How to Reduce Visceral Fat (aka "Belly Fat")

How to reduce visceral fat? It can sometimes seem hopeless. Visceral fat, also known as "Belly Fat", poses so serious dangers to your health, more so than "regular" subcutaneous fat.

How can you get rid of this type of fat? That's what this video is all about.

I'm Dave Smith, Canada's Top Fitness Professional, and I'm here to help you get fitness results. If you want more help, come over to my website at http://www.makeyourbodywork.com where you can watch more videos, download freebies, and ask me questions. See you there!

[Video Transcript]

Today I have a really great question, it's from Kenneth in Vancouver BC. Let's dive right in. Kenneth gets straight to the point, he asked,

"What's the best way to lose visceral fat?"

Thanks so much for your question Kenneth and I want to start by explaining the difference between our two main types of fat. The most common type of fat is called subcutaneous fat and basically the way I like to describe that is basically imagine you put on a sweat suit and it covers your entire body. It gives a little bit more bulk to your entire body. That's what subcutaneous fat looks like except for it's underneath the skin. As we accumulate more and more subcutaneous fat it's like putting on extra layers of clothing. Another sweater, another pair of track pants, and we get a little bit bigger, and a little bit puffier with each level of this fat that is accumulated.

Contrast this with visceral fat. So, Kenneth the type of fat that your referenced. Picture a bowl and in that bowl is jello and the bowl itself represents our abdominal cavity and the jello represents visceral fat. If you think back to the 1980's, maybe 1990's, it was really popular if you were going to a pot luck dinner to bring jello salad. Within that bowl of jello there would be suspended pieces of fruit, or maybe raisins, or maybe nuts, whatever it is. Those represent our organs. Well if you have more jello, there's more jello separating those organs. Our organs get more spaced out, there is more jello in between them. That is the same thing that happens in our abdominal cavity as we get more and more fat accumulating in our abdominal cavity. There is more pressure or there is more space being created between these organs because the fat needs a place to reside.

Some visceral fat is definitely necessary because like that jello separates the pieces of fruit we need our organs to be separated, we need them to have some buffer zone, or some cushioning for protection. It is necessary that some visceral fat is there but when we start to accumulate too much visceral fat that's when all sorts of problems begin to happen. One of the problems, like I was alluding too, is just the physical pressure of having more visceral fat in our abdominal cavity. As the organs get more pressure our blood pressure also tends to rise which increases our risk for heart attack and stoke. Another problem with building up too much visceral fat is its impact on a hormone called adiponectin.

Adiponectin is sometimes referred to as our fat hormone because of the role is has in regulating our metabolism. The problem with visceral fat is it actually inhibits adiponectin.

You can imagine this vicious cycle. The more belly fat or visceral fat we accumulate the more it inhibits adiponectin, the more our body thinks it needs to store the healthy amount of fat, and the more fat we accumulate. Another big problem with visceral fat is it's impact on our insulin sensitivity. Lots of research has shown that the more visceral fat a person is carrying the more likely they are to develop type two diabetes later in life. Visceral fat has also been linked to mental health problems as people age and all sorts of other health problems that we really want to avoid.

The next obvious question becomes, how much visceral fat do I actually have? In the show notes I give a link to a really interesting study that compares a couple of different metrics for measuring fat. They take a look at BMI, body mass index. They look at a body fat percentage. They look at body weight and then they look at a ratio, it's called a waist to hip ratio. Basically the research is trying to figure out which of those measurements best predicts how much visceral fat a person has. Surprisingly, it is the simple ratio.

Measuring your waist versus measuring your hips. As a general guideline for women they want that ratio to be less than 0.8 to 1. If you took a measurement of your waist, and that's done around your belly button, and you divided that by the measurement of your hips, and that's done around the biggest part of your hips. Ideally that ratio would be 0.8 or less. It means your waist is smaller than your hips. That makes sense. That suggest a smaller waist, less abdominal fat, or less visceral fat.

Continue reading at http://makeyourbodywork.com/how-to-reduce-visceral-fat

Видео How to Reduce Visceral Fat (aka "Belly Fat") канала Dave & Lucy Smith