Why You Store Fat Here, And How To Get Rid Of It

Ranking Six Problem Areas for Fat Loss00:00

Going from this to this can take as little as 90 days, but that's just one area. Your love handles, face fat, and even the fat hidden around your organs don't all come off the same way. The six biggest problem areas are ranked from least to most stubborn, along with the best training and diet strategy to improve each one.

Visceral Fat - The Easiest to Lose but Most Dangerous00:00

Visceral fat sits deep in your belly, wrapping around your organs, pumping out inflammatory molecules linked to heart disease, diabetes, and even early death. Eric and Brian look pretty similar from the outside, but based on their scans, Eric carries 10 times more visceral fat, over 1,000 g, which puts him in the high-risk category for disease and health complications. Andy is a good example - he's actually pretty skinny everywhere, but his gut has gotten bigger and feels firm to touch since moving from Ukraine to North America. Andy actually carries more visceral fat than Eric, higher than anyone else measured.

In just a few months, Andy's visceral fat was cut down to about a third. Asians have been found to have higher levels of visceral fat, which might explain the pot belly physique that's common in many of these regions. When you overeat, especially sugar and saturated fats like fatty meats, butter, and deep-fried foods, the more likely your body is to store those extra calories as visceral fat. Brian eats a much cleaner diet with less added sugar and more healthy fats from foods like avocados, fish, and nuts, so any surplus calories are more likely to be put towards building muscle or stored as regular fat.

For visceral fat, diet changes can go a long way. Brian does one thing both Andy and Eric don't do at all - cardio. Since your body prioritizes health above aesthetics, visceral fat is actually the fastest to go. You can even start burning it without losing any weight. In 2023, researchers measured how effective different exercises were at burning off visceral fat, scoring them each out of 100. Lifting weights alone did help, but it was the least effective. Lifting weights plus steady-state cardio made it over twice as effective. The most effective exercises were intense forms of cardio, like HIIT or fast running and hard cycling. Even if you currently lift weights, add 15 to 30 minutes of cardio after your workouts. For the best results, at least once or twice a week, choose a form of cardio that really gets your heart rate up. It can be intervals or just straight hard cardio. Do not push yourself too hard right at the start.

The most reliable way to burn off visceral fat is still a calorie deficit. You may not even need to count calories yet. Simply cutting back on the sugary and high-fat foods while adding some cardio can often be enough. Dayton and Andy did this and within a matter of months, both cut their visceral fat by more than half. On the stubborn scale, visceral fat gets just a one out of 10.

Face Fat - A Three Out of 10 on the Stubborn Scale04:01

Unlike visceral fat, which is invisible and hard to visually see progress, losing even a tiny amount from your face can make you look dramatically leaner. Even though only 1 to 2% of your overall fat is stored in your cheeks and chin, it has an outsize effect on how lean you look. Sometimes it's not even fat that's a problem. After eating a big salty bowl of soup with a lot more sodium than normal, the face becomes puffier and more swollen looking. Both faces are puffier, just a lot less defined, but no actual fat was gained. The salt caused the face to hold onto more water under the skin to balance out the salt levels, puffing them up. The biggest culprits of sodium usually come from takeout meals and pre-processed foods. Simply cutting back on that can quickly flush out the water the face is holding and look leaner within 24 hours.

Compared to areas like your belly and love handles, your face is actually one of the first areas you'll lose progress during a diet. Matson felt like his cheeks and chin genetically just stored more fat. In just 30 days, the fluid in his face was flushed out, and a lot of the actual fat was gotten rid of. He didn't even have to start counting calories. He just followed a couple simple rules. First, instead of eating out almost every single day, he started eating most of his meals at home using whole unprocessed foods. Second, instead of drinking calories from things like bubble tea and lattes, he switched over to calorie-free options like herbal teas, diet sodas, and Americanos. Melody followed a similar diet, and her cheeks are slimmer, her skin looks healthier, and even her jawline is more defined. On the stubborn scale, face fat gets a three out of 10.

Upper Body Fat - A Six Out of 10 on the Stubborn Scale05:30

After analyzing over 100 DEXA scans from participants, a pattern was noticed. For every single female scan, the body fat percentage in the arms was on average about 3.1% higher than their total body fat percentage. For men, it was the opposite - arms actually scored on average 4.2% below their total body fat. Visually, it seemed like most of their upper body fat instead seemed to be around their chest, which might explain why so many guys complain about having man boobs. The fix for these two areas is the same, and it doesn't just have to do with losing fat. Muscle is what gives a body part shape. Without it, fat just sits there and spreads out. It's actually one of the main causes behind a skinny fat physique. It's not that you're carrying a ton of fat, it's that you don't have much muscle either. So the little fat you do have just looks more loose and undefined. Using exercises that build the right muscles underneath these areas can change how lean or toned they look even without any fat loss.

Most women's complaints are the back of the arm, the part that hangs and jiggles when you wave. Underneath that fat is the long head of the triceps, which most people's gym routines overlook. This area seems to respond and grow best to overhead extensions, either with dumbbells or cables. Ever since these were started twice a week, this area has definitely firmed up and just feels less loose. Most guys simply need more upper chest work as it makes the chest look higher and fuller, creating the illusion of less sag. The best options here are incline dumbbell presses, plus machine flies but with a slight lean forward to target the upper chest. A good idea is to put these exercises at the beginning of your workouts from now on while reducing some of the volume currently done for lower chest exercises like flat bench press and dips.

Building muscle only solves half the problem. To reveal the definition and lines that you're probably after, combine it with a calorie deficit. Because these areas require more fat loss than the face, build on the strategies covered earlier. You might not even need to start counting calories just yet. Start with adding one fist-size serving of lean protein to every meal. This is going to help support muscle growth while also keeping you fuller, so you naturally eat less. To increase your daily calorie burn, combine that with walking at least 8 to 10,000 steps a day. While this area requires a bit more work, it's still very doable. Upper body fat is put at a six out of 10 on the stubborn scale.

Love Handles - An 8.5 out of 10 on the Stubborn Scale08:31

The reason for love handles' stubbornness comes down to receptors. Within your fat cells, there's two types of receptors. Think of them as jail guards who decide whether your fat should be released or not. Beta receptors are super chill. If your body needs energy, they'll release the fat without giving you a hard time. Alpha receptors are the opposite. They won't let your fat go unless there's a dire need for it. Part of why we think fat from the face, upper body, and even the deep belly fat come off easier is because they have more of these chill beta receptors. In 1987, researchers actually measured the receptor balance in different types of fat. In the deeper visceral fat, there was almost a perfect 50/50 split between the strict receptors and the chill ones. But in the fat right under your skin, like your love handles, 60% were strict and only 40% were chill.

While you can't spot reduce this fat, there is one way to make your love handles look smaller before they're actually gone. It's called a V-taper. Building your shoulders with lateral raises and your upper back with pull-ups can widen your upper body, creating the illusion of a narrow waist and less obvious love handles well before the fat there actually goes away. But to actually shrink them, you still need to lose overall body fat. Because they're so stubborn, you typically won't start noticing much progress until you get below 20% body fat for men and below 30% for women. And to get there, just eating healthy usually isn't enough. If you multiply your body weight in pounds by anywhere between 10 to 13, that's going to give you a very rough idea of how many calories you need. This means that at this stage, it would be in your best interest to actually start tracking.

When Luke and Nicole first started, they both started eating 12 calories per pound of their body weight. They also used the Built With Science app, which adjusted their calories over time based on their progress while giving them workouts to build their V-taper. At first, their love handles barely moved. But after about 2 months, they finally started coming off. After 4 months total, this was the result. Even with an app that takes care of all the guesswork, getting rid of love handles still takes time and consistency. Love handles get the highest stubborn score so far, 8.5 out of 10.

Lower Belly Fat - The Final Boss of Fat Loss11:02

Even after 4 months, there is still one small pocket of fat that couldn't be gotten rid of. It's usually the very last place to lean out and the final boss of fat loss, the lower belly. For women, this area can actually be faster to get rid of because they tend to store less fat here compared to men. After dieting for the same amount of time and losing a similar relative amount of fat, Nicole's belly fat was almost completely gone. But Luke, even at around 15% body fat, had a visible upper and middle abs while the lower belly fat was still hanging on. Unless you genetically just store less fat in this area, most guys will need to get down to around 10 to 12% body fat for this area to really lean out. And unlike what you see on social media, that is not very common. DEXA scans were analyzed for more than 9,000 American men, and only one reached 12% body fat.

That doesn't mean it's impossible. It's been done, and with a few more months of dieting, Luke could have as well. It's just so rare because the leaner you get, the fewer calories your body naturally burns every day. So you often have to eat even fewer calories and/or do more steps or cardio than before just to keep the same calorie deficit going. By the time most average weight guys get to this stage, they're taking at least 10,000 steps a day and eating fewer than 2,000 calories a day just to keep that loss going. And unlike other areas where you can speed up fat loss just by going harder, by this point, you've actually already lost a lot of fat from the easier areas. And so, if you go too hard, instead of tapping into lower belly fat, your body might actually start pulling from your muscle instead.

A good rule of thumb here is to multiply your body weight by 0.007. That is the maximum amount of weight you want to lose every week. So if you weigh 160 lb, that's around a pound a week. Even when around 10 to 11% body fat, there is still a little bit of lower belly fat that could be obsessed over losing if wanted. First, just decide whether losing that final little pocket is actually worth it. And if it is, you just have to be more stubborn than the stubborn fat itself. This puts lower belly fat at a 10 out of 10 for stubbornness. If you're lean enough, one thing that can help your midsection look better without actually losing more fat, is by building and growing your abs.