Stomach fat

You read a lot about stomach fat being a big problem area for many people, but what's the best way to burn your spare tyre?

Don't think of it as stomach fat - think of it as fat! You wanna burn off a spare tyre - you need to burn fat. A balanced mixture of effective cardio and whole body resistance training will yield much better results than targeted stomach exercises alone will ever achieve.

Yeah, I used to be a bit tubby but from playing footie practically everyday I managed to burn fat across my whole body, including my belly

Is there not any specific exercises that can help with that area?

No, because you can't spot-reduce fat. You can only begin to lose the fat and persist until it begins to come off where you want it to. You can do exercises to target your stomach muscles, this will just strengthen the muscles and potentially affect your posture and the way you carry yourself if done correctly (which can make you look slimmer). The addition of muscle will also help to increase your base metabolic rate = more efficient fat burning.

Body shape plays a part, as can age. Men and menopausal women are more likely to carry weight on the middle, as are those who are insulin resistant or apple shaped. Reducing carbohyrdrate intake can be effective for this kind of weight loss (especially if it's insulin resistance), but it's still not guaranteed to reduce fat from the stomach first.

Plenty of exercises you can do to create the appearance of a slimmer waist, not necessarily what you would immediately think of though (for example broadening the shoulders). Strong postural exercises such as Pilates where much of the focus is on keeping the transverse abdominal muscle drawn in (a wide band of muscle that sits like a weight lifting belt across the abdomen deep beneath the visible obliques and more obvious 6-pack muscle, the rectus abdomis) are arguably the most effective.

However, in terms of burning fat from a specific area it is as has already been said, impossible to strip fat from an area of your choice. That said though, your body will have a preference, encoded in your DNA, for where it likes to deposit fat first, and where it likes to burn it off from first, so it may turn out that way for some people, for the rest of us though, it really is just a case of keeping on burning the calories and / or building lean tissue (muscle) mass.

The only way you can get rid of fat from a particular area is liposuction or surgery - I'm afraid it's plenty of cardio, a good diet and a matter of letting your body decide where it goes from!

Unfortunately the belly fat is usually the first that goes on and one of the last that comes off for most people... :(

Surely that's not right - what about exercising that particular part of your body i.e. your abs?

Yes, it's right. You can't spot-reduce fat from certain areas. Just exercising 1 area of the body won't reduce fat in that area, it may help strengthen or tone the muscle being used, but it won't make it less fatty. If you lose weight off your stomach first, it's because your body naturally loses weight that way. You can't force it.