Of all the baseless fitness myths that have been spread by infomercials and influencers for centuries, the notion that you can “get rid of belly fat” is one of the most audacious. Targeted fat loss, or spot reduction, is simply No problem Which our body is equipped to do.
“You can’t do less, no matter how promising the marketing and advertising tell you that this is the case,” says Chris Mohr, PhD, RD, co-founder of . mohr results. “Although it would be nice if you could lose fat where you want, your body handles fat the way it wants to.”
However, even though you may not be able to bring belly fat to the forefront of your fat-loss list, that doesn’t mean you can’t reduce it. You absolutely can. Unlike the other 90% or more of fat we carry on our bodies, belly fat – or visceral fat, to use its official name – is a particularly dangerous brand of the stuff that has been shown to increase the risk of a long list of serious health conditions. And the longer you ignore it, the harder it will be to shake.
Here, we’ll explain why belly fat deserves your attention. Even better, with the help of medical and fitness experts, we’ll tell you how to lose it – and won’t even try to sell you a DVD.
Why is belly fat more dangerous than “regular” fat?
Typically, when we talk about fat, we’re talking about subcutaneous fat – the fat that lies just beneath the skin. It can appear anywhere on your body, including your arms, legs, buttocks, back and stomach. Although we may not always welcome its presence, it is not necessarily unhealthy.
Visceral fat, on the other hand, resides much deeper inside our body. Hidden behind the abdominal wall, it rests against vital organs like the heart and liver – out of reach of cosmetic procedures like liposuction and CoolSculpting. Unlike subcutaneous fat, which you can press between your fingers, visceral fat is only visible to the naked eye through its contribution to your waist circumference.
“The reason visceral fat matters is that it’s highly inflammatory,” says Rekha Kumar, MD, MS, chief medical officer. found and Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. Among the more common risks associated with increased visceral fat are heart and liver disease, although the list is much longer. One Study It also found that men with high levels of visceral fat were more than three times as likely to develop dementia, while other research has highlighted its link asthmaDifferent types of cancer, and more. “This puts people at higher risk for those specific diseases, and probably even more that we don’t know about yet,” says Dr. Mohr.
How to tell if excess fat is accumulating on your stomach
The most accurate way to measure your visceral fat would be a CT or DEXA scan, although this is not practical or cost-effective for most people. Fortunately, in this case, a simple waist-to-hip ratio is more useful than specific numbers, so a regular old tape measure will do.
“Basically, it’s the ratio of your waist to hip circumference,” says Dr. Kumar. “For a man, we don’t want it to be greater than one, meaning we don’t want the waist circumference to be larger than the hips. Low health risk is 0.95 or less. And then high health risk is one or more.”
Other warning signs that you’re reaching dangerous levels of belly fat may include elevated blood sugar, low testosterone, or even snoring and trouble swallowing. “As you accumulate visceral fat, you’re probably also slowly accumulating fat around other organs, such as the esophagus and trachea,” says Dr. Kumar.
