6 Things You Didn’t Know About Belly Fat

Politicians, gossip columnists, doctors, your best friend -- they’re all
talking about the same thing: fat. Especially belly fat. The great thing
about belly fat is that the better you get to know it, the easier it is to
make it vanish (if only spam e-mail worked the same way!). Digest these
stomach-flattening facts.*
*

*1. All fat is not alike.* Eat more calories than you burn and the extras
get packed away in one of two places -- long-term storage depots beneath the
skin (subcutaneous fat) or short-term bins deep in the abdomen (visceral
fat). Visceral fat is what we call omental fat -- that is, fat in your
omentum, a piece of webbing that hangs off your stomach just beneath your ab
muscles, sort of like a mesh apron.

*2. The fat you don’t see is the most dangerous.* The soft, superficial
stuff that ripples your thighs and tummy may be a bikini spoiler, but if you
can pinch it, it probably won’t kill you. However, if you have a solid “beer
belly" . . . well, you’re likely headed for more trouble than a politician
hooked up to a polygraph. That’s because too much deep fat churns out
supersize amounts of hormones and proteins, which can lead to big hazards.
Among them: lousy LDL cholesterol and triglyceride levels; high blood sugar
and blood pressure; insulin resistance; and widespread inflammation. All are
instigators of many diseases -- including dementia, cancer, heart disease,
and diabetes. But often you can get a “do over,” and it doesn’t take that
long and isn’t that hard, if you know what you’re doing. So don’t stop
reading!

First, don’t rely on your scale. As you start to reduce risky belly fat,
your weight may temporarily go up. So ditch the scale in favor of the tape
measure. If you’re a woman, your waist should be 32.5 inches; if you’re a
man, 35 inches. Creep past 37 inches for women or 40 for men, and the health
dangers increase.

*3. Stress makes you fat.* Not only does stress lead you to eat Haagen-Dazs
straight from the carton, but it also triggers the release of cortisol, a
stress hormone. When stress becomes unrelenting, the omentum attempts to
control cortisol flow by sucking it out of the bloodstream. Nice try, but
cortisol fights back once it’s in the omentum and turbocharges fat there.
That sets off other chemical reactions that leave you feeling hungry . . .
and looking for the Haagen-Dazs again. Fortunately, any kind of stress
reduction, especially exercise, will help short-circuit this stress/fat
cycle. Feeling tense right now? Go for a walk the minute you finish this
column.

*4. The fat you eat affects the fat you get.* When monkeys munched on
trans-fat laced diets for 6 years, they developed more deep-belly fat than
those who went trans-fat-free, even though both ate the same number of
calories. Physiologically, we’re close enough to monkeys to extrapolate that
trans fat doesn’t do anything good for your waist or your arteries.

*5. Blasting belly fat isn’t hard.* If you’re not overweight but still have
an oversized waist, the fastest way to shrink your omentum is by walking.
Taking a brisk 30-minute walk each day will keep those fat cells from
expanding. Pick up the pace some, walk a little longer, and you can give
your omentum a makeover, turning a flabby apron of omental fat into sheer
mesh again. After 30 days of walking, start doing resistance exercises as
well to add muscle and lose inches -- otherwise you’ll hit a plateau. No
dumbbells? No gym? No problem. You can get an excellent workout in 20
minutes by using your own body as a weight to stretch and strengthen all of
your major muscle groups. Find examples at
www.realage.com/ct/shape-up-slim-down/.

*6. Whole grains scare away belly fat.* If you and a friend go on a diet but
you eat whole grains (meaning brown rice, steel-cut oats, and whole-wheat
pasta, not whole-grain Pop Tarts) and your friend eats processed grains
(anything made with white/enriched grains and flours, cupcakes to noodles),
you both might lose the same amount of weight, but you’ll shed more belly
fat and lower your levels of C-reactive protein, a marker of damaging
inflammation. And your food will taste better, and you’ll feel full longer.
AND you’ll have a flat stomach!