Shifting Stubborn Body Fat

When you’re doing everything right but still can’t seem to lose that stubborn body fat, the final domain to conquer is your mind.

- Greg Dolman

How many times have you heard the question ‘What about stubborn body fat?’ discussed or written about in media outlets or online? Most probably the answer is far too many times to remember.

For just about anyone who enjoys doing any form of exercise, losing stubborn body fat is at the top of the list of personal goals or achievements. For the purpose of this article, I am purely focusing on both my personal experience and the experience that my clients have had with body fat over the decades that I have been involved in the fitness industry.

Body fat is used to protect our body from external blows. The more fat we have, the more ‘cushioning’ we have from being hurt from an external blow. If we have a not-so-serious fall (or take a hit) and land on a fairly fat-protected part of the body, which is generally anywhere between upper thighs through to upper torso, we may bruise but we are unlikely to break anything. So, in this instance, our body fat defends the body from more harm, both externally and internally.

Body fat is essential as a boundary and acts as a kind of shield that our body needs in order to be protected. To clarify this more, let’s look at an example of someone who has been, and still is being, abused. This abuse can come in a few different ways such as sexual, physical, spiritual, and emotional. Abuse might not always come from others either. Personal abuse is a quite common form of abuse that I have assisted clients with in both understanding why it happens and recognising when it’s happening, so the abuse cycle can stop.