MELT YOUR MIDSECTION

Want to know the real secret to a South Beach body? Wake Forest University researchers discovered that people who diet and exercise shrink their abdominal fat cells twice as much as those who diet only—even when they lose the same amount of total weight. When scientists analyzed the body-fat distribution of study participants who had dropped an average of 22 pounds, they observed that those who included exercise in their weight-loss programs were able to specifically target belly fat. “Abdominal fat cells may have different amounts of metabolic enzymes than other parts of your body, causing them to be more responsive to exercise,” says lead author Tongjian You, Ph.D.