Excessive belly fat is the unwanted accumulation of superficial and deep fat in your abdomen. Deep fat in your abdomen, called visceral fat, can significantly increase your risks for a variety of serious health problems. Belly fat increases are not typically medical problems, but rather result from natural factors, including changing hormone levels, age and your weight at birth.
Basics
Visceral fat sits in the spaces around your abdominal organs and actively exerts a harmful influence on some of your body's basic processes, according to Harvard Medical School. For instance, this type of fat increases your production of proteins called cytokines, which promote inflammation and increase your risks for heart disease. Visceral fat also secretes a protein that can increase your resistance to the effects of insulin, a hormone your body uses to control the amount of glucose, or sugar, in your bloodstream. While you can have too much visceral fat if you are overweight or obese, you can also have too much of this fat if you have an overall normal body weight.
Belly Fat Factors
Women can easily experience an increase in belly fat levels during menopause, Harvard Medical School and MayoClinic.com report. This tendency is related to decreasing amounts of the hormone estrogen and the subsequent increase in the influence of testosterone, a male hormone which women naturally have in small amounts. As women age, they also undergo a fat redistribution that tends to increase belly fat concentrations. Additional factors that can lead to excessive belly fat development include physical inactivity, age-related loss of muscle mass, genetic predisposition, low body weight at your time of birth and giving birth to children of your own.
Fighting Natural Tendencies
You can combat the natural tendency to develop increasing belly fat levels, Harvard Medical School and University of Alabama Birmingham Medicine explain. In fact, you can lose dangerous visceral fat relatively rapidly if you get 30 minutes of an aerobic activity like brisk walking on most days and perform strength-training exercises like weightlifting twice a week. This is true even if exercise doesn't lead to significant weight loss anywhere else in your body. After you lose excessive visceral fat, continued exercise will help you prevent its return over time.
Considerations
You have an increased risks for visceral fat-related problems if you're male with a waistline over 40 inches or female with a waistline of 35 inches or more. In addition to exercise, you can control visceral fat by avoiding foods that may promote its buildup, including foods and drinks sweetened with fructose and any food that contains man-made fats called trans fats. Women may also be able to decrease their belly fat by increasing their intake of calcium. Consult your doctor for more information, or if you believe your excessive belly fat is unrelated to common non-medical factors.
References
- Harvard Medical School - Harvard Health Publications: Taking Aim at Belly Fat; August 2010
- MayoClinic.com: Belly Fat in Women; Taking - And Keeping - It Off (Pages 1 and 2); April 16, 2011
- University of Alabama Birmingham Medicine: Belly Fat; March 10, 2008
- MayoClinic.com: Belly Fat in Men; Why Weight Loss Matters (Pages 1 and 2); February 5, 2011
Member Comments