You know that fat on the inside of your legs, under your arms, around your belly button, and falling over the sides of your jeans? That fat you have been trying to lose with thousands of crunches, side bends, tricep extensions, and that machine at the gym that you sit on and squeeze the pads together? Well, here is your guide to getting rid of that fat.
Step 1: Stop replacing high knees, mountain climbers, and other movements intended to increase heart rate for tricep extensions, side bends, situps, and leg adduction machines. As we have talked about before, you CAN’T SPOT REDUCE FAT!!! While these exercises MAY increase muscle mass in those areas, they will do little to increase the definition of the trained body part without first dropping fat. In fact, you may actually increase the size of the trained body part if you do not shed fat before building the underlying muscle tissue. Do you really want BIGGER arms with the exact same amount of fat?
Step 2: Stick to your calorie goal!!! The only way to shed fat is to be in a calorie deficit. Food logging is the best exercise to lose fat. You can be on a 4-day per week bodybuilder-type arm workout and you will not gain enough muscle to give your arm that chiseled look without reducing the fat.
Step 3: Stick to your supplemental workouts. These workouts are high-intensity circuits or high- intensity cardio, which have been shown to increase fat loss at a much higher rate than steady state cardio .
Step 4: Understand that these areas are tough to get REALLY LEAN, and you may need to make sacrifices to achieve the goal you have in mind. You may need to give up that glass of wine and full serving of dessert each night, and get on the cardio equipment for a few more interval sessions per week.