Back fat can take many forms. Here are the top three ways to eliminate those problem areas without surgical intervention.
What is Back Fat and “Bra Bulge”?
Back fat shows up differently in different people. For some, it appears around the armpits. For others it might appear in the lower back, sort of sitting on top of love handles. For a lot of women, however, it appears as the infamous “bra bulge.”
A bra bulge can be caused by a number of things, including a bra that’s too small, but usually it’s the result of a little bit of weight gain. Bra bulge involves fat that spills over the top and/or bottom of the band. Over time, the back will confirm to the shape of the bra, resulting in bulges that stay even when the bra is removed. This may also result in spillage in the front, around the armpits or under the chest, but for the purposes of this article we’re concerned with only the back area.
How to Get Rid of Back Fat Method #1: Exercise
There’s no evidence that you can reduce fat in specific body areas (often called “spot reduction”).
Most women store fat around in their lower body first, while most men store fat in their abdomen first: so if you’re noticing back fat, you’re probably been gaining weight in other areas as well. Any exercise program that purports to cause you to lose fat in a specific area like the back is either a scam, or a program that focuses on toning and building muscle in that area and then calls it “losing fat”. Building muscle and losing fat aren’t the same thing at all, so if fat reduction is really what you’re after, then avoid focusing on working out specific areas and choose a program that burns calories.
High intensity interval training is generally recommended if you want to burn the most calories in the smallest amount of time, but those exercises are advanced-level and often very high impact. If you can’t “drop and give me 20,” then focus your efforts elsewhere. Swimming is an excellent low-impact activity that burns an incredible amount of calories. Wearing a fitness tracker that measures heart rate can help give a better approximation of real calories burned than the heart rate monitor on the elliptical or treadmill.
How long will this take? Don’t expect to see results from just one trip to the gym, or even two weeks.
Losing fat through exercise alone can take about 6 months of consistent effort before you notice a big difference.
How to Get Rid of Back Fat Method #2: Reduce Calories
You can take a much more direct approach to losing that bra bulge by cutting back on your daily calorie intake.
You can’t out-train a bad diet. Maybe you’ve heard this before, maybe you’re sick of hearing it, but it’s true. Exercise alone may get you in better shape, but it’s a really difficult way to lose weight. Just as an illustration of this, it would take five hours and 18 minutes of jogging to lose one pound of fat (that’s at a 10-minute mile pace). That’s way too many hours of jogging. There are a lot of benefits to exercise, but despite what your favorite fitness Youtuber may have told you, it’s not an efficient way to lose weight.
Let’s talk about healthy habits. Many people gain weight due to their eating choices, then go on a diet, lose the weight, and go right back to the habits that caused them to gain weight in the first place.
You need to find a healthy lifestyle that works for you, so that you don’t put that weight back on after your diet.
In recent years, a variety of gurus have advocated for avoiding a “diet” mentality and focusing solely on healthy habits, which is a bit of an over-correction. A healthy lifestyle should be your maintenance calories, or how many calories you need to eat to maintain your current weight. If you want to lose weight and get rid of back fat, you need to eat less calories than your body needs, which will force your body to tap into those fat stores for energy.
Calorie reduction will cause you to lose weight fairly evenly; there’s no way to target your back specifically. How long a calorie reduction diet takes to affect the appearance of bra bulge will depend on how much you cut calories. Some diets can see results in as little as three months, others may take longer. It all depends on how much of a calorie deficit you can maintain – while still functioning and maintaining good nutrition (please don’t get “hangry,” it makes the world a worse place).
How to Get Rid of Back Fat Method #3: CoolSculpting
Diet and exercise are effective when done right, and offer many other health benefits. But neither of these methods will allow you to lose fat in targeted areas. On top of that, back fat, for whatever reason, seems particularly hard to lose.
That’s why the most effective way to lose fat in your back is still CoolSculpting.
CoolSculpting isn’t a weight loss solution; it’s a body sculpting solution. So if you really don’t want to lose that butt or those thighs, but you do want to get rid of that back fat, that’s not something you’re going to be able to accomplish with diet and exercise. CoolSculpting will allow you to actually achieve the coveted “spot reduction” and eliminate fat only in specific areas. Compared to surgical procedures, CoolSculpting is quick and easy. You’ll be able to return to work immediately after the treatment, with zero down time.
CoolSculpting your back may take a little more time than other CoolSculpting areas, depending on the area. This is because the entire shape of the body needs to be taken into account. Otherwise, what can happen is a reduction in one part of the back leads to another part of the back looking disproportionate. To learn more about CoolSculpting the back area, take a look at this actual back CoolSculpting video performed right here at DaVinci. The patient here needed a total of eight cycles (four on each side) to ensure that we didn’t just reduce fat in one area.
Because CoolSculpting freezes fat cells, it relies on your body’s natural processes to eliminate those dead cells over time. You can start to see results from CoolSculpting as early as 30 days, with final results at 120 days (four months).
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