Can You Lose Back Fat Specifically? The Honest Answer

This is one of the most searched questions in fitness, and almost everything written about it is untrue.

So we are going to answer it straight, including the part that is not what anybody wants to hear.

Why You Cannot Lose Back Fat on Its Own

Fat is not stored locally for the muscle next to it.

When your body needs energy it releases fatty acids into the bloodstream from fat tissue all over you, and the working muscle takes what it needs from circulation. Working muscle does pull slightly more from the fat right next to it, but in trials the difference is small, inconsistent and nowhere near what you could see in a mirror. For practical purposes, you cannot choose where fat comes off.

This is why the exercise you do has almost no bearing on where you get leaner. Doing rows will build the muscles in your back. It will not empty the fat cells above them.

Where you lose from first is set mostly by genetics, sex and hormones, and it is not something you get a vote on. Some people lose from the face first, some from the waist, some from the limbs. The pattern is largely yours, though it shifts with age, and for women around menopause fat tends to move toward the waist.

Things that are sold as spot reduction and do not work

• Foam rolling. Useful for muscle soreness and mobility. It does not remove fat, and it does not break down or release any tissue that is holding fat in place.
• Targeted exercises. They build the muscle underneath, which is worth doing for its own sake. They do not thin the layer above.
• Breathing drills, wraps, creams and massage. None of these has evidence behind it for fat loss.
• Water for flushing toxins. Water is worth drinking. Your kidneys and liver do the clearing, and there is nothing to flush.

We had a version of this article on the site for several years that recommended some of the above. It was wrong, and we would rather correct it in public than quietly delete it.

What Actually Changes Body Composition

The honest answer is unglamorous and it is mostly about what is on your plate on ordinary days.

The thing that made the difference for us

Andy had been overweight for as long as he could remember, and lost weight through sheer determination more than once. It never held, because a system that runs on effort runs out.

He lost about forty pounds in 2017. What has kept it off ever since was not more discipline. It was eating food that did not require any.

Whole plant foods carry very little energy for their bulk. Vegetables run one to two hundred calories a pound. Potatoes, rice and cooked oats run about 350 to 550, and beans about 550 to 600. Nuts and oils run several thousand.

People tend to eat a fairly steady amount of food by weight, so when that food carries fewer calories, they take in fewer without trying. Build meals from the middle of that range and you can eat until you are comfortably full without the arithmetic working against you. The four numbers are here.

He has kept those forty pounds off since, eating as much as he wants. We did not expect that part to hold, and it has.

Sleep, which is not a filler tip

Short sleep does two separate things, and both push in the same direction.

It shifts the hormones that regulate appetite, so you feel hungrier on less food. And it weakens the part of the brain that runs deliberate decisions, so the resistance is lower at the same time the pull is higher.

In controlled studies, people short on sleep eat more, about 385 extra calories a day on average across eleven trials, and it tends to be the richer, fattier food. That is not a character flaw. It is a consistent experimental finding.

Movement, for what it is actually good at

Exercise is genuinely important, and it is oversold as a weight tool and undersold as everything else.

The American Heart Association’s minimum is 150 minutes a week of moderate activity, about twenty-two minutes of brisk walking a day. That is a much lower bar than most people assume, and walking is where we would start rather than with anything that requires a subscription.

Strength work is worth doing because muscle is worth having, particularly with age. Just not as a way of choosing where fat leaves from.

The Part That Is Andy’s Rather Than Venny’s

Andy here, and this is the psychology rather than the nutrition.

Searches like this one usually start in front of a mirror, and the feeling that sends somebody looking is not a useful engine to run on. It burns out, and it tends to produce exactly the eating it was trying to prevent.

The thing I would say to anybody who arrived here from that particular query is that the strategy which works is boring and kind, and the strategy which fails is urgent and harsh. Six bad days inside a good year is under 2 percent of your meals, and your body barely registers it. What it does notice is the average of many months.

If eating feels genuinely out of your control, or thoughts about your body take up a large part of your day, that is worth taking to a professional who can see you properly. It is not a failure of willpower and it is not something a blog post should be treating.

Where to Start If You Want to Start

One change, not eight.

• Put a real starch at lunch. If you are careful all day and ravenous every evening, a light lunch is often where the evening comes from.
• Cook more than you need. A pot of soup takes the same time for six portions as for two, and the tired Wednesday stops being a decision.
• Add beans. In a study of 785 adults over 70 in Japan, Sweden, Greece and Australia, every extra 20 grams of beans a day (about two tablespoons) was linked to a 7 to 8 percent lower risk of death, which is a better reason than any waistband.
• Walk briskly. Twenty-two minutes a day meets the minimum.

Venny is a medical doctor and a specialist in Nutrition and Dietetics; Andy holds a master’s degree in psychology. This is general information rather than medical advice. Sudden or unexplained changes in body weight in either direction are worth seeing a doctor about rather than a website.

And, always, seek health consciously.

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