The Real Deal about Stubborn Fat

Oftentimes when people ask me how to lose stubborn fat, they expect me to come up with an “advanced” fat loss trick. But there is no secret to losing stubborn fat. If you get lean enough, you will eventually lose fat in stubborn areas. With that said, there is an explanation for “why” you lose fat less quickly in certain body parts.
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When you consume fewer calories than your body requires (=calorie deficit), your body signals fat cells to release energy in the form of fat [1]. These signals are received by what we know as “catecholamine receptors” [2].
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Fat cells have two types of catecholamine receptors, Beta- and Alpha-Receptors. Beta-Receptors speed up the release of fat, whereas Alpha-Receptors slow it down [3]. One of the main reasons you have stubborn body fat is because, in some areas of your body, fat cells contain more Alpha-Receptors than Beta-Receptors [4].
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This simply causes you to release less fat from certain areas of your body (often lower belly and hips) [5, 6]. This is genetic and there’s little you can do about it. By simply losing more fat overall, the stubborn areas will eventually have to become leaner. It won’t happen overnight though. Like anything worth having in life, it requires patience.
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References:
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9403317
2. http://www.jlr.org/content/34/7/1057.long
3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/38720
4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8680455
5. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2503539
6. Stubborn Fat Solution – Lyle