On these dates, whether we admit it or not, binge eating and food excessesare the order of the day: nougat, business lunches and dinners, the Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve dinner , the end of the year drinks … And later , the first day of the year, the remorse and the hurry to lose those kilos that we have accumulated.

And our body is so “funny”, that tends to accumulate excess fat at specific points in our anatomy, causing all our efforts to focus later on thinning those areas. Is it possible to lose weight in a localized way and lose only a part of our body? We anticipate that the answer is no, but how to get rid of that localized fat?

It is not possible to lose fat in a localized way

This is something that we must take into account. Losing fat from a specific part of the body is not possible unless we go through the operating room and get liposuction. As much as manufacturers of “miraculous” products assure us that we are going to reduce waist, hip, thighs or abdomen losing fat only in those areas, it is a lie.

The process of fat loss is something global , our body knows it all too well and it will only matter to him to get stored energy in the form of fat without fixing if he takes it from one place or another. It is more: our body will take that energy in the form of fat from our whole body, as if it were a “mass appeal”.

First steps to lose weight

To lose weight and lose those extra kilos that we have accumulated in a specific period (normally they are usually Christmas and holiday periods such as summer or Easter), there are a number of points to keep in mind to avoid ruining Our weight loss operation :

  • First, we must go to a professional . Nothing to look for a miracle diet, a detox diet or the recommendations of our neighbor of the third. A diet should be something totally personalized and adapted to our circumstances and lifestyle, so going to a dietitian-nutritionist to “configure” our diet is the first step.
  • Rest and absence of stress are two key factors when losing weight, as stress increases the production of cortisol and having a defective rest cycles will cause leptin and ghrelin (two hormones responsible for regulating the sensation of hunger and satiety) make us eat more food than necessary.
  • Physical activity : It is recommended that we perform physical activity at the same time we are on a diet, since this way the fat loss will be enhanced and we will also achieve a physical recomposition due to the effect of physical exercise.
  • Running away from obesogenic environments : it is difficult and complicated, because we always have that social commitment with family or friends in which eating healthy seems complicated. For this reason, resorting to grilled foods, avoiding fats as much as possible (remember that not all fats are bad for our health) and eating small portions of each dish are some of the options we have to avoid excesses .

So your body loses weight when you go on a diet

Have not you wondered why it is in the first weeks of our diet when we lose more weight ? The answer is simple: in those first weeks, our body is reduced caloric intake suddenly (even when it is within the normal values ​​of 10-20% of total calories), and until you get used to this new intake, There will be a time when we will lose weight faster .

But this does not mean that after that time we stop losing weight, but we will lose it more slowly. In addition, if we are exercising, our muscles will also increase , so part of that “space” released by the lost fat, will be occupied by lean muscle mass.

As time passes and we are eliminating excess fat , our body will adapt and the caloric margin in which we can work will be reduced . To understand us: suppose we start our diet to lose weight by eating 2000 calories, when our bodies would need, for example, 2200 calories (this is a deficit of around 10%). After a few weeks, our body will be at a point where it will need 2000 calories for its operation, so we must readjust our diet to eat less of those 2000 calories.

During this time, we will burn mainly stored fats in our body (stored fat is pure energy), because the best indicator of the success of our diet will be more in the reduction of body volume than in the shtick that marks the scale.

A curious study: Where does the fat we lose go?

In the study ” When somebody loses weight, where does the fat go? “, Ruben Meerman and Andrew Brown affirmed, as a general summary of it, that the fat that we lose is expelled in the form of carbon dioxide in its majority through the breathing.

Losing ten kilos of fat requires the inhalation of 29 kilos of oxygen, and the entire metabolic process produces up to 28 kilos of carbon dioxide and eleven kilos of water.

This way your body loses volume when exercising

If apart from following a diet plan controlled by a professional , we introduce the practice of physical exercise in our attempt to lose weight, the differences will be much greater in our favor. The reason for this is that through the inclusion of physical exercise we can achieve a much better body recomposition, since while losing fat, we are creating lean muscle mass that “occupies” that space released by the burning of fat.

As you all know, a kilo of muscle occupies less space than one of fat and, in addition, needs or demands more energy for its “maintenance”, so the higher our percentage of lean muscle mass, the less volume of fat we will have and more energy will burn our muscles.

And what about the “unruly fat” that is so difficult to eliminate?

What we commonly call ” rebellious fat ” are neither more nor less than the last reserves of excess fat in our body , and that is what it will cost us the most to eliminate, since our body will try by all means not to resort to them. to obtain the necessary energy to stay active in our day to day.

At this point, we must point out the importance of not discouraging ourselves if we see that it is difficult for us to lose that last point of fat and it seems to us that we are stagnating. The important thing is perseverance and that the whole process is supervised by a professional , since at this point it is very common for people’s desperation to lead them to resort to miracle diets or products of doubtful efficacy (no matter how much they say it in the tele store, there are things that are impossible to work)