5 Tips from a Personal Trainer for Getting Rid of Back Fat

Tired of dealing with that pesky back fat? You’re not alone! The good news is there are some straightforward ways to tackle it.

Chris Freytag, a seasoned personal trainer and health coach, shares her top five tips for toning and trimming your back. From easy-to-follow exercises to smart diet tweaks, these tips will help you achieve a stronger, more sculpted back!

1. Focus on Nutrition

While you might just want to dive into back fat exercises, the truth is that starts with your diet.

In an editorial by the British Journal of Sports Medicine, researchers noted that excess sugar and carbs—not physical inactivity—are primarily to blame for the growing obesity epidemic. No matter how much you move, eating poorly is working against you and it will win every time.

Excess calories, especially those in the form of sugar and unhealthy fats, end up as fat on your body, including your back. A healthy diet doesn’t mean starving yourself. The key is to choose healthy, whole foods.

Clean eating includes lots of fruits, vegetables, lean protein, and healthy fats. The choices are wide open!

If you’re not sure how to start, try our Ultimate Guide to Healthy Eating ebook for a little guidance—we’ve got TONS of tips on how to make clean eating a natural part of your daily life.

2. Incorporate Cardio Exercise

Cardiovascular exercise burns calories, and for fat loss, you need to burn off more calories than you take in. Cardio exercise alone can’t tone your back, but it can help you create a calorie deficit, which is needed to lose fat.

The CDC recommends 150 minutes of heart-pumping cardiovascular exercise per week. There are so many great cardio exercise options available, including these 9 cardio workouts for weight loss that don’t include running!

Here are a few forms of cardio exercise to help lose back fat: 

• Jumping Rope: Burns calories and tones back muscles.
• Swimming: A low-impact and full-body exercise that targets back muscles.
• Power Walking: Improves cardiovascular endurance, burns calories, and a workout that is easy to keep up with.
• Rowing: A cardiovascular exercise that engages the entire back and upper body muscles.
• High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT): Burns calories, boosts metabolism, and reduces overall body fat.

Varying your workouts to include both lower- and higher-intensity activities helps shake up your stubborn metabolism and get things moving in the right direction toward fat loss. And remember, high intensity doesn’t have to be high impact. You can get your heart rate up while keeping your movements low-impact!

3. Strength Train Your Entire Body

We all start to lose about a half pound to a pound of muscle a year after the age of 35 if we aren’t actively replacing it. Unfortunately, there is no magic pill to build or maintain muscle—you have to do it through strength training.

So, how do you build muscle? Work the muscles, of course! “Without question, exercise is the most powerful intervention to address muscle loss,” explains Nathan K.LeBrasseur, Ph.D. from the Mayo Clinic. 

The best weapon against body fat and to tone and firm up is to strength train your whole body. 

If you become sedentary in midlife, you will notice weaker back muscles and a slumping posture. Your best defense against this is to work your back muscles.

Here are a few things about back muscles you should know about:

• Muscle tissue is active. The more muscle you have, the more efficient your body is at burning calories, even at a resting heart rate.
• While spot-reducing fat doesn’t work, spot sculpting does. When you lose body fat, you shed it all over your body. But you can spot-train certain muscle groups to tone that specific area. If you want a stronger, more defined back, work the muscles in your back and firm up that bra bulge.

Check out our 9 favorite back fat exercises to tone and firm your back!

4. Improve Your Posture

Standing tall with your shoulders back and lower abs pulled in tight will make you look taller and leaner all over. If posture is really a problem for you, try Pilates!

Pilates is another form of strength training that teaches you to engage your core, strengthen your lower back, practice good posture, and keep your back and shoulders stable and strong. Professional athletes everywhere have learned the wonders of Pilates.

Here are a couple of pilates workouts to get you started: 

• Pilates Exercises for Beginners
• 5 Pilates Moves to Sculpt Your Core

You can also use postural exercises that specifically target the back muscles and improve posture:

• Bird Dog: Stabilizes the core and strengthens the back muscles, promoting good posture.
• Superman: Tones the back muscles and improves overall spinal alignment.
• Bridge Pose: Strengthens the glutes and core, supporting proper posture and reducing back fat.
• Plank: Engages the entire core and back muscles, improving stability and posture.

5. Focus on Better Lifestyle Choices

Along with nutrition and exercise, there are numerous lifestyle changes you can make to improve your efforts to strengthen and tone your back.

These suggestions will help you follow healthy habits and crush your daily routine:

• Get Enough Sleep: Getting enough sleep impacts your overall health and well-being. Try these science-backed tips for getting better sleep to avoid hormonal imbalances that can cause unhealthy cravings and upset your body’s natural fat-burning process.
• Manage Your Stress. Chronic stress can negatively impact your body’s ability to lose fat (including back fat). Stress-reducing strategies, such as meditation, breathing exercises, daily yoga practice, and regular exercise, minimize the amount of cortisol (the stress hormone) released into your body.
• Avoid Excessive Alcohol. Alcohol drinks are usually high in calories, sugar, and other unhealthy ingredients. Plus, you may not make the best nutrition choices when partaking. Consider reducing your alcohol intake to help your back fat reduction efforts.
• Drink More Water. Drinking enough water every day supports your overall health and your fitness goals. Water helps flush toxins from your body, aids in digestion, and helps control appetite. Try our favorite tips to drink more water every day to get your 8 glasses!

If you follow these tips to tone your back, you’ll feel more confident, lose weight, and, most importantly, gain strength for more flexibility and mobility so you can do the things you love!

• Category: Fitness, Health