Name: Why You Can’t Lose Fat in THIS Area (And Other Weight Loss Facts)
Uploaded: 2025-06-18T11:34:02.000Z
Duration: 23 min 57 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

You've been working out for six months straight and decide to check out your progress in the gym mirror.

Flexing your arms you see your biceps bulging, triceps tight, legs like a runner, and a belly poking out over your spandex shorts.

How could it be that all of your work is going to waste when it comes to your stomach?

On today's episode of the Infographics Show we're going to go into why you can't lose fat in this area and some other crazy weight loss facts you might not be aware of. 21.

The number one thing people ask trainers about as summer approaches is how to lose belly fat.

And it's not just something people are concerned about for appearance sake.

The presence of excess belly fat increases people's risk for type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes, even depression.

Unfortunately, what makes belly fat so dangerous also makes it stubborn.

That's because it's an active fat that behaves almost like an endocrine gland, releasing hormones that actually make it harder to burn fat, making losing fat a vicious cycle.

Belly fat is also particularly influenced by things like stress levels and poor diet.

So even if you're killing it at the gym, if you're not moving away from sugary, carb-rich foods, you're likely going to keep some fat around your belly.

And even with a great diet, being stressed out about your work or personal life is still going to keep that area around your tummy wobbly because of an effect known as stress belly.

When you're stressed, your body releases hormones like cortisol, which ramp up fat metabolism to give you a quick energy boost but also crank up your appetite.

It's likely an evolutionary leftover from the times when stress meant that you hadn't found enough food for the winter and you might die.

Not that Excel won't do what you want it to, but the effect is still the same.

You store more fat in the long term and bloat up in the short term when you're feeling the stress.

And belly fat isn't the only fat that is hard to drop. 20.

You Can't Spot Reduce Weight Google search is inundated with questions about how to specifically remove weight from your stomach, your thighs, arms, and other problem areas.

And no matter what TikTok videos may tell you, experts have only one real answer.

You can't remove weight or burn fat from just one part of your body, that is.

You can do all the crunches and glute exercises you like, but if there is still a big layer of fat covering those parts of the body, you're not going to see the muscles developing underneath.

And when your body is in a calorie deficit or exercising, it is burning fat from all over, not just one specific part.

If you're thinking, well then why do some people lose weight in their butt immediately while others have skinny arms and big thighs?

That has almost everything to do with genetics influencing how fat is distributed on your body in the first place.

It's got nothing to do with spot targeting weight loss.

So if you don't like how the weight sits on you, blame your parents.

That being said, it's actually surprising what activities can affect your weight loss in general, including… 19.

It turns out being smart has even more downsides than you think.

Including weight gain, researchers at Canada's Laval University gave two groups of people different tasks before eating.

One group did mentally demanding tasks, the other simply relaxed and read a book.

Even though the high focus group had only burned about 3 extra calories, they ate 253 calories at their next meal, compared to just 203 calories eaten by the relaxed group.

In addition, overthinking or working on a mentally challenging problem can also cause people to stress out.

Stress releases cortisol, which in addition to promoting fat storage, also stimulates overeating.

So if your teacher tells you that you need to stop daydreaming and pay attention in class, just tell her you're trying to lose weight. 18.

It seems like a no-brainer that eating fat will make you fat, right?

Unfortunately, or fortunately for people who like food with some fatty flavor, it is also wrong.

Fats are an important part of any balanced diet.

Healthy fats in foods like avocado and salmon have a lot of positive effects on the body, including regulating your heart and actually making you feel full, so you have less of an urge to snack.

So why do so many people think of fat as the enemy?

Well that's because you've been lied to, and for that you can blame the sugar industry.

The US and quite a few other countries started recommending a low-fat diet for weight loss and improved health in 1977, when the rate of obesity was at 15%.

Recently released documents show that this recommendation didn't come out of nowhere.

Throughout the 1960s, the sugar industry paid scientists to overlook the link between sugar and heart disease, as well as other diseases, and then blame fat instead.

So people following the advice of professionals started switching to low-fat products.

Low-fat products have much more sugar than full-fat products, sometimes 6 times as much, to make up for the loss of flavor.

And what's happened to the obesity rate since then?

Well, from August 2021 to August 2023, it was at 40.3%, more than two and a half times higher than when the guidelines about reducing fat were given.

Meanwhile, the sugar industry is booming, and that is hardly the only myth about weight loss. 17.

Many of us have heard the myth that starting the day with a good breakfast leads to weight loss and a healthier diet, while skipping breakfast is one of the worst things you could do.

But that is not really true, and it's more likely a result of confusing correlation with causation.

This piece of advice started being passed around after many studies showed that people who skipped breakfast generally weighed more than people who ate breakfast.

But the more researchers looked into the data, the more it became clear that this was just a random correlation.

People who consistently woke up early to make themselves a proper breakfast before work or school were far more likely to stick to healthier habits, both in their diet and overall lifestyle.

In a controlled four-month study with 309 adults, researchers tested whether eating breakfast actually affected weight.

But by the end, there was no meaningful difference in weight between them.

There is also zero evidence that eating breakfast jump-starts your metabolism.

A big food myth floating around is that eating multiple small meals throughout the day instead of a couple of big ones helps you lose weight.

Gym rats are always meal-prepping for the week and talking about how important it is to eat something every three hours or so, but in reality there is little to no evidence that that is the case.

One scientific review analyzed every major study on the topic and found no real link between how often you eat and how much weight you lose.

Or as they put it, with the exception of a single study, there is no evidence that weight loss on hypo-energetic regimens is altered by meal frequency.

So just stick to eating when you're hungry, and that will probably be the right balance for you.

After all, forcing yourself to eat when you're not hungry because, well, it's already been three hours, is a surefire way to make you gain weight. 15.

Here's something that you'll find true when trying to lose weight.

Your brain almost always works against you while doing it, and one of the ways in which it tricks you into failing at your weight loss goals is that it doesn't register sugar in liquid form.

So when you drink something like a soda, a high-calorie drink packed with added sugars, it doesn't process that as a huge intake of calories, even though that's exactly what just happened.

If you ate really sugary foods, your brain would compensate by eating less sugary products throughout the day, but with liquids it doesn't do that.

And we're not just talking about sodas, which seems obvious.

Plenty of fruit juices that you might think of as healthy also have way too much sugar.

For example, 12 ounces of Coca-Cola has 1.3 ounces of sugar, but 12 ounces of Tropicana orange juice has 1.2 ounces of sugar.

The other sugary drink that people often overlook?

After all, alcohol is made from a combination of starch and natural sugar, and each gram of alcohol contains 7 calories.

That's not even taking into account the sodas and other sweetened beverages that bartenders use as mixers.

For example, a bottle of white wine has 0.8 ounces of sugar and 564 calories.

One six-pack of cider, drank over the course of a few days, we hope, adds 32 teaspoons of sugar to your diet.

One Healthline article actually states, Sugary drinks are the most fattening product in the modern diet. 14.

In a not-so-shocking twist, the only studies showing weight loss supplements work are usually funded by, surprise surprise, the supplement companies themselves.

And since these products aren't regulated like actual drugs, they don't even have to prove that they're effective before hitting the market.

The Obesity Journal conducted a review of 315 trials of 14 different weight loss supplements.

They found that the effectiveness of a vast majority of weight loss supplements are backed by little evidence or none at all.

In fact, some supplements can actually be dangerous.

One popular ingredient in supplements, called phenylpropylamine, has been found to have little to no effect on weight, while at the same time inducing anxiety, insomnia, high blood pressure, and increasing your risk of stroke. 13.

In fact, you literally need cholesterol to survive.

Not only does it help you maintain your cell membranes, but your body needs it to make vitamin D and a lot of its necessary hormones.

Which is why eggs, although they have been sometimes demonized because their yolks are high in cholesterol, are actually one of the healthiest things you can eat.

That's mainly because cholesterol is divided into good cholesterol, HDL, or high-density lipoprotein, and bad cholesterol, or LDL, or low-density lipoprotein.

LDL is the cholesterol that tends to block up your arteries and lead to health problems down the line.

However, HDL cholesterol actually absorbs excess cholesterol within your body and carries it to your liver, which quickly throws it out of your body.

Though eating eggs slightly raises both kinds of cholesterol, it has an overall minimal impact.

Because this is the next surprising fact that most people don't know. 12.