Why Lower Belly Fat Is Always The Last To Go (And How To Fix It)

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]This is what 12% body fat looks like on a Dexter scan. And the reason I'm showing you this is because, as you know, I shared the other week, my visceral fat score was elite. Below 50 cm squared is elite. Mine was 36, which is insane. But on the topic we're talking about today, the lower belly fat, you'll see in the image, I haven't really got any, right? And that's the subcutaneous fat. And I want to share with you today why lower belly fat is always the last to go. You're not alone with this. And I'm going to show you exactly what to do to fix it. So, first of all, let's look at the difference between the two. Right? We talked about visceral fat. Visceral fat is essentially the fat you can't see around your internal organs, your liver, your pancreas, your intestines, for example.

[00:00:45]And what it's doing is it's slowly blocking pipes and disrupting flow. It's like the sludge building up inside your plumbing system, right? And it's damaging the whole system right from the inside out, but you can't see it. Now, subcutaneous fat, which is the topic of discussion today, which is the fat you can see that frustrating belly fat that is always the last to go on your lower stomach. And godamn is it annoying. And it's what most people struggle with. And that is basically more like clutter in your garage, right?

[00:01:17]That fat there on your stomach. It's visible. It's not ideal, but it's not immediately damaging anything. And it really depends on the level of fat. When I say stubborn fat, you can have a little bit of fat there on the lower abs or on the lower stomach or you can have a significant amount. But I'm going to cover exactly what to do to shift it today. So, first and foremost, I, you know, went through a battle myself. And this is what most people struggle with is like yo-yo dieting or even if it's not extreme, they'll lose weight and then gain it back. And they'll do that several times. In fact, the average person or six out of seven people will lose a significant amount of weight in their life fat only to gain it back and more. Right? So, when you do that, especially that lower fat, that for most people is going to be the last place for it to go. The first place for it to go, right? Let's say you do a fat loss phase now you want to lose weight. The first place for it to go is normally the last place for it to go, if that makes sense.

[00:02:14]Obviously, genetics play a part in that, too. So I was stuck in a cycle for 18 months for to two years back in my bodybuilding competing days where I was sabotaging on weekends all or nothing hitting the off button on the weekends.

[00:02:29]Couldn't manage my emotions, right? I was turning I was basically emotional eating but I was eating like an [ __ ] And what was happening was I was gaining a bunch of fat. So I was in a deficit, a calorie deficit all week from being overly restricted with my food, not doing it the right way. And then we get to Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and I would just go overboard and I'll put myself into a surfer. So, I cancel out my whole week. A lot of people do this, but I was doing it to the extreme. So, what I noticed that was actually probably the worst shape I've been in since being in shape, right? When I was I was in really good shape from the age of like 20, well, from like 17, 18, but really good shape with abs from like the age of 23 or something like that. But I lost the abs completely for this period. I had fat covering my abs. Highest body fat percentage I'd been. And what happened then if I continued that path [snorts] I would I could cuz I could start noticing like a little bit more stubborn fat even when I would get lean I started noticing and then I found it was a little bit harder to lose that lower belly fat then from those cycles for about two years you know the cycles of of basically overeating luckily it didn't make a big difference right but I even did notice actually on my la the last comp I did which is the last one I'll ever do which is 2019 I noticed that I had a little like you wouldn't notice it, but when you get on stage, it's a different level of meticulousness, if that's even a word, word. Obsession. And I noticed from the yo-yo dieting I've done in the past, I noticed that there was a tiny bit more there, but it wasn't that noticeable.

[00:03:55]But this is just an extreme example of when you lose fat and gain it back, particularly around the stomach and the lower stomach, which is where most of us store it. Your body gets smarter at storing fat because the body only cares about survival. There was some research to show, I don't know whether it was uh more fat cells or increase fat cell size, but long story short, permanent fat, the body stores fat cells um when you yo-yo diet to the extreme and you do that too often, right? Not good. That's how you're going to get lower belly fat, which gets harder and harder to shift first and foremost.

[00:04:32]Right? Now, most people have been in that camp. Uh, so you're not alone with that first and foremost. Now, why is it the last to go? Well, I just explained, right? The body cares about survival and ultimately all it cares about is we need to store energy [snorts] and around that area is generally just where the body tends to store it, right? And to be honest, I don't know the scientific term in terms of like why it's specifically subcutaneous fat around the lower belly belly, but it makes sense for it to store stubborn because it's not everyone's the belly fat by the way. You know, when you look at women, for example, it might be hips, might be around the bum if they're lucky, it might be thighs, it could be the back of the arms. Even for men, men get moves as well. But generally, the first place you're going to store it for guys is normally the lower stomach and then the lower back fat, right?

[00:05:19]So, this is exactly what you need to do to fix it. Um, it's not by doing more abs, right? A lot of people want to train more abs. I hear this a lot. I'm going to turn the fat into muscle.

[00:05:31]That's impossible to do, right? They're two separate types of body tissue.

[00:05:35]Muscle is lean muscle tissue, right? Fat adapose fatty tissue. They're different, right? You don't turn them into like they don't like transform, right? you you basically lose the fat and then you want to develop your abs like basically if your abs if you if you develop your abs and you train your abs properly and you use weight like you you want to firstly I'm not going to go too much down this rabbit hole but it is important to touch on when you're training your abs you want to firstly connect to the abs properly most people I used to train people in person for like 12 years right they have a terrible connection to their core to their abs right about 80% of people they can't connect to their core.

[00:06:15]They think they're doing it right, but they're not. You're just doing it.

[00:06:17]You're not doing it right. Firstly, focus on technique. Doing the perfect situp, for example, right? Doing a sit up and then coming down really slowly, squeezing your abs, learning how to flex your spine. I can't really show you on a video, right? But learn how to contract your abs properly and switch off your hip flexors as well. That's another conversation. Maybe I'll do another podcast on that. But then you want to add weight, right? You want to like you would any other body part when you're trying to build muscle and you're trying to sculpt your body. You treat your abs like any other body part. You develop them. You add weights to the abs. I don't know why people think doing loads of crunches is going to get No, it's not going to happen. So that's how you develop it. Now depending on where your body fat is percentage, you're going to see more prominent abs and genetics play a part in that as well. Depending on where your body fat percentage is, you know, it depend I'm not going to throw numbers out there, but you're going to see more prominent abs even by developing them. In some cases are even higher body fat percentages within reason though. I'm not talking like super like over fat. I'm talking about still relatively lean. Like let's just say for men, some men they could be, you know, 17 18% or even 19%, maybe even 20% the rare case. And you're still going to see abs. Still going to have like some visible abs. Um whereas, you know, a lot of guys need to get 15% or lower uh to see any abs whatsoever, right? But if you develop them and you build them, they're going to be more prominent either way. So that's one thing. That wasn't going to be my first point, but that's a little bonus tip there.

[00:07:35]What you want to do really to lose that stubborn fat is you want to really do you want to you want to focus on mini bulks and mini cuts for the most part.

[00:07:44]Now, when I think about a lot of you here, you've got that stubborn fat there on the lower part. You either got a little bit or you've got a lot of it, right? And what you're doing is you're always aware of it. First and foremost, you normalize having a little bit of it.

[00:07:55]You got to be realistic as well. People want to get shredded and stuff and it's like you're 50 years old, right? Let it go. Not to say you can't get in great shape, but you got to be realistic, okay? People want to get to unhealthy body fat percentages. You couldn't maintain it, right? Your mental health would be uh impacted. You'd have a negative impact because you wouldn't be able to live your life to get down there. You probably couldn't stick to it as well on top of that, right? For partly because of that reason. And it wouldn't be healthy for your hormones in most cases, right? When you get too lean. But that being said, depending on genetics and everything else, you can it depends on how much you've got. You can still shift it.

[00:08:32]Mini bulks and mini cuts, the way you train, you don't want to be doing cardio and trying to burn loads more calories by doing intense cardio to lose that lower belly fat. What you want to be doing is you want to be doing it the smart way. So, not only can you like chip away at some of some of that lower belly fat, but you can keep it off and maintain that. So firstly, most people listening to this need to do a proper building phase. You actually need to focus on the pursuit of building muscle for longer before you even address the lower belly fat. Uh the lower belly fat, losing that. I know it you don't want to hear that, but the reason why you need to do that is because you really want to first you want to look better, right? A lot of people you want to improve the way your body looks. You don't want to just lose a little bit of uh belly fat and then just, you know, not improve your physique. If you want to improve your physique and look better, so not that this is this is everything, but people notice and go, you're in better shape, do this one thing. Build muscle.

[00:09:30]That's a slow process. We don't get communicated properly enough about how you look even when you add a little bit of muscle to your body, right? Forget about your if your body fat percentage stays the same, let's say, right? And you add some muscle to your body, you look better, you look tighter. Muscle tissue is dense tissue and depending on age and other factors and even if taking an age out of it, it's a slow process or unless you've got like newbie gains, right? You're brand new to lifting.

[00:09:56]Yeah, you're going to build a bit quicker there or you're on steroids. Of course, there's the exceptions to the rule, but generally it's a really really slow process. If you're looking to lose that belly fat, focus on building muscle and doing a building phase. If you're someone who struggled with this for your whole life, like losing weight, gain the back, having that stubborn belly fat there. And if you've noticed that it's actually increased over the years, which is what happens to most people, then you definitely want to do a longer building phase. So, I'm going to I don't want to throw an exact number out there, but I'll just give you an example. Let's say you were to do a six month block [sighs] of just even if you just start with three months. If you just did three months, no, I'm going to say six months because it's so slow building muscle.

[00:10:36]Six months of just focusing on building muscle right now. What would what would happen? Look, I'm going to get I know we're talking about losing the lower belly fat. I'm going to get there as well in terms of like trimming it down, but just hear me out because this is the foundation. If you did that for six months, you would build muscle, obviously, speed the metabolism up, right? So, your body's burning more calories, which means you can you can get away with more food. So, you can you can get into a calorie deficit easier, right? Because you can eat more. So, you naturally can get into a deficit sometimes without even putting too much planning into it, depending on the level you're at. But if you did that for 6 months, you are then going to be at a better place to start throwing in some mini cuts and chipping away at that body fat. Again, metabolically, psychologically as well.

[00:11:20]And what I was going to say is like the number on the scales, it really depends on how much of a reservoir of fat you've got to lose. There's a lot of variables here. But if you've got a lot of fat to lose around the belly, for example, like a significant amount, then you could likely build and still simult again, it's not the same time this happens.

[00:11:36]Simultaneously, you lose a bit of fat.

[00:11:37]So you build a bit of muscle one month or so say you build a pound of muscle you lose a pound of fat. And you could do that slow and steady just by in some cases just having enough protein. Just having like at least 30% of your calories coming from protein or at least a gram per pound of body weight for example. Just by doing that and having a proper training stimulus that gets overlooked. And then obviously the big one is burning as much as you can throughout the daytime. So walking that's when you're going to chip away at fat the most is by walking more and burning it. then you get a nice little exchange of building muscle and losing fat. Now, if you're someone who's at a higher level where you've just like, "Martin, I've got this little bit on the lower belly, like it's just pissing me off, right? I've come a long way and I can't get rid of that. I hear that a lot." Then you want to go straight into doing like mini bulks and mini cuts, right? So, in if you're trying to cut, Ryan, you're trying to shred it down right now and you've been trying to do that for ages, it's obviously not working, right? So, you've got to change your approach. So you could do like a month, two months, maybe even three months of focusing on eating enough to build muscle. So in other words, your weights, your body weight stays the same or even goes up by a bit, right? Again, it depends on how much. Okay, if I'm speaking to this person with a little bit of fat to lose, your weight could even go up a bit. So even if your weight went up by, let's say, a pound or two maximum a month maximum, it depends on the person, but I'm going to I'm going to say a pound to play it safe, right? Even if your weight on average went up by a pound to let's say 1.5 pounds, right, a month on average or in some cases, right, if you build a significant amount, it could be like up to two pounds, but one I'd like to be conservative. So 1 to one and a half pounds on the scales, it went up by maximum, let's say 4.55 pounds maximum, right? So 3 to 5 pounds, let's say over three months, providing you're taking photos, you're looking at the uh pictures, and you're not gaining on your stomach, right? And even if you gain a tiny bit, if you're building when you build muscle, this is why a DEXA scan is so helpful because you can track it a bit more accurately. And the sweet spot for anyone who has a proper has had a proper scan. Even if you just do like the body impedance things, again, they're not as accurate, but consistent data is key. The sweet spot when you're building or bulking is to gain twice as much lean body mass as you are muscle.

[00:13:45]It doesn't get much better than that, right? You're not going to bulk generally. You can, but if you if you're already relatively lean and you've just got a little bit of fat to lose, even if you gained a little bit of fat, this is where people worry, right? You're going to look better and you're going to feel better, right? And if you did that over 3 months and you gained twice as much as you did fat, your body fat percentage isn't going to change that much anyway, then fantastic. You've got to a place now where you built your metabolism, you got more muscle, your body's burning more. Psychologically, you're going to feel better because you've had a break from constantly trying to restrict calories. Your testosterone levels are going to be up most likely. You know, your hormones are going to be you're just going to feel way better. Then, and by the way, this is not going to be like pinpoint the amount of time you spend doing this. I'm just giving you a rough idea. Um, then basically you could just throw in some mini cuts then, right? So, like four weeks, bang, I'm going to put myself into a deficit and I'm going to start chipping away at that stubborn belly fat. So, it's simple, right? And and then you could go back into a mini bulk for for a month or you could even do that for two months, right? Like a calorie deficit. Chip away some of that body fat. But you've got to give your body a reason to basically shift that surviv let's just call that survival fat, right? That is kept on the lower stomach. You got to give it a reason to do that. And how do you do that? You do that by fueling it with enough food, right? It's simple. If you're constantly restricting it, then you're sending a signal to say there's not much food, right? uh if you actually fuel your body to build muscle, what happens is when you eat a bit more and you do a proper strength training stimulus, you got to get that part right, the body actually starts burning more by itself, right?

[00:15:18]The metabolism speeds up and your body starts burning more. Um and you might even lose a bit of stubborn body fat on the way if if you know if you're lucky, but that's that's unlikely. Again, you can throw in the mini cuts and bang, it feels easier and you can start chipping away at that stubborn belly fat. But something that gets really overlooked as well with that with that lower fat is um the walking piece. just moving as much as you can. Obviously, burning more calories day by day. Another thing as well, you got to get my metabolic assessment as well cuz like as I say, I can't give you an exact bang on personalized thing. Obviously, I'm speaking to the masses here, but my metabolic assessment, my fat loss assessment, it'll basically give you a score out of 100, a metabolic health score, and it'll give you a plan on what to do next to lose fat as fast as possible. Long story short, right? Um, it takes two to three minutes to fill out, and people have had great results just from using this. It's free. The link is just beneath in the show notes.

[00:16:07]So, you got to be number one, you want to move as much as you can throughout the daytime, your activity, right?

[00:16:12]That's going to burn more. Two, you want to do a building phase, right, for a good period of time. In fact, most people just need to spend most of their life building muscle, right? Just like Dr. Gabrielle Lion says, right? We're not overfat. We're under muscled. When it comes to metabolic health, insulin sensitivity, and insulin resistance, adding muscle to your body and strength, getting stronger is is the best thing you can do to combat these things. So, it's going to it's going to tick so many boxes if you can just be patient and focus on building. But look, you know, a lot of people gain too much fat when they build. You don't want to be gaining lots of fat. So, you want to monitor that. You want to take photos. You want to do it the right way. You know what I mean? And that's why I said, you know, your weight, it could have stay the same or go up a tiny bit, but you shouldn't be noticing any like even if you went up a tiny bit on the waist over a 3-month period, like let's say you went up by a set. If you keep your waist the same, that's as good as it gets, by the way, when you're building for most people, right? Again, if you're someone who's got more fat to lose, you might lose some fat. But for the average person who's like got that little bit to lose, you know, if you can keep your waist the same, your measurements with the measuring tape whilst building, that's as good as it gets, right? Um, so yeah, so that's kind of like the strategy, but people don't want to hear that, right?

[00:17:17]Everyone wants to fast fat loss and everything else. You're never going to keep it off, right? 90% of you are going to gain it all back and you're going to keep repeating the cycle because you're trying one diet to the next diet and different approaches, different ways to do the same thing. People keep doing different ways to do exactly the same thing. What is that same thing? Calorie restriction. And they can't restrict the calories. Right now, some people manage to do it with a different approach like whether that be carnival, keto, whatever works for you, high carb for some people, and they manage to adhere to it long term. But 80 to 90% of people don't adhere to it long term because they haven't got to the root cause. They haven't got to the place where they making it easier for themselves to keep the fat off, to chip away at that lower stubborn belly fat and keep it off.

[00:17:57][snorts] And that is by building the engine, building the metabolism, building muscle, and then you look better anyway, and then you can chip away at that stubborn fat. So that is pretty much it in a nutshell. That's what you want to do when you get you want to develop the abs as well. When you get lean, when you get to a place where you're like, "Oh, I feel relatively lean here. My midsection is tightened up." You know, you could focus more on the ab training, develop the abs, make them more prominent, right? Uh and get them to pop more, get that midsection looking tighter. Um, obviously specifically with nutrition, you know, this is obviously really important. If it's like if you track your calories, right? If you want to lose that stubborn fat, the stubborn belly fat and you've never tracked your calories, track your calories. And even if you literally just ate at least 30% and if you want to really melt fat, 35 to 40, it it My fitness power for example, right? It calculates this for you. literally gives you a pie chart and it shows you your percentage of macros for the calories you're eating. Like for example, it'll say you had 35% protein, 35% carbs, you know, 25% or 30% fat, for example. It breaks it down for you. If you literally just had I would say to players say if you can aim for 30% definitely minimum 35% to 40% of your calories, your total calories are coming from protein, right? 40% forget about that's like bodybuilder territory, right? If you're doing that, you you're not going to be able to not get lean, right? It's literally that simple, right? There's clear-cut data on this.

[00:19:27]Protein percentage goes up, people lose fat, they get leaner, right? So, if you can hit 40% of your total calories from protein consistently, you'll naturally start melting fat, even some of the stubborn belly fat. 35% that's going to cut. Even 30%, right, it's kind of hard to it's definitely you're not going to gain any weight doing that. And you'll likely lose just from doing that. or if you want to look at like a gram per pound of body weight, but tracking your food. If you've never done that and you're carrying stubborn belly fat, then you're eating more, right? You're eating more than you think. And just by tracking, you're going to eat less because you're aware what gets measured can get managed, right? So, it's very simple. It works. Obviously, the protein piece as well. You know, we know if we have a gram per pound of body weight every single day, if you just did that, right, and nothing else and you track that, it's hard to go wrong if you haven't done that and you're someone who just followed different diets or like I've tried everything but you've never tracked and you never been meticulous with tracking and even weighing your food and being aware of quantity as well in terms of like the portion sizes and stuff. So, like when you weigh the food, you learn about the portion size. You don't have to do that forever, but if you do that, you'll lose fat, right? And you'll, you know, most people carry on the stomach. So, as a side effect, you'll probably lose some of the some of the lower belly fat as well, just by doing that consistently, though. Not doing it for a week, not doing it for two weeks. Follow them through for at least a few months. Like, you're going to see results probably pretty quick if you've never done that. And if you're moving plenty as well, there's only, by the way, there's only so much you can do with diet. I can give you all the all the tricks and tips with diet. There's only so much you can do. If you're sat on your ass all day, you're not going to get there. You're not going there's only so much fat you're going to lose. You're not going to lose any. You're going to plateau real quick. Walk as much as you can, right? And plan it into your day. I mean, factor it into your day. Integrate it into your day, should I say, when you're doing your, you know, your your work meetings or park further away from work. Always take the stairs instead of the lifts. Like, I'll walk around my apartment. I'll pace around my rooftop in my apartment, right? Overlooking Sydney. Pace around there. I don't care how you do it, right? People want hacks for walking more. Put one [ __ ] foot in front of the other, right?

[00:21:26]Come on. And just by doing those things, it's so simple when we come down to it.

[00:21:31]So that's it in a nutshell already, right? It's pretty straightforward, right? I'd say nutrition wise, track your food. Have 30% 35 to 40% ideally of your calories coming from protein consistently and weigh the food and get as meticulous you can as you can with the tracking. Even if you just do that for 30 days, you'll notice some fat loss. And if you're counting it around the belly mainly, you'll see it from there. Uh, number two is, um, and not not in any particular order, walk as much as you can. Add more steps into your day, right? Do it for if you could add like an extra even two, three, maximum 4,000 steps onto your day. Um, or even like an extra 30 minute walk a day for 30 days, right? If you just commit for 30 days, extra 30-minute walk, simple. You'll likely lose fat just from doing that, right? Unless you're eating like an absolute [ __ ] of course, right? Let alone if you implement those two things with the tracking food hitting the protein, a gram per pound of body weights, right?

[00:22:21]Or 35 to 40% of your calories come from protein. Move more, develop your abs, and treat them like any other body part and connect to the abs more as well, right? Focus on uh actually the technique and the tension in the abs.

[00:22:34]Then you can add weights and develop them and build them like you would any other muscle. Then they'll become more prominent and you'll have tighter tighter midsection and the lower belly fat. And then the big one then is the mini is do a building phase. Like take your time, focus on building muscle.

[00:22:46]Switch your attention away from constantly focusing on that little bit of fat on the stomach, right? If you're always focused on that, you're always going to be disappointed and you're always going to behave in a way which is actually damaging your health cuz you're doing dumb stuff to lose it. And why are you trying to lose it for anyway? You know what I mean? That's why you got to ask yourself, why are you trying to lose that little bit of belly fat? It's fine if you want to lose it. Totally fine.

[00:23:08]But you got to take an approach which is actually going to work. And if that stubborn fat belly fat's been sitting there for a while, then it's going to take a while to shift it, right? So do a building phase for three months or six months, then throw in some mini cuts for like four weeks at a time and see, you know, watch what you uh chip away at that lower belly fat. One thing I want to touch on as well, uh, is the insulin thing as well. People always talk about stuff like, um, insulin is a fat storing hormone. So if you eat more carbs, I said this on the on a recent episode, if you eat more carbs, right, then you're going to you're going to spike insulin.

[00:23:38]Insulin is a fattorring hormone. and you're gonna gain fat. And it's like, no. Do you understand how complex the body is, right? It doesn't work like that. Actually, the main thing is what I was talking about. When you've got excess fat, especially visceral fat, which by the way, visceral fat, massive contributor to insulin resistance, inflammation, and even heart disease.

[00:24:02]And even there was some research to show uh like dementia and stuff as well. If you're carrying fat, stop like getting caught up in the weeds and all the [ __ ] that doesn't matter like insulin spike, fat storage. No. If you're carrying excess fat, you know what it does is it is it disrupts the insulin signaling which then leads to more insulin resistance and then god forbid pre-diabetes and diabetes, right? If you don't take care of it, excess fat, particularly visceral fat, is the problem. There's some other rare cases, but that's the biggest problem. Stop over complicating things and get to what the big problem is. You're carrying too much fat. Take the right approach to lose the fat, especially the visceral fat, and implement even one or two of the things I've talked about in this episode, and actually just do it because it feels good listening to these episodes, right? It feels good. Oh, this is great. I got this information. It's stimulating. And then most people do, [ __ ] all. Actually implement and do the work, right, that I mentioned about and you will see some results. But you got to be patient. And that's where people fall down. They're not patient. They're not resilient enough to keep going when they're because fat loss is not linear.

[00:25:09]It doesn't go in a straight line. It's up and down. And people just don't stick to it, right? Because they back out because they quit essentially, right?

[00:25:17]So, keep it simple. Stop over complicating things. Get the metabolic assessment. The link is just beneath in the show notes. It'll give you a plan on what to do next for your body type and a score out of 100, a metabolic health score. And it only takes two to three minutes to fill out. Check out this next video as well. by the way, where I did talk about a bit more depth, if you didn't see the recent video on visceral fat that I I talked about and I went into more detail there in terms of what you can do to shift the visceral fat as opposed to the lower belly fat or the subcutaneous fat. All right.