Tips? Kinda stuck here

[jlmoney22]

Hi - I am 23 years old and have always struggled with keeping fat down in my mid section. I eat a pretty well balanced diet, exercise an hour or more almost every day (either 3 mile walk or an hour + of lifting) yet I still struggle to get my body to where I want it. Feel like my arms stay skinny and I belly area stays the same or gains fat.

Would someone tell me which exercises I should be doing to lose that fat? Should I be more focused on building muscle and the fat will burn too? Any tips are appreciated. My belly fat and the fat on my chest have always been areas of struggle, especially when my rib cage will show in my chest yet I will have fat on the outer part of my pecs.

[tadpole25]

1) You can't spot-reduce fat in specific areas. You just lose fat in general until eventually the fat in those areas eventually comes off.

2) It's not just what foods you eat. It's your calories. You need to track calories daily and be at a caloric deficit.

3) Weight loss is 90% how much you eat and 10% exercise. Exercise is good, but focus on calorie intake first and foremost.

[Rich1143]

Hi - I am 23 years old and have always struggled with keeping fat down in my mid section. I eat a pretty well balanced diet, exercise an hour or more almost every day (either 3 mile walk or an hour + of lifting) yet I still struggle to get my body to where I want it. Feel like my arms stay skinny and I belly area stays the same or gains fat.

Would someone tell me which exercises I should be doing to lose that fat? Should I be more focused on building muscle and the fat will burn too? Any tips are appreciated. My belly fat and the fat on my chest have always been areas of struggle, especially when my rib cage will show in my chest yet I will have fat on the outer part of my pecs.

Yes, as tadole25 mentions you need to be tracking your calories. Go to a calorie estimator website and enter your information to get a ROUGH estimate of how many calories you need to burn to maintain. Then take of ~15% of that and eat that much each day. It will take time to get those numbers dialed since your starting point is just an estimate. Eat high protein when cutting. Most people including myself found out that to maintain the amount of food required doesn't seem that much. I also found I was sneaking in calories here and there that would add up.

Fat loss gets way more involved than that, but that is a starting point.

[xsquid99]

3) Weight loss is 90% how much you eat and 10% exercise. Exercise is good, but focus on calorie intake first and foremost.

Weight loss is 100% about how much you eat, you don't actually need to exercise at all outside of your normal daily activity (even if its low) to lose weight so long as you are eating in a consistent calorie deficit.

Now if you want to change that to FAT LOSS vice weight loss, then yes exercise (specifically strength training) comes into play.