We all know that when we put on weight we are most likely to store excessive fat in the belly region, although for women it can end up on the thighs and hips. However, sometimes when men develop excessive body fat the body can store this in the chest region and eventually this leads to what is known more commonly as “man boobs”. This can be a very embarrassing and humiliating problem that can cause some mental and social problems if the underlying problem is not addressed. The good news is that for most men this problem will be resolved by adopting a healthy lifestyle that includes regular exercise and quality nutrition. Some guy’s chest fat will be hard to budge even after they’ve lost quite a bit of body fat, and this is due to a genetic condition where the fat cells around the chest area can be more “resistant” to being mobilized and burned compared to other parts of the body. There are treatments for this condition so you can still get rid of chest fat no matter how stubborn it is, it just might take you slightly longer than it will for others. In this article, we will look closely at all the factors you need to consider to get to the root cause of the problem.

You Cannot Spot Reduce

It is important to address the most obvious and common solution many men think will solve their problem, and that is, trying to use push-ups or the bench press to reduce the chest fat. This is called spot reduction and is the same thing we see with people doing endless ab exercises to lose their belly fat. This strategy never works in reducing the fat and is more likely to cause other health problems.

When you exercise a muscle group, it does cause fat to be burned around it, but the effect is too small to significantly change your appearance. That’s why you’ll never lose your man boobs by doing push-ups alone, no matter how many you do. Actually, you are more likely to develop a shoulder injury from over-doing the push-ups, eventually forcing you to exercise less and consequently put more weight on.

What you need to do is focus on improving your overall metabolism and eating quality nutrition to reduce your overall body fat. You cannot choose where the fat is taken as the body will do that on its own. Usually what happens is the area of the body you want to lose the fat most is the last place it takes it from.

While push-ups and bench presses are great ways to build muscle mass in your pecs, and assist in improving your metabolic rate, the fact that these exercises only focus on your upper body is unlikely to speed metabolism enough to garner significant fat loss. You are more likely to reduce your chest fat by doing legs workouts with squats and lunges than you are with a bench press! More on this later.

One thing that is a certainty when you are trying to get rid of man boobs is that the fat in this region of the body can be extremely stubborn. This means you have to remain very consistent and patient with your diet and exercise program. I see too many people give up early because they do not see the changes they are looking for as their expectations on how quick it would be were unrealistic.

Today’s modern world is moving so fast and technology has allowed us to get things at the click of button that we have come to expect instant gratification in just about everything we do. And when it doesn’t happen people become discouraged very quickly and try one of two options. They try to cut corners and try extreme methods to speed things up, or they simply give up.

Persistence is probably the single most common quality of high achievers. They simply refuse to give up. The longer you hang in there, the greater the chance that something will happen in your favour. No matter how hard it seems, the longer you persist the more likely your success.

Now before we discuss the various things you need to address we have to discuss the less common reason behind the development of man boobs. While most chest fat is caused by overall excess body fat due to nutrition and lifestyle factors, there is another type that is associated with a medical condition. The medical term for this condition is gynecomastia where some males develop enlarged breasts due to hormonal changes or fluctuations.

There are treatment options for this condition, but it involves the doctors finding the cause and correcting why it is happening. There is no single cause of gynecomastia.

There are several potential causes of gynecomastia such as:

• hormone changes, such as an increase in estrogen
• certain types of tumours that affect hormone levels
• genetics
• obesity
• overactive thyroid gland
• specific medications
• sex hormone deficiency
• Kallmann syndrome and other diseases that lower testosterone
• liver or kidney disease
• spinal cord disorders
• HIV
• substance abuse

One thing is certain is that there is an imbalance with the hormones within the body and until that is resolved it will be hard to make any changes.

Hormones control much of what you feel, hungry, thirsty, tired, sick, energetic, hot or cold. On a basic level your hormones are like your body’s messengers, they are produced in one area of the body such as the thyroid, pass into your bloodstream where they can be sent to organs and tissues to modify structures and functions.

They act like traffic signals telling your body what to do and when to do it so it can run effectively. They are as much a part of your respiratory, cardiovascular, skeletal, immune and digestive system as they are a part of your reproductive system. If there is an imbalance left unchecked this can cause serious damage to your health.

It is important to understand that there are no good or bad hormones, there are only good balance or bad imbalances of them. Too little or too much of certain hormones can lead to problems like gynecomastia.

Testosterone in often the hormone out of balance with the male body and adequate levels of this usually prevents the breast tissue from expanding. Often a reduction in testosterone can lead to this imbalance but the complex nature of hormones means this could be a reaction to an imbalance with other hormones in the body. Stress hormones like cortisol can wreak havoc on the entire system which is one reason why you must find a way to keep your stress levels under control.

While people with this condition will need medical assistance there are many natural ways to increase your testosterone levels that are very similar to what the person who needs to lose body fat requires. It is wise to adopt as many of these as possible to give your body every chance of getting things under control.

Let's discuss these in more detail now so you can get started.

Strength Training Is Essential But Not What You Think

How much you weigh largely depends on the choices you make about food and how much physical activity you get. As you age, you tend to eat fewer calories mainly due to the amount of muscle you have decreases as you get older. Your muscle mass affects how many calories you need because muscle tissue burns calories, even at rest. Having less muscle decreases your calorie needs by decreasing your basal metabolic rate. Therefor it makes perfect sense to find ways to add muscle mass for more muscle equals a faster metabolism.

Secondly, if there is a problem with hormones out of balance creating gynecomastia as we just discussed it is even more important to use strength training for muscle plays a vital role in regulating hormones. Using exercises that have the specific intention of adding muscle is one of the best natural methods for balancing out your hormones as the extra muscle increases your body's production of human growth hormone (HGH) which is essential to speed up metabolism, regulate blood sugars and glucose levels and effectively burn excessive fat.

However, the type of strength training that will benefit you the most is not what you think. Those with a great understanding of the human body and physiological adaptation to strength training will know that leg training is the key, for this is the trigger for whole body growth.

Heavy leg training causes your body to increase its production of testosterone and growth hormone - both essential ingredients for muscle growth.

The reason for this is that the leg muscles are the largest muscles in your body and demand huge amounts of blood and testosterone in order to repair damage from heavy training. This is also why they take so much out of you when you complete them in your workout.

Unfortunately this information is not passed down the average guy in the gym who spends all his time with bench press, ab exercises, and bicep curls looking to build the ultimate beach body. If only they knew how much benefit leg exercises would provide their body and get them much closer to their goal.

There are numerous leg strength routines such as the ‘squats and milk method’ that use this information with their approach to gaining whole body mass by focusing predominately on lower body exercises. Superior leg development is not an easy task but it’s this that makes it all the more worthwhile.

Focus a lot of your efforts in the early stages of learning how to do deadlifts, squats, and lunges and you will notice how quickly your body composition begins to change. These lifts do require a fair degree of skill so you have to take your time to learn the techniques required to avoid hurting yourself. While this appears to be a slower process, it will pay-off in buckets later on and will enable you to use some advanced methods with the upper body that will enable you to lift bigger loads and exhaust the muscles of the chest.

I highly suggest to read the article – Why you should never skip legs day to see a detailed breakdown of how to increase the strength in your legs. This includes a program broken into four phases and the exercise techniques of the main lifts.

How to Strengthen the Chest Muscles

Now that you have your leg strength sorted out you can begin to include upper body exercises that will add much needed muscle to the rest of the body.

The pushing exercises in particular will target the area of the man boobs very effectively. Key muscles used in these actions include the chest muscles of Pec Major and Pec Minor, the triceps, the deltoid muscles, and the upper trapezius muscles.

While you can easily target the pecs with exercises like the bench press and push-ups I have always found it more effective to use a combination of functional training methods that integrate the rest of the body at the same time. For example exercises like the squat press with a barbell or cable press using a lunge stance are much more exhausting than a bench press lying down. These type of exercises not only help to avoid injury for they improve how you move in daily life more effectively, they are also much more intense and require a significant amount of energy to complete. Remember, it is not about targeting the muscles of the chest area to lose the fat but expending tons of energy from the entire body so it uses its body-fat reserves as fuel for energy.

Isolated exercises like the bench press may target the muscles of the pecs well but do not have the benefit of moving better or improving the metabolic rate as much as functional exercises like the squat press. On the flip side of this is the squat press may not target the pecs as effective as the bench press meaning you miss out on some of the strength gains from this exercise.

The solution is to include both methods in your training. I like to use supersets that take the muscle to full exhaustion but utilize multiple muscles and joints. This type of workout method was originally known for being a great way to hit the muscle fibres and stimulate fast muscle growth, particularly if they targeted the same muscle group and medium to heavy weights are used. For this reason they have often been a key part of many body-builders and advanced strength training programs.

To do this will take considerable planning but it is well worth it when you get it right. Plus your training becomes so much more challenging and enjoyable as you have so many more exercise choices and challenges to keep you motivated and inspired.

I also love to constantly switch between different phases of intensity.

One month I focus more on low volume workouts with a high intensity maximal strength or power focus, then the following month I switch to a high volume and low intensity hypertrophy training or strength endurance workout. Sometimes I combine a slow “body-building” slow tempo exercise with a functional and fast tempo movement within the same workout. It just depends on what the focus is at the time.

Combining the different training methods together makes every workout feel completely different and it keeps my body guessing all the time. I can feel the constant and steady improvement with every workout as my body is being forced to adapt and overcome multiple challenges.

Watch the video below that shows you how to gradually increase the strength and muscle mass of the pecs.

You can read more about how to do this in the articles below

• How to improve strength using functional training methods
• 7 Best exercises for improving pushing strength

Make sure you balance out your upper body strength exercises by including pulling exercises for the upper back. This is where you could focus too much on developing your pushing strength and end up with a chronic shoulder injury like a rotator cuff tear and that is the worst thing that could happen, for now you cannot train at all!

From chin-ups to bent-over rows, these exercises are known for targeting massive muscle groups like the Lats, Trapezius, and Rhomboids, not to mention they all hit the ever-popular muscles like the biceps too. Grip strength has been proven in many studies to be a good predictor of future injury and even overall body strength. Therefor it makes sense that we should always be looking at improving grip strength using pulling exercises that are completely dependent on this.

Once again, you have to remember that your goal is to improve your overall muscle mass of the entire body to improve your metabolic rate and increase testosterone. The more muscles you affect the better. If you can achieve this and also improve how you move, you are going to make massive changes really quickly.

Don’t Forget About Cardio Exercise

Now that you have your strength workouts sorted out you can also add in some cardio on the days between. You do not have to spend too much time here but all of this will help you to improve your overall fitness and endurance, but at the same time speed up your metabolic rate to help you lose a bit of extra fat.

If you are not a fan of cardio training that is fine, you can focus on trying to go for a 45-60 minute walk once a day. However, if you want to do a bit more I would prefer to use interval training over long and slow cardio exercises. You can do this with activities like running, swimming, skipping rope, stair climbing, and bike riding.

Several studies have confirmed that exercising in shorter bursts with rest periods in between burns more fat than exercising continuously for an entire session. This has been shown to hold true even when the session is not done at an extremely high intensity.

For example, in one such study, those who cycled for 40 minutes, alternating four-minute bursts at 90 % effort with two minutes of rest, improved their cardiovascular fitness by 13 %, and were able to burn 36 % more fat during a later hour-long moderate cycling session. Another study went one step further proving you can burn more fat exercising for 20 minutes than for 40 minutes!

In their trial, women either exercised for 20 minutes, alternating 8 seconds of sprinting on a bike with 12 seconds of exercising lightly, or exercised at a regular pace for 40 minutes. After exercising three times a week for 15 weeks, those who did the 20-minute, alternating routine lost three times as much fat as the other women! The researchers believe this type of exercise works because it produces a unique metabolic response. Intermittent sprinting produces high levels of chemical compounds called catecholamines, which allow more fat to be burned from under your skin and within your muscles.

The resulting increase in fat oxidation is thought to drive the increased weight loss. Again, one of the best parts of this shorter but harder training is that it cuts down on the amount of time you need to exercise, which is great if you don’t have time for hour-long cardio workouts. 

Watch the video below for ideas of how to do this.

You Must Eat Quality Nutrition

While it is great to use strength training and interval training to add muscle and speed up your metabolism you will not get very far if you do not clean up your diet. This really is a no-brainer but it is amazing just how many people try to cut corners with their eating habits that ultimately lead them to fail in their quest to lose weight or in this case, get rid of the man boobs.

The first thing you should do is start cutting back and ideally eliminating processed foods as much as you can. This will ensure your nutrition is from fresh vegetables, fruits, meats, dairy and grains that are loaded with the essential vitamins and nutrients your body craves for good health. If it is in a packet, bottle, or jar, don’t buy it. This means it is processed in some way so try to minimise as much of these foods as you can.

Secondly you need to find the foods that best fuel your body. What works for me may be completely different for what you need to eat. For example certain foods may give me energy and feeling great might make you sleepy and sluggish.  You must learn to listen to your body, keeping a food diary for a month can help with this, not only writing down the foods that you eat, but how they make you feel.

Our modern western diet is so high in carbohydrates, especially high energy carbohydrates.  We seem to be always in a hurry and are often looking for convenience when it comes to food choices, which often leads to poor food choices.  To avoid putting yourself in this situation it is vital you plan your meals in advance.

If you are constantly over-eating or unable to get rid of the food cravings that are sabotaging your training efforts you most likely need to eat more protein and learn to eat slowly.

It is amazing how some of the simplest changes can make such a big difference.

When you make the effort to eat your meals slowly it gives your body time to recognise that you’re full. It takes about twenty minutes from the start of a meal for the brain to send out signals of satiety.

Imagine the extra food you could unnecessarily eat simply because you didn’t allow your body time to register that it no longer required food. Now imagine the effect of those extra calories to your man boobs or your belly. Eating slowly helps you to feel more satisfied with the meal instead of being “full”. In addition to this when you slow down you savour the meal more by paying closer attention to the tastes and textures of the food. The meal becomes an enjoyable time to recharge, refuel and to some extent relax which for many people it is far from this.

If food cravings are your problem you may not be eating enough protein and way too much carbohydrates. When you eat too many carbohydrates your body gets a surge of glucose (sugar) and what goes up fast also comes down fast. When the glucose begins to suddenly crash your body wants to balance out the insulin and blood sugars by sending you a craving to eat more food. The food that is balances out this crash is what? You guessed it, SUGAR.

The hormone leptin has been shown to target taste receptors on your tongue, thereby increasing or reducing cravings for sweet foods. It is believed that leptin is a sweet-sensing modulator (suppressor), and therefore a contributor to the process that regulates food intake. It is likely that either a lack of leptin, or your body's failure to respond to the hormone due to defects in your leptin receptors, contributes to the so-called 'sweet tooth' or sweet cravings that affect so many people. If you eat a diet that is high in sugar and grains, the sugar gets metabolized to fat (and is stored as fat in your fat cells), which in turn releases surges in leptin.

Over time, if your body is exposed to too much leptin, it will become resistant to it (just as your body can become resistant to insulin). And when you become leptin-resistant, your body can no longer "hear" the messages telling it to stop eating, burn fat, so you remain hungry, you crave sweets, and your body stores more fat. Leptin-resistance also causes an increase in belly fat, sending you on a vicious cycle of hunger, fat storage and an increased risk of heart disease, diabetes, etc.

In addition to preventing food cravings you want to make sure you are eating enough protein to maximise your training efforts by supplying your body with the right type of foods to complete muscle repair. Protein is made up of amino acids that act as building blocks for cells and tissues in the body. There are 20 amino acids that combine to form proteins. While some can be synthesized by the human body, others cannot. The nine amino acids that the body cannot make are called essential amino acids. These must be obtained through diet.

All body-builders and professional sporting athletes are very aware of the need to eat quality protein to fuel and sustain muscle growth but for many other people just looking to get in shape they are not aware of just how critical it can be to eat the correct amount of protein.

Like other body tissues, muscle proteins are continuously broken down and rebuilt. In order to build muscle, a person must consume more protein than what is broken down. If a person is not consuming adequate amounts of protein, their body will cannibalize itself by breaking down existing muscle to provide the body with the amino acids needed to support body functions and preserve more important tissues.

This is the equivalent of going one step forward and two steps back and make all of your strength training efforts pointless as this eventually leads to decreased muscle mass and strength. It has nothing to do with your exercise program or techniques but everything to do with your diet.

It is not only the quantity of protein that matters but also the variety. Some people may in fact be eating protein at each meal but always eating the same type of food. If their diet isn’t varied enough, they may be eating enough total protein, but not enough of a specific essential amino acid that is found in other food groups. For example, eating chicken all the time but avoiding fish, eggs, or red meat.

Your body is going to need a steady supply of nutrients to so it can go about the job of refuelling, repairing and building your muscles. You are going to have to be organised and possibly carry food with you to work, school or college because if you miss a meal, you miss an opportunity to give your body the essential fuel it needs to develop bigger and stronger muscles.

Good articles to read about nutrition are shown below.

• Best foods to speed up recovery
• Everything you need to know about protein

Make Sure You Eat Good Fats

Firstly let’s get one thing clear - eating fat does not mean that you will get fat. You are much more likely to get fat from eating sugar and fructose than eating good fats. In fact, fats and oils are essential to optimal health as it is paramount to your survival.

"No one can have a fat free body and be healthy at the same time."

Each gram of dietary fat provides nine calories of energy for the body versus four calories for carbohydrates and proteins. Your body needs fats to build cells and manufacture key hormones.

Fat assists in the health of the brain and nervous system, as well as regulating immune responses, liver function, and proper thyroid and adrenal activity. Just as with all foods, however, you must consume high-quality fats and oils for your body to effectively use them.

In addition to helping provide structure and function to the body, one of the main reasons we need to eat fat is to absorb and use fat soluble vitamins such as A, D, E and K. These vitamins do not dissolve in water and can only be absorbed from your small intestine in combination with fat. Without enough Vitamin K you would lack the ability to form blood clots and could suffer from instant bleeding! Deficiency in vitamin A can lead to blindness and infections.

Fats fall into two groups; omega-3 and omega-6 EFAs.

1. Omega-6 EFAs are readily available in grain products, meats and many commonly used cooking oils such as corn, safflower and sunflower.
2. Omega-3 EFAs are found in leafy green vegetables, oily fish and free-range eggs and comparatively small quantities are available in walnuts and animal meats. The ideal ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids in your diet is 1:4.

You can read more about this in the article - why saturated fats are not as bad as you thought.

The last two factors to address are not quite as easy to change and they are controlling stress and getting a good night’s sleep.

Stress and Sleep

These two factors tend to go hand in hand. If you are feeling relaxed and happy within yourself you tend to sleep well. If however, you are chronically stressed your sleep will go right off the rails and cause a multitude of problems. Unlike exercise and nutrition where you can consciously change bad habits into good ones or modify exercise programs to suit your needs, these two factors are not easy to change, especially if you have been in poor health for some time.

Stress can sabotage all of your best efforts to eat well and exercise so it is vital you are aware of the dangers it presents and have strategies up your sleeve to use to combat this. Once again you will see how easily it can disrupt your hormonal balance throwing your homeostasis out of whack.

When your cortisol levels (your stress hormones) are chronically high, it suppresses your androgens (growth hormones), so things like testosterone and growth hormone are suppressed, which is not good if you are trying to add muscle to get stronger and fitter. You need more muscle to speed up your metabolism so you are already off to a bad start.

As testosterone decreases, your gluco-corticoids or your stress hormones are elevated. One of the first reactions is that the body thinks that it’s going to have a long-term energy crisis, so to prepare for this situation our bodies start accumulating fat right around the belly button.

An unchecked stress response can cause repeated spikes in blood pressure increasing the chances of a stroke. You will begin to stockpile fat around the abdomen due to the high levels of the stress hormone cortisol being activated lowering IGF-1 and maintaining high levels of glucose in the bloodstream. This endless supply of cortisol greatly weakens the immune system and exposes the body to deadly diseases like diabetes and cancer.

When you are overly stressed the chances your sleep patterns will be disrupted are very high. The info-graphic below gives you some great ideas of how to reset your sleep pattern.

Many people think we shut down at night but it is the exact opposite, the body's digestive system is in hyper-drive at night as it uses this time to repair damage cells and tissue caused from activities during the day. If our sleep is compromised so is our ability to heal our body and is why people with poor sleep are more likely suffer with serious illness and disease.

These topics are massive as I am sure you would agree and this article could be another 10,000 words long if we wanted to go into detail of what to do if you have issues with stress or sleep. If you are struggling with either of these areas I suggest to see a qualified therapist for assistance. You may also want to check out the 2 articles below that provide some great tips of how we help our clients to improve their sleep and reduce stress.

• Why sleeping is so important to our health
• How to overcome and reduce stress to improve your health and fitness

Mental health is a serious issue and I hope this article provides you with some great information to both treating and managing your health issues with exercise. However, if you feel that you may be affected by depression or anxiety remember they are treatable conditions and effective treatments are available. The earlier you seek support, the better.

Additional Resources to Help You with Exercise & Nutrition

I know there is a ton of information I have not included in this article with regards to how to lose weight or in this case get rid of the man boobs. If you follow the links throughout the article they will take you to detailed articles relating to these questions. I also suggest grabbing a copy of the detailed reports below that give you everything you need to know about healthy eating, stress, sleep and also strength training.

Summary

I know I covered a lot of information in this article and to be honest I only briefly touched on some of the bigger issues like stress and sleep at the end. I hope this gives you a much clearer understanding of what actually causes man boobs.

To summarise what we discussed it is important to include

• Strength training with a big focus on functional movements and leg strength
• Combine interval training if you can or walking daily
• Eat fresh foods and make sure you include high quality protein and healthy fats with each meal
• Eat your meals slowly
• Try to reduce your stress levels and use methods like meditation, Yoga, or Tai-chi to help your body relax and calm down
• Build strong sleep habits by getting to bed on time

If you can begin putting all these things in place you will be well on the way to improving your overall health and getting rid of your man boobs forever.

For more ideas and information on specific topics I may not have covered in detail be sure to check out our INDEX PAGE on the website that has over 300 of our best articles. These are all sorted into categories for quick reference so you can find what you are after more easily. You can also subscribe to our FREE fortnightly newsletter by clicking here.

If you do need specific help with your exercise program please feel free to reach out to me for help and we can set you up with your individualised program.

About The Author

Nick Jack is owner of No Regrets Personal Training and has over 18 years’ experience as a qualified Personal Trainer, Level 2 Rehabilitation trainer, CHEK practitioner, and Level 2 Sports conditioning Coach. Based in Melbourne Australia he specializes in providing solutions to injury and health problems for people of all ages using the latest methods of assessing movement and corrective exercise.

Additional References:

• Obesity Paradox - By Carl J. Lavie M.D.
• Movement - By Gray Cook
• Corrective Exercise Solutions for the Hip & Shoulder - by Evan Osar
• Back Pain Mechanic - by Dr Stuart McGill
• Diagnosis & Treatment Of Movement Impairment Syndromes - By Shirley Sahrman
• Low Back Disorders - by Dr Stuart McGill
• Ultimate Back Fitness & Performance - by Dr Stuart McGill
• Core Stability - by Peak Performance
• Bending the Aging Curve -  Joseph Signorile
• Athletic Body in Balance - by Gray Cook
• Anatomy Trains - by Thomas Meyers
• Motor Learning and Performance - By Richard A Schmidt and Timothy D Lee
• Assessment & Treatment Of Muscle Imbalance - By Vladimir Janda
• How To Eat, Move & Be Healthy by Paul Chek
• Scientific Core Conditioning Correspondence Course - By Paul Chek
• Advanced Program Design - By Paul Chek
• Twist Conditioning Sports Strength - By Peter Twist
• Twist Conditioning Sports Movement - By Peter Twist
• Heart foundation
• CSIRO
• Precision Nutrition 
• Nutrition & Physical Degeneration - By Weston A Price
• Big Fat Lies - By David Gillespie