs after 30 minutes of cycling on one leg at 85%(!) maximum intensity. The result?

Yes, there was spot fat release from the area. But how much? Well, brace for it: 97nmol of mobilised fat per 100g of fat tissue per minute - mainly due to marginally increased adipose tissue blood flow between the two legs.

With a molecular weight of 855g/mol for triglycerides comprising palmitoleic acid (PAT), the most common fatty acid in the human body, and if we assume a massive 5kg of fat deposits on that leg (a very fat leg indeed), we have:

• 97nmol = 0.000000097 mol/minute of mobilised fat * 855g/mol of PAT fat =

• 0.00008294 g/minute mobilised fat / 100g fat tissue * 5000g leg fat tissue =

• 0.00414675 g/minute mobilised fat * 30 minutes =

• 0.12g of mobilised fat - with 30’ of cycling at 85% intensity!

Yes, that's right, even a very fat leg with 5kg of fat in it should expect to lose one tenth of a gram, after almost maximum intensity training for half an hour.

At this rate you can expect to lose all 5kg of that leg’s fat after 5000g : 0.12g/30’ = 42,000 thirty-minute sessions!

If you are very motivated and perform daily, without fail, sixty-minute cycling sessions at 85% intensity (and if you don't die of a heart attack first), you will lose half the fat on your legs in 21,000 sessions : 365 sessions/year : 2 = 29 years! 

29 years of intensive daily exercise to lose 2.5kg of fat via spot fat reduction with exercise

Obviously, the spot fat removal strategy is pathetic.

Actually, most of the benefits in fat loss would be due to throughout-the-body calories burned with that exercise, which would, of course, slim down the entire body, including your legs - but without being able to focus it on your legs.

In fact, you would probably need about 175 days of intense cycling to lose half of your body fat, and therefore half the fat in your legs, just by doing this type of exercise. Provided, of course, that you do not consume any excess calories during that time and that your body removes fat equally from all over the body.

Here is the calculation:

• 65kg person * 27% body fat : 2 =

• 17,550g body fat * 9cals/g of fat =

• 157.500 calories to be burned : 900 cals/hour of intensive daily cycling =

• 175 days of such cycling of cycling

These studies are not futile

When I read those two studies I wondered why did researchers waste all that time, money and effort to prove something which is so obvious physiologically - just to prove the YouTubers and silly YouTube “experts” wrong.

However, people don’t want to believe that spot fat reduction does not exist, despite all the physiological explanations. They need actual hands-on studies, they need to put their fingers into the print of the nails - and still they won’t believe the scientists.

So in the end I realised that if these studies help educate all the ignorant/stubborn people about spot fat reduction, they were taxpayers’ money and researchers’ time well spent.

Plié squats and hip bridges for cellulite removal? Seriously?

After all the above it becomes apparent how ridiculous all those "Plié Squats", Pilates moves and Yoga poses touted to help you spot-reduce fat/cellulite on your thighs sound. They would require centuries to provide results. C-E-N-T-U-R-I-E-S.

So my advice is to stop looking for the best exercises for topical fat/cellulite reduction, disregard the thousands of internet and printed press articles with such misinformation and focus on advice about the best type of overall workout for cellulite reduction.

Real spot cellulite reduction with interval training plus a strong cellulite cream/treatment

Having said all the above, there is indeed one way to reduce cellulite (but not subcutaneous fat) with exercise: by combining high intensity exercise (such as interval training) with a strong anti-cellulite cream and/or treatment.

Due to the high amounts of noradrenaline that interval training releases, it is the perfect type of exercise to combine with real anti-cellulite treatments and creams in order to focus the results of exercise on specific cellulite areas.

The way it works is as follows: noradrenaline, secreted during sprinting, triggers fat release which synergistically enhances the fat release in the area caused by a concentrated anti-cellulite cream (think high amounts of forskolin, caffeine etc) and/or by a strong anti-cellulite treatment (think high power ultrasonic cavitation and/or high intensity deep acting radiofrequency).

This means that cellulite fat reduction will be much more pronounced on the area treated, than the overall fat reduction caused by exercise.

All you need to do is apply the cream before/after 1-2 hours exercise or receive the RF/cavitation treatment 1-2 hours before/after exercise. Even fast walking immediately before/after your treatment will confer some benefits.

Are blood flow and lipolysis in subcutaneous adipose tissue influenced by contractions in adjacent muscles in humans?

• Research paper link: https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/ajpendo.00215.2006

• Abstract: Aerobic exercise increases whole body adipose tissue lipolysis, but is lipolysis higher in subcutaneous adipose tissue (SCAT) adjacent to contracting muscles than in SCAT adjacent to resting muscles? Ten healthy, overnight-fasted males performed one-legged knee extension exercise at 25% of maximal workload (Wmax) for 30 min followed by exercise at 55% Wmax for 120 min with the other leg and finally exercised at 85% Wmax for 30 min with the first leg. Subjects rested for 30 min between exercise periods. Femoral SCAT blood flow was estimated from washout of 133Xe, and lipolysis was calculated from femoral SCAT interstitial and arterial glycerol concentrations and blood flow. In general, blood flow and lipolysis were higher in femoral SCAT adjacent to contracting than adjacent to resting muscle (time 15–30 min; blood flow: 25% Wmax 6.6 ± 1.0 vs. 3.9 ± 0.8 ml·100 g−1·min−1, P < 0.05; 55% Wmax 7.3 ± 0.6 vs. 5.0 ± 0.6 ml·100 g−1·min−1, P < 0.05; 85% Wmax 6.6 ± 1.3 vs. 5.9 ± 0.7 ml·100 g−1·min−1, P > 0.05; lipolysis: 25% Wmax 102 ± 19 vs. 55 ± 14 nmol·100 g−1·min−1, P = 0.06; 55% Wmax 86 ± 11 vs. 50 ± 20 nmol·100 g−1·min−1, P > 0.05; 85% Wmax 88 ± 31 vs. −9 ± 25 nmol·100 g−1·min−1, P < 0.05). In conclusion, blood flow and lipolysis are generally higher in SCAT adjacent to contracting than adjacent to resting muscle irrespective of exercise intensity. Thus specific exercises can induce “spot lipolysis” in adipose tissue. [Albeit at infinitesimal levels]

Subcutaneous fat alterations resulting from an upper-body resistance training program

• Research paper link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17596787/

• Abstract: Purpose: It is believed spot reduction, the exercise-induced localized loss of subcutaneous fat, does not occur as a result of an exercise program; however, evidence as a whole has been inconsistent. To reexamine this concept, we compared subcutaneous fat measurements before and after resistance training among 104 subjects (45 men, 59 women). Methods: Subjects participated in 12 wk of supervised resistance training of their nondominant arm. Magnetic resonance imaging and skinfold calipers examined subcutaneous fat in the nondominant (trained) and dominant (untrained) arms before and after resistance training. Repeated-measures ANCOVA tested for subcutaneous fat differences within and between arms before, after, and from before to after resistance training by gender and measurement technique, with BMI and age as covariates. Simple linear regression compared subcutaneous fat changes before and after resistance training as assessed by MRI and skinfold. Results: Subcutaneous fat, measured by skinfold, decreased in the trained arm and not the untrained arm in the men (P < 0.01); it was similar in the total sample and in the women (P > 0.05). MRI determinations of subcutaneous fat changes were not different between arms in the total sample and by gender (P > 0.05). Conclusion: Subcutaneous fat changes resulting from resistance training varied by gender and assessment technique. Skinfold findings indicate that spot reduction occurred in men but not in women. In contrast, MRI found a generalised subcutaneous fat loss independent of gender, supporting the notion that spot reduction does not occur as a result of resistance training. MRI, sensitive to changes along the entire upper arm, detected greater variation in resistance training responses, preventing significant differences between trained and untrained arms. Variation in upper-arm resistance training [fat reduction] response was not evident from a single skinfold measurement at the belly of the muscle.

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