Losing / maintaining

kayvilla0102

My goal is to lose some belly fat while maintaining my lower body. Any tips? I keep hearing that this isn’t possible but I feel like it is lol

mtaratoot

The way to lose belly fat is to lose fat. To do that you need to eat fewer calories than you burn. Set a reasonable deficit, log all your food and exercise completely, accurately, and honestly. Then stick to it. After several weeks, make sure that your results match what you expected, and if they don't, make changes. If your results are what you expected, then just keep sticking to it. As you lose weight (fat) you will have to reduce your calorie goal because it takes less energy to move a smaller you.

The way to maintain your "lower body" (legs?) is to keep doing strength training. It would be better to have a whole-body focus so that you can build strength in your legs, core, back, chest, and arms all at the same time. If legs are your thing though, you can focus on those. You won't gain much muscle if you are in deficit, but your goal is to maintain what you have. That's a good plan because in a deficit, your body does consume not just fat but also muscle. You can help reduce that by doing strength training.

These are goals that somewhat work against each other, so figure out what goals you really want.

As far as "spot reducing" fat on some part of your body, they do have surgery that will do that. You can't do it by diet. You can just be in deficit so you reduce fat throughout your body. Your belly is part of your body, so you will lose fat there, but not JUST there.

AnnPT77

kayvilla0102 wrote: »

My goal is to lose some belly fat while maintaining my lower body. Any tips? I keep hearing that this isn’t possible but I feel like it is lol

Unfortunately, science is a more trustworthy guide about thismag than feelings are, and there's decent science behind the contention that spot reduction doesn't work.

However, improvement is possible. If you reduce calories below what it takes to maintain your current weight, you'll lose weight. If you don't do too big a cut, the loss will be mostly fat. (Too big a cut risks losing more than minimum lean tissue.) You will lose fat from different areas depending on your individual genetics. (We somewhat tend to lose first from the areas that added fat last as we gained, but that's an approximation.) We lose fat from body parts where we have some fat, not where we don't.

If your lower body that you like is mostly liked because of muscle, you won't lose that if you get enough protein, keep working out, and don't lose weight too fast. If you have fat on your lower body (non-belly) that you'd like to keep, that's less probable, but in the long run you can add mass to your legs or booty via strength training. (Warning: It's slow.)

Many things we wish were true aren't true, sadly.

Best wishes for progress!

mtaratoot

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Many things we wish were true aren't true, sadly.

This, sadly, IS true.