I have noticed a lot of news articles coming out about “Belly Fattening Foods” and “Foods That Will Add Pounds To Your Waistline.” The sad thing is that some of these articles are coming from what most people would consider reputable news sources. The main concept to these articles is that there are certain foods that will add pounds to your belly, but this just isn’t true.

Your body stores and removes body fat in whatever way it see necessary. The fact that people say eating a certain type of food will add fat to a specific part of your body is just absurd! No where is it written in your DNA that eating a jelly donut will store fat in your belly, or that eating chocolate cake will store fat in your butt. The ACSM has stated that “spot reduction” is a myth, but what isn’t a myth is that men and women have parts of the body which are more prone to weight gain and loss. Men are more prone to adding weight to the belly area, while women are more prone to the waist and hip area.

Everyone’s body is different and our bodies are going to store and remove fat in whatever way it wants, not because of the foods we eat. Granted, there are more healthy foods then others out there, but that doesn’t mean the bad foods target a specific part of our body. What people forget is that there are a lot of hidden calories in those so called “bad foods.” Lets take a donut for example: the average donut has around 260 calories. Most likely one donut wasn’t filling enough and you had two, so that’s 520 calories from one meal. For the average person, that’s around one quarter of your daily caloric intake!

It’s not so much that these food are bad for you, as it is the amount of calories you are consuming because of these “bad food.” Remember, if you consume more calories then what your body uses, then those calories become stored as fat, regardless of what type of food you ate. Now, if that fat gets stored in your belly it just happens to be a coincidence.

-Scott