We all know that burning fat is one of the steps on the way to leading healthy lifestyle and looking great. The thing is not all of us actually know that there are two different types of fat and that one of them can be dangerous to our body and health.
What is visceral fat?
When talking about burning fat of your belly, thighs, arms, etc. we are actually talking about the so called subcutaneous fat. This is a fatty tissue located directly under the skin and it is the one that you could easily get rid of with a healthy diet and regular exercising.
In other words, we can say that this is the “good fat” in our bodies.
The “bad fat” is the visceral fat, that is also sometimes called active fat. Now you would naturally ask, “what is actually the visceral fat then and why is it so bad for your health?”
Visceral fat is the one that is located deeper below the skin and it is the one that surrounds your internal organs, which makes it hard to identify as a start.
However, if you have a fairly big belly and a large waist, then you are most likely already storing visceral fat. Apart from being a gel-like fat tissue wrapped around your organs and hard to burn, the visceral fat is dangerous as it actually affects the way your body works.
How does it affect your health?
According to some medical studies, it was discovered that visceral fat has a direct impact on the so called “fat Hormone” – adiponectin.
The adiponectin functions as a regulator of the body fat levels in your body, but visceral fat has the ability to inhibit the hormone, so as a result you end up with more body fat than the body needs. As the amount of visceral fat around the organs increases, the space between them also does, and this way a series of dangerous processes in your body are triggered and can lead to a number of medical conditions, like:
Coronary heart disease, Cancer, Stroke, Dementia, Diabetes, Depression, Arthritis, Obesity, Sexual dysfunction and Sleep disorders.
Things are not as bad, as there are ways to measure and get rid of the visceral fat.
The easiest one of them is to measure your waist and hips in their widest part and divide the waist by the hip measurement. If you are a man and your result is not more than 1.0 then you have a healthy body, for women the result should be no more than 0.85.
The truth is that this method is quick and will give an estimate, but it is not the most accurate.
How to measure it?
If you really want to get an accurate measurement, the best thing to do is to equip yourself with a body fat analyzer scale that actually gives you an outlook on your body composition.
The body fat analyzers are able to give you measurements, not only of your body fat, but the muscle mass and the overall BMI, as well as measure your weight as a whole.
Once you have equipped yourself with one of these and you can regularly monitor your body composition, there are a few things you need to do to start getting rid of visceral fat:
- Cut down on sugar, sweets, fizzy drinks and carbs
- Try to consume more healthy vegetables and proteins
- Exercise regularly
- Try to reduce stress
- Get as much sleep as you can
