The Truth About Belly Fat

Surprise: Everyone has some belly fat, even people who have flat abs.

That's normal. But too much belly fat can affect your health in a way that other fat doesn't.

Some of your fat is right under your skin. Other fat is deeper inside, around your heart, lungs, liver, and other organs.

It's that deeper fat -- called "visceral" fat -- that may be the bigger problem, even for thin people.
Deep Belly Fat

You need some visceral fat. It provides cushioning around your organs.

But if you have too much of it, you may be more likely to get high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, dementia, and certain cancers, including breast cancer and colon cancer.

The fat doesn't just sit there. It's an active part of your body, making "lots of nasty substances," says Kristen Hairston, MD, assistant professor of endocrinology and metabolism at Wake Forest School of Medicine.

If you gain too much weight, your body starts to store your fat in unusual places.

With increasing obesity, you have people whose regular areas to store fat are so full that the fat is deposited into the organs and around the heart, says Carol Shively, PhD, professor of pathology-comparative medicine at Wake Forest School of Medicine.

How Much Belly Fat Do You Have?

The most precise way to determine how much visceral fat you have is to get a CT scan or MRI. But there's a much simpler, low-cost way to check.

Get a measuring tape, wrap it around your waist at your belly button, and check your girth. Do it while you're standing up, and make sure the tape measure is level.

For your health's sake, you want your waist size to be less than 35 inches if you're a woman and less than 40 inches if you're a man.

Having a "pear shape" -- bigger hips and thighs -- is considered safer than an "apple shape," which describes a wider waistline.

“What we’re really pointing to with the apple versus pear,” Hairston says, "is that, if you have more abdominal fat, it’s probably an indicator that you have more visceral fat."

Thin People Have It, Too

Even if you're thin, you can still have too much visceral fat.

How much you have is partly about your genes, and partly about your lifestyle, especially how active you are.

Visceral fat likes inactivity. In one study, thin people who watched their diets but didn't exercise were more likely to have too much visceral fat.

The key is to be active, no matter what size you are.

4 Steps for Beating Belly Fat

There are four keys to controlling belly fat: exercise, diet, sleep, and stress management.

1. Exercise: Vigorous exercise trims all your fat, including visceral fat.

Get at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise at least 5 days a week. Walking counts, as long as it's brisk enough that you work up a sweat and breathe harder, with your heart rate faster than usual.

To get the same results in half the time, step up your pace and get vigorous exercise -- like jogging or walking. You'd need to do that for 20 minutes a day, 4 days a week.

Jog, if you're already fit, or walk briskly at an incline on a treadmill if you're not ready for jogging. Vigorous workouts on stationary bikes and elliptical or rowing machines are also effective, says Duke researcher Cris Slentz, PhD.

Moderate activity -- raising your heart rate for 30 minutes at least three times per week -- also helps. It slows down how much visceral fat you gain. But to torch visceral fat, your workouts may need to be stepped up.

“Rake leaves, walk, garden, go to Zumba, play soccer with your kids. It doesn’t have to be in the gym,” Hairston says.

If you are not active now, it's a good idea to check with your health care provider before starting a new fitness program.

2. Diet: There is no magic diet for belly fat. But when you lose weight on any diet, belly fat usually goes first.
Getting enough fiber can help. Hairston’s research shows that people who eat 10 grams of soluble fiber per day -- without any other diet changes -- build up less visceral fat over time than others. That’s as simple as eating two small apples, a cup of green peas, or a half-cup of pinto beans.

“Even if you kept everything else the same but switched to a higher-fiber bread, you might be able to better maintain your weight over time,” Hairston says.

3. Sleep: Getting the right amount of shut-eye helps.

In one study, people who got 6 to 7 hours of sleep per night gained less visceral fat over 5 years compared to those who slept 5 or fewer hours per night or 8 or more hours per night. Sleep may not have been the only thing that mattered -- but it was part of the picture.

4. Stress: Everyone has stress. How you handle it matters.

The best things you can do include relaxing with friends and family, meditating, exercising to blow off steam, and getting counseling. That leaves you healthier and better prepared to make good choices for yourself.

“If you could only afford the time to do one of these things," Shively says, "exercise probably has the most immediate benefits, because it gets at both obesity and stress.”

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Why we should focus on the health of our gut this January and NOT our weight

Gut Health: Part 1

Part 1: Why we should focus on the health of our gut this January and NOT our weight

Hippocrates supposedly said that ‘all disease starts in the gut’. Clearly this isn’t true all of the time (take genetic disorders, for example), but a significant proportion of chronic diseases are indeed linked to gut health. It has just taken medical science a few thousand years to catch up!

This topic is a real interest of mine. I often see clients who are struggling with all sorts of problems – ranging from skin disorders to obesity – which may stem from poor gut health, yet they usually have no idea that this could be the root cause of their symptoms. Once we have worked together to heal and soothe the gut, often their symptoms significantly improve and any excess weight starts to drop off naturally too.

That is why I start off by encouraging almost all of my clients to stop focusing on their weight as a primary outcome of the changes they are making, but instead to focus on the health of their digestion. I hope that after reading my 3-part guide, you might consider thinking this way too!

What do we mean by the ‘gut’?

The gut is a collection of organs, running from the mouth to the bowels, with help from the stomach, liver, pancreas and gallbladder along the way. All of these structures work together to extract the greatest amount of nutrition from whatever we choose to eat.
But newer research has also discovered the powerful impact of our gut microbiota. This consists of trillions of microbes (bacteria, yeast, funghi and viruses), which live inside our bowels, interacting not only with the food we eat, but also with each other and with us. Each microbiota is unique to each person.
When in harmonious balance, these microbes helpfully aid our digestion, make vitamins and other nutrients, break down dietary toxins, strengthen the body’s internal barrier against the contents of gut, prevent overgrowth of bacteria which can make us unwell, and can even influence our immune system and mood (Butel, 2014). But when out of balance, these microbes can also have the potential to wreck health havoc too.

I therefore now see the ‘gut’ not only as an organ system, but as an ecosystem too.

All sorts of factors will affect the composition and function of our microbiota, and therefore our gut health, including:

What is a ‘healthy’ gut?
There is actually no specific definition of what makes a healthy gut, because that depends so much on the individual. But in general, I would consider a healthy gut to:

• Be free from persistent digestive symptoms (such as bloating, abdominal pain or disrupted bowel habits). We all get the odd symptom from time to time though, which is absolutely normal. If bloating is your main problem, take a look at my post ‘Do you often feel bloated?’ for more information
• Eliminate regular, formed (but easily passed) stools.
• Allow complete digestion and absorption of nutrition. The average time for the entire process of digestion / absorption is 24 hours, although this does vary a lot between individuals.

What is an ‘unhealthy’ gut?
There are certain unhealthy gut symptoms which are known as ‘red flags’. These are important warning signs that should be discussed with a doctor as soon as possible. Although some of them may represent a harmless condition that will settle itself, it is important if you have any of these symptoms to seek a medical opinion promptly.

• A sudden, persistent change your bowel habits
• Any bleeding, or black, tarry stools
• Increasing heartburn, indigestion or stomach pains
• Losing weight unintentionally
• Any difficulty or pain on swallowing
• Within the scope of my nutritional practice, I would also look at all sorts of other symptoms (even if they are not necessarily directly related to the gut), such as skin, mood, energy, weight and much more.

How might gut health affect weight?

We know that our gut needs to function effectively to be able to digest and absorb the nutrition that we are eating. This can lead to both underweight and overweight. Perhaps the most important question to ask is firstly whether there could be an underlying medical problem that is driving poor digestion? The best way to work out if this is a possibility is to speak to your doctor or other healthcare provider. These problems usually lead to an unintended decrease in weight (although not always).

Once this has been ruled out, the next step would be a more comprehensive look at overall digestion, and whether there are any signs and symptoms of maldigestion, gut inflammation or irritation. This is often highly variable between people, so I would suggest that you find a well-qualified Nutritional Therapist or Registered Nutritionist (see FAQs for more info) –  ideally with some training on Functional Medicine –  to help you, if necessary. I run stool, blood, urine and saliva tests where necessary in my practice to help identify what might be going on for each individual.


There is also a lot of interest in the science world at the moment around the potential role of the gut microbiota in the development of obesity, and obesity-related diseases. Lots of this revolves around how certain microbes alter energy absorption by the body. In simple terms; the composition of our microbiota can cause us to either absorb less, or more, energy from exactly the same plate of food.

I think about it in terms of ‘energy harvesting’ – some microbes help us to do this more efficiently than others. One of the ways that our microbes do this is by producing specialized enzymes that help to break down carbohydrates and proteins that would normally be indigestible (Krajmalnik-Brown et al., 2012). The more energy we harvest, the more we absorb.

Unfortunately, we do not know enough about this topic yet to know which types of microbe would help us to lose weight (or indeed, help us to gain weight). However, there are some promising studies emerging (Kadooka et al., 2010). Watch this space!

Further reading

Part 2 & Part 3 of this gut health series will be launched over the next two weeks, exploring the world of probiotics, prebiotics and lots of advice on how to take the first steps to improving your gut health.

For further reading, Gut by Guilia Enders is a fantastic and easy to understand read for anyone interested in improving their knowledge and gut health.

Source Article with References  By Amelia Freer