How to Lose Stubborn Fat

​[Weight loss] changes your philosophy of life because you recognize that you are capable of using your mind to change your body.
––Jean Nidetch

​We all have certain body parts that never seem to get quite as lean as the rest, no matter how hard we diet: our so-called “stubborn fat areas”.
 
Why does this happen?
 
How can you get rid of this stubborn fat?
 
Is it even possible?
 
In order to get to the bottom of your stubborn fat problem, first you need to understand what determines where you store fat, or adipose tissue, and how fast you can lose it.

What determines fat storage patterns?

The answer is sex and genetics, which means that your fat storage pattern isn’t under your control.

For instance, most people assigned female at birth (AFAB) tend to store fat in their thighs, limbs, chest, and around the reproductive organs, whereas most people assigned male at birth (AMAB) store more of it in their stomach and lower back.

Moreover, AFAB people often have more subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) than visceral adipose tissue (VAT) compared to AMAB people. In other words, they have more fat underneath the skin (subcutaneous) than around the internal organs (visceral).
 
However, after menopause or as a result of taking testosterone as a gender-diverse person undergoing medical transition, the AFAB-typical fat storage pattern can shift to a more AMAB-typical pattern, with an increase in VAT in the abdomen.
 
VAT poses a greater threat to your metabolic health and all-cause mortality than SAT.
 
If you carry too much VAT, you’re more likely to develop metabolic syndrome, which is a host of conditions including hypertension (high blood pressure), dyslipidaemia (issues with your blood lipids, like high cholesterol), insulin resistance, and abdominal obesity. Metabolic syndrome can in turn result in serious health problems, like cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.
 
Fortunately, as reported in a 2017 meta-analysis of 89 studies, all of the following fat loss strategies appear to successfully decrease both VAT and SAT over time:
 

• Diets, with or without physical activity
• Weight loss-promoting drugs, like GLP-1 agonists (such as semaglutide, marketed as Ozempic in the US)
• Bariatric surgery

 
In addition to storing fat unevenly throughout the body depending on sex and genetics, we all have areas from which we lose fat more slowly than others, which is where the colloquial term “stubborn fat” originated from.
 
How do you lose stubborn fat?

First off, an important clarification: stubborn fat is no different from the other body fat you carry, so a calorie deficit is paramount in order to lose it. If you want to learn more about how to set up a fat loss phase for maximal fat loss and minimal muscle loss, check out this article.
 
In a calorie deficit, you’re going to lose fat from your whole body over time. However, your stubborn areas take longer to lean out than the rest. Therefore, the most obvious solution to lose this stubborn fat is to be patient and stick to your deficit.
 
Now, you might be wondering: “If it’s that easy, why is everyone always complaining about how hard it is to lose stubborn fat?”

Well, here’s the catch: the longer you spend in a calorie deficit, the more body fat you lose, and the lower the body fat percentage you’re trying to get to, the more challenging the diet becomes. This is especially true if you hold a healthy amount of body fat for your size––that is, you’re not overweight and don’t have obesity––and you’re trying to get leaner purely for aesthetic reasons.
 
As a result, many people simply don’t diet for long enough and thus don’t get lean enough to “uncover” their stubborn areas.
 
In some cases, in order to remove all the fat you’d like from those stubborn areas, you may even need to attain a body fat percentage that’s too challenging to maintain. A common reason is that there’s a mismatch between the lifestyle you want to live and the lifestyle that’s required to maintain that level of leanness.
 
The smaller the body you choose to live in, the lower your maintenance calories. Therefore, maintaining a very lean physique will be a struggle if you have to do more physical activity than you have time for and/or eat fewer calories than you’d like to.
 
Another reason is that, if you’re trying to maintain a lower body fat percentage than your body can sustain, then you’re going to experience some undesirable side effects, which will make it not only harder, but also inadvisable for your long-term health to stay in such shape.
 
These side effects include constant hunger and food focus, high fatigue, low libido, difficulty sleeping, mood swings, hormonal dysregulation, and more. If you want to learn more, I recorded an in-depth podcast episode about this topic here.
 
However, achieving such an unsustainable body fat percentage is more common among bodybuilders, as it’s a relatively extreme endeavour. Most people wanting to get healthier and look a bit leaner are unlikely to reach this point.
 
Whichever the reason why you’re finding it too challenging to get or stay lean enough to see definition in your stubborn fat areas, the most reasonable choice would be to accept that, for the time being, attempting to do so isn’t a feasible strategy for you.
 
However, this may change in the future. For instance, by building more muscle, you can lower your overall body fat percentage at the same bodyweight. So, while your scale weight may not change, you’re going to look leaner, which matters far more than the number on the scale.
 
In addition, assuming the problem is the lifestyle mismatch, by spending time maintaining the leanest physique that’s currently realistic for you, you’re going to hone your ability to stick to the health-promoting habits necessary to do so.
 
The more experience you gain, the easier it becomes to maintain even those habits that might have seemed unattainable in the past. So, over time, you may become skilled enough to further reduce your body fat percentage through future fat loss phases and learn to maintain a leaner and leaner physique.

The other solution to stubborn fat is to emphasise muscle growth in the same area.

The less muscle you have in any particular body part, the leaner you need to get in order to see any definition, especially where you carry stubborn fat. On the other hand, if you have bigger muscles, you’ll need to lose less fat overall in order to make them more visible. This is important because it’s having visible muscle that makes you look toned, lean, and defined.
 
Even so, it’s important to set yourself realistic expectations.
 
For one, muscle growth is a slow process and it will likely take years to make a meaningful difference to your physique after your newbie gains.
 
Moreover, if a certain body part holds more fat than others, it’s going to be challenging for the muscle mass underneath to be more evident, even when it’s larger.
 
Last but not least, since genetics play a significant role in dictating your fat storage pattern, you want to compare your current and future physique to your starting point, not to other people’s.
 
Therefore, while building muscle can help, don’t expect it to transform your stubborn areas overnight. Moreover, even in the long term, you may never look like your favourite athlete, who has a different fat storage pattern and different stubborn areas than you.
 
In conclusion, the best strategy to deal with stubborn fat is likely a combination of the two discussed so far, whereby you alternate fat loss and muscle-building phases over time in order to get progressively leaner and more muscular over the years.
 
Every time you complete a fat loss phase, you may be able to maintain a lower body fat percentage than before because you’ll have accumulated more practice with the healthy habits you need to do so. Alternatively or in addition to this, you can build more muscle, so you’ll look leaner at a higher body fat percentage.
 
Eventually, you’ll achieve a look you’re content with, even though you may never be fully rid of every ounce of stubborn fat.
 
Final Takeaways:
 
1.Body fat distribution depends primarily on sex and genetics, with some areas being more “stubborn” than others and requiring a longer time spent dieting to lean out.
2.The only way to lose stubborn fat is to continue dieting, but this isn’t always practical.
3.Building muscle can help you gain definition in any area of interest, even without dieting to lose more body fat.
 
As a final note, I want to give a shout-out to the anonymous follower who submitted these questions via my NGL link on my weekly Instagram story Q&A:
 
“What are the different types of fat that make up our bodies and do you lose different types at different rates during fat loss?”
 
Whoever you are, your submission gave me the inspiration for this article, so thank you.
 
And thank you for reading this far. May you make the best gains.
 
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