Is spot accumulation of body fat a myth?

Question

It has been widely stated that spot reduction is a myth.

I came across the reverse effect proposed here (starting at 3:43), where a bodybuilder states that, if You train a specific muscle, the body would prefer to store fat from energy surplus at these muscles. In contrast, for an untrained individual (or the same person before being fit), the body would store fat in the belly region and around inner organs.

So that would be inverted spot reduction, meaning You could spot-accumulate fat leading to a visually more appealing physique for the same body fat percentage, shifting the preference from visceral to subcutaneous fat.

Is the following true?

(1) exercising does shift fat accumulation preference towards the fat located around the exercised muscle

(2) exercising does shift fat accumulation preference from visceral to subcutaneous (which would also be shifting the fat away from the belly, because subcutaneous is not neccessarily around the belly, while visceral fat is)

Answer 1

If that's what he said it's wrong; he's talking about subcutaneous fat (under the skin, around MUSCLES on your whole body not any specific trained muscle) versus visceral fat (which deposits around the organs in the abdominal area).

The body won't store fat on certain areas based on which muscles you're training. If you're training and eating in a caloric surplus you will gain lean mass and fat (the amounts of each will vary based on numerous variables); muscles you train grow more, but fat is distributed around your body (location dictated by genetics; some people might accumulate it around certain areas instead of others, but that is NOT determined by exercise).

You will appear more aesthetic due to having less belly fat and more muscle mass, making other parts of your body look bigger. So the key is to have less visceral fat, which you can achieve by exercising regularly and keeping low body fat levels (the more muscle mass you have, the higher this fat % can be).

Answer 2

He's talking about visceral fat versus subcutaneous fat.

Visceral fat surrounds the organs. Since most of your organs are around your stomach area, then that will be concentrated mostly in that area. If you have enough of it, it'll push out the stomach lining and cause a "beer gut".

Subcutaneous fat is just under the skin (not "wrapped around the muscle"). It can be more distributed around the body, but it mostly focuses around the abdomen, hips, and legs.

Both types of fat are accumulated and removed in the same manner. You get less when in a caloric deficit and you get more when you are in a caloric surplus.

What determines where fat is stored is primarily genetics, hormone profile, and diet to a lesser extent.

Men tend to have more visceral fat than women. Men also tend to have significantly more muscle mass than women. So that alone should tell you that there is no correlation between fat accumulation and muscle mass.

People on PEDs, particularly anabolic steroids, can have much higher amounts of visceral fat despite having extremely low amounts of subcutaneous fat.

Diet has also been linked to accumulation of visceral fat. Alcohol for example has been linked to increase in visceral fat particularly in the liver. Diets high in fat and sugar (particularly fructose) have very loosely been linked to higher visceral fat uptake, although this link is harder to establish as people who eat those diets also typically have higher BF% in general.

The reason there may be a confusion is because of a classic case of correlation vs causation. People who exercise a lot, bodybuilders especially, have a lower overall bodyfat percentage in total. They're going to have lower amounts of visceral fat. They also have lower amounts of subcutaneous fat. They also typically eat foods that are less processed, have less sugar, less fat, and more protein. They also don't drink alcohol as much.

In comparison, people who don't train at all, typically have both high amounts of both visceral and subcutaneous fat. They typically eat higher processed foods that are higher in both fat and sugar while being lower in protein. They are typically heavier drinkers.