August 9, 2020: Spot Targeting Muscle Groups

My weekly Get Your Stuff Together Sunday email series gives you one actionable focus for the week that will make your life a little easier.

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With so much information out on the internet (and coming from friends and family), it’s pretty difficult to tell fact from fiction. It is incredibly important to learn the truth and be able to distinguish between the two. This week, we’re going to talk about one of the biggest exercise myths out there - that you can lose fat in an area of the body by strength training or exercising that specific body part.

Oh, how much easier life would be if this were true! The truth is that we can’t dictate where our bodies will decide to oxidize fat from, nor can we change fat into muscle. Yeah, I know...Sunday’s ruined now. Doing triceps press-downs will not decrease the amount of fat on our arms any more than doing crunches will decrease the amount of fat we may have in our mid-sections.

How can that be? Your body is a complex, interconnected machine that consists of many moving parts. While fat can show up in certain areas over others on your body (depending on where you tend to carry it), you have to exercise all of it as a whole to see results anywhere. You can do crunches every day for a month and you may eventually see some of the results of your labor there, but your face may show the results of your progress first in that it may look thinner.

There has to be some good news in here somewhere to convince us to continue exercising, though, right? Here is the silver lining: any exercise that decreases your overall body fat percentage will help you lose fat and tone your body as a whole. So, keep on exercising! It’s worth your time. If you’re into high-intensity interval training (HIIT), those exercises increase your metabolic burn to a point where you can continue to burn fat for up to 72 hours AFTER you leave the gym. If that’s not a plus, I don’t know what is!

Put the effort in now to increase your overall exercise routine and reap the results of your efforts in the form of overall body fat percentage decreases, increased energy and a better overall health.

Next Sunday, we’ll talk about how you can use a foam roller to ease your muscles after a hard workout or on rest days.

Want some expert help with reaching your health goals painlessly? Check out my programs! We’ll get everything taken care of in a way that fits into your current lifestyle so you never have to think about your health again.

Do you have a friend who could stand to G(her)ST? Feel free to forward this!

I hope you have a wonderful week,

Kelly

Kelly Morgan, Ph.D.

Tsirona - www.tsirona.com

My weekly GYSTS email give you one actionable thing to do for the week that will make you life a little easier. As "they" say, "Fail to plan; plan to fail." Get these emails (and more!) delivered right to your inbox by clicking HERE.