This post is aimed at satisfying your curiosity when it comes to belly fat, its causes, science, remedies, and lots more
Introduction
[License: Wikimedia Commons]: Wikimedia Abdominal obesity is also known as central obesity, pot belly, beer belly, alcohol gut, and a lot more other names. This is a situation that occurs when fats around the abdominal region encompasses a person's organs, thereby increasing his risk of developing some devastating illnesses. Abnormal obesity or central obesity, has been known to be associated with certain cardiovascular diseases, high blood pressure, insulin resistance, Alzheimer's disease, and other metabolic diseases
Much focus were being channelled towards this abdominal obesity around the 1980's when it was discovered to be associated with diseases like cardiovascular diseases, dyslipedemia and obesity. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography, also played their respective roles in categorizing mass of tissues (abdominal), giving a clear cut difference between subcutaneous fat and intra-abdominal fat
Sometimes your problem is not how much you weigh, but how much abdominal fat you have. So next time you get curious about how much you weight, also check the amount of belly fat you carry. Scientists are not 100% certain about what causes abdominal fat, but studies have proven that there are two different forms of abdominal fat. The first is ** Subcutaneous fat ** which behaves like every other fat around your body, and is located just beneath the skin. The second form of fat is known as visceral fat, which is located around the body's internal organs (inside the abdomen). This is when fat becomes a real problem, because they go ahead to deposit their waste products into the portal circulation that conveys blood to the liver, thereby causing complications like the ones mentioned above
Here are 3 major reasons why people develop belly fat
1. Blood sugar
One major problem is insulin resistance, and poor management of our blood sugar. Whenever you eat glycenic fat food like bread, ice cream, etc, your blood sugar spikes high at first and later crashes back down when your body secretes insulin. It is during this process, that your body secretes certain hormones like cortisol which contributes immensely to this
belly fat. For some other people, the fat accumulates in their face, or other body parts where you are holding your weight. The solution to this kind of problem, is to look for possible ways to balance your body with low glycemic index type of foods and drinks, especially the ones made from fruit sugars. Avoid any synthetic sweeteners that is made in the laboratory
Here is a research for further confirmation
2. chromium
Like most of us already know, one major reason why minerals are needed in our body, is that those vitamins you take, can't work without minerals. Chromium is one of those minerals which is greatly associated to regulation of insulin in our body. Chromium as a cause of belly fat, isn't sure for anyone, until a mineral test has been carried out on the person, for confirmation. Low chromium in the body can be a cause of belly fat. Due to environmental and other Conditions, lots of soils are mineral and vitamin depleted, resulting in deficiency of some vital minerals like chromium in our diets today. Chromium plays a vital role when the body is using insulin. So many people living with blood sugar issues achieve much benefits from taking chromium
3. Caffeine
This one of the most popular amongst all. Caffeine has its advantages and disadvantages. It mobilizes free body fatty acids. It contains certain anti-oxidants, and plays a vital role in stimulation. We get caffeine everyday from drinks like red bull, coffee, etc. Whatever contains caffeine, gives us an energy boost. Most people think having caffeine in their diets helps speed down metabolism. Well, if you think like this, you are probably correct. However, it doesn't just stop there. Just like in the case of blood sugar, there is a spike in metabolism rate when you take caffeine, but it crashes down back after a while. During this crash, your body secretes the same cortisol just like in the case of blood sugars. Cortisol makes people store body belly fat
Science of what happens to body, when you lose body fat
[License: CC0 Creative Commons]: pixabay This will probably be one of the most vital information some of you have come in contact with in a while, when it comes to breaking down of body fat. The knowledge of this is very important, especially for those that are willing to lose weight. There are many wrong perceptions when it comes to how fat leaves the body. Some people just happen to think that it magically leaves the body after much exercise, while others think it gets burned up as energy, or it goes off when you visit the bathroom.
Well, its not much of a problem when other non-scientific people think this way. What bothers me is when certain people that are dedicated to research start thinking like this. If any of these thoughts have ever come across your head, i'd like to draw back your attention to "The law of conservation of mass" which made us to understand that atoms doesn't simply vanish. Their arrangement can be altered, but they dont vanish.
So if that is the case, what then do fat molecules become?
Here is the chemical formula for the average human fat --> C55H104O6. This is mixture of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms
Sometime in 2014, a study was conducted by University of South Wales (UNSW) and published in the British medical journal. This research study showed us a scientific understanding of how fat leaves the body.
When a person decides to not eat enough food, to create the necessary energy needed by the body. What the Body does, is to start breaking down already stored fat for energy. Also, when we breathe in oxygen and move around, a complex reaction takes place, which releases energy, and produces carbon dioxide and water
When you exercise or decide not to eat anything until around 4pm, which is mid afternoon, we end up creating the human growth hormone (HGH). This hormone breaks down fat when mixed with oxygen. 29kg of oxygen has to be inhaled for every 10kg of fat, this is to help the hormones easily break down the fat.
During exercise, 84% of your body fat is converted to and released as carbondioxide, while 16% is converted to and leaves your body in the form of water. To sum it all up, fat leaves the human body as we breathe. The heavier you breathe, the more fat you get to remove. For those thinking they can just sit on a chair and heavily breathe out all the fat, the answer is a big fat NO!.
It is almost impossible to lose fat in just one part of the body, which is why aerobic exercises like rope skipping, jugging, brisk walking, swimming, and others, are advised over anaerobic exercises like sit ups and crunches.
When you try too hard to breathe in and out without moving your body, its called hyperventilating, and you might end up passing out. You have to actually move your body. You cannot cheat nature, this is simply how the human body is designed. So, this is how you lose body fat. And it is also advised to do these exercises preferably on an empty stomach. The heavier you are gasping for air, the more body fat you end up losing. This is how fat leaves your body.
Here are some vital remedies to this situation
[License: Wikimedia Commons]: Wikimedia Observing your daily ab exercises are awesome in enhancing your abdominal muscles. But not even a daily 1,000 ab exercises can put the fats protecting them in shape. It was important I mentioned the above, because too many people hold the belief that ab exercises are enough, which is false. To maintain a healthy shape in your abdominal region, there are certain disciplines you must observe, including dietary, self discipline, and you must improve your lifestyle
1. Eat more organic foods
The liver is one of the most important organs in the body. The job of the liver is to clean up toxins from the body system. you are not in any way helping the liver lose that huge tommy, when you constantly take in poisons. You help your liver do what it is designed to do better when you eat organic meals
Understanding the new concept of lipotoxidity, will give you a proper understanding. Subcutaneous fat isn't much of a problem to you, what you really need to watch out for is visceral fat. Visceral fat cells has a way of releasing its metabolic wastes into the portal circulation. The job of this portal circulation, is do carry blood directly to your liver.
There are cases where triglycerides are contained in visceral fat, in such cases, the visceral fat cells causes more harm to the liver, by emptying free fatty acids into the liver. These free fatty acids which are not designed to store fat, goes ahead to get accumulated in certain parts of your body like your pancreas, heart (and others). It all ends up in issues like abnormalities in your heart functioning, blood sugar and cholesterol related issues, etc.
2. Alcohol reduction
Experts continue to notify the public of the toxicity of alcohol. Alcohol consumption has a way of dehydrating the body, which is very dangerous, and continues to decelerate fat loss. The same way toxic meals contribute immensely to the size of abnormal growth of abdominal fat, so does alcohol. Beer consumption is not necessarily the cause of belly fat, but consumption of excess calories. Alcohol becomes a problem when you take in excess of it
According to Michael Jenson, who is an endocrine and obesity researcher with Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
"In general, alcohol intake is associated with bigger waists, because when you drink alcohol, the liver burns alcohol instead of fat,"
What happens in the body is quite simple. When you consume excess calories than your body can burn, the remnant calories are stored in your body as fat. The next issue, is where your body decides to store this fat, which is dependent on certain factors like hormones, age, sex. Abdominal fat are seen more in men than in women because, fat in women are naturally stored in other parts of the body like thighs, arms, hips, ass, etc. This is because women have more subcutaneous fat than men
3. Drink enough water
In your quest for good health and reduction or avoidance of abdominal obesity, water has a major role to play. We all know how dangerous it is to not consume enough water, and how it affects our system. Water makes sure body fat passes through your system, before they are saved. It also has a way of removing poisons from our body system. It is very dangerous to be dehydrated or not consume enough water every day because these poisons will build up in your body and go ahead to affect your ability to get rid of fat. It gets worse when your body fat goes ahead to remain in your body
4. Excess of cardio exercises
I know this will come up as a shock for a lot of people. For removal of tummy fats, weight training are some of the best methods. However, the intensity of your cardio exercises has to start up on the low, you can then gradually increase your workout intensity. When you engage in too much of slow cardio, you are at the risk of storing more fat, It also decreases your muscle tone and speeds up aging
Note: If you just had a C-section, do not exercise till first 3 months are over
5. Stress reduction/Balanced diet
Stress increases hunger in humans. We also produce the cortisol hormone when we are very stressed up, which helps in production of glucose in our body. Excess of cortisol is the main issue to deal with, because it goes ahead to inhibit the fat loss hormones like insulin, which regulates our body glucose level. This then becomes a problem because fat accumulates in the belly region.
When you are hungry as a result of stress, you often want to eat more than is necessary for the body. There are cases where regular cardio exercises and eating right seem like it isn't helping. In such cases the issue could be underactive hypothyroid. One major function of the thyroid, is to preserve your body's metabolic rate and reduce or stop fat build up up in the body. Also avoid oversized portions of food. Instead of eating 2 or 3 oversized food portions, eat 4-5 times of normal food at different times of the day
Sleepiness and sugar intake
To solve the problem of sleep, we must get in tune to our natural bio-rythm. One way to do this, is to maintain a healthy sleep pattern. Most people dont pay attention to the relationship between proper sleeping and belly fat
A study conducted by the Howard medical school, showed what happens in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex of individuals who has a lot of day time sleepiness caused by high calories
The ventromedial prefrontal cortex is a part of the brain which is associated with inhibition, behaviour, etc. This part of the brain happened to be deactivated during this time. what does this mean? it means they were inhibited, causing a person to eat more than necessary during the day
In your body, excess sugar gets converted to fat. So its only wise you reduce your amount of sugar intake. How do you do this? simply reduce the amount of processed foods and drinks you take, because they contain lots of sugar. Fructose is often gotten from fruits, but the ones gotten from fruits is lesser than the ones from diets high in refined sugar
Sugar as we know it, is 50% glucose, and 50% fructose. Fructose in moderate amounts, can only undergo metabolism by the liver. We look for serious trouble when we consume excess added sugars, because we end up overworking the liver with too much fructose, which eventually turns it to fat.
Here is a research which shows that added sugar is detrimental to our metabolic health
Thank you all for your time, until we meet next time, bye!
In conclusion
The internet is parked full of articles concerning weight loss, and i am sure you must have seen quite a number of them. Most individuals already know what to do about their weight or abdominal obesity, but discipline becomes the problem. I will advise you get a coach or someone you trust (not your family member), so you can answer to to them, while they see you through those belly fat loss goals you have. Recall I mentioned ** aerobic exercises **. It's best you don't try to deceive yourself, as self deceit is the highest form of deceit. Its time to close the tap instead of always moping the floor. Do the hard/smart work, and see yourself change before your very eyes
Reference
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Hi @njokueruchi. Nice article, however, I need to point out some doubts:
Firstly, it is true that there are two types of fats which are subcutaneous and visceral. Both of them can potentially cause obesity but one is more detrimental than the other. Some studies in the past have found that removing your subcutaneous fat by liposuction would do you almost nothing if the amount of visceral fat around your organs are not changing. It's therefore reasonable to assume that, people with lots of visceral fat (some of them look skinny) are predisposed to illnesses which could have increased their morbidity or mortality rate despite of their obesity profile.
Secondly, in glucose metabolism, the secretion of cortisol is not the main concern. Sure, cortisol can induce over-eating which can lead to obesity but the main reason while people are getting fat is the insulin itself. Insulin is quite flexible. If all of the cells are fully occupied by glucose that is used for energy, they (insulins) have to transport glucose into the adipose tissue through a process called de novo lipogenesis (literally translated to new fat making). Think about people who have diagnosed with diabetes type I (can't produce insulin or produce fewer insulins than normal). Without insulin treatment, they can be extremely thin despite high cortisol level in the blood. After insulins have been prescribed, they will gain some weight. This can be due to the fact that insulin contributes to the making of new fat cells and it can increase the expression of ghrelin (which would cause you to become hungry). That's why no-carb diet has been popular (and working) this day; if you took less carb, less insulin would be secreted. You can read about ketosis to understand the subject more.
Caffeine is actually fine unless you took them with a lot of sugars. That would be fattening; no, fatty food items such as coconut oil and butter does not make you fat.
I'm quite confused regarding the fact that you have presented about how do we lose fat through exercise. In my knowledge, ketosis plays a role in it. You will be using glucose as an energy source until cells run out of it. It would need an alternate energy source, so if the insulin level was low, the body would mobilise fat cells to the liver so that it can be converted into ketone bodies to be utilised by cells. That's how we lose fat cells through exercise. Why is it important to keep your insulin level low during exercise? Fat cells would not be used when insulin level is high because it signals that the body has a lot of glucose which is in fact, untrue. So if cells need energy but the insulin level is high, how it's going to acquire energy sources? The answer is by degrading muscles which would reduce your resting energy expenditure hence metabolism. Through a process called gluconeogenesis, muscle protein would be converted into glucose in the liver. That's why, if you are not paying attention to what you eat, people who exercise regularly would find it hard to reduce their weight after 4 weeks of exercise. This can be attributed to the muscle loss hence reduced metabolism.
Indeed there are a lot of weight-loss programs on the internet that we can choose from but it is also important for us to understand the basic biochemistry of how we became fat in the first place and how to prevent it.
Hello @conficker! I have seen all you've written, and they are all well noted. However, there are so many lectures and research especially on the subject of weight loss
Thanks for taking out time to read this post, i appreciate
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As a weight loss coach and someone who has lost "half my size" with natural methods, I assure you that this:
"Most individuals already know what to do about their weight or abdominal obesity"
is false. 80% of Americans are obese or overweight and a vast majority of them are completely fooled by the lies of big pharma/agro/food etal.
I had no idea about the poison I was eating that kept me sick and fat. How many dieters at weight watchers know that WW branded food is full of endocrine disruptors and other nasty gunk? None - or they would not eat it thinking they would lose weight.
I tried many mainstream ideas and plans over the years and just got sicker and fatter. When all my doctors wanted me to get weight loss surgery, I decided to lose weight or die trying. A coach with truthful information was the person who saved me and that is why I am a coach myself now. I am in 100% agreement, that weight loss is impossible without help - especially in the US.
I found your post in the minnowbooster discord promo and I am very glad I did. You have lots of good information here and I resteemed :)
Hello @fitinfunThanks for your comment
I really wanted this post to get to a fitness coach, I am glad it finally did. However, there is hardly a site I open today, without diverse ways of losing body fat flashing before my very eyes in form of ads. I guess I over generalized. But I know a large percentage of the world's population are aware of some of the remedies
Thanks for resteeming, Regards!
Nice blog on belly fat. I have a question
what if an individual tries all you mentioned, but the belly fat remains?
Hello @akiripromise! There are hardly cases like that. Its either the person is doing the wrong practices or they still continued the habits that caused their pot belly, while trying to lose weight.
It is also good you see a doctor, it might be a medical situation
Regards!
Oh That's clear enough, Thank you
The chromium information is a new one for me. Going to have to rad up one that one for sure.
I have recently been hearing about intermittent fasting as a way to control weight and improve health. It means, once you have your first meal of the day you can only eat for the next ten hours. Once those ten hours are up, you fast until the next day.
Yea! I wanted to include intermittent fasting, but i figured it will make the post too long. In my next post, which I will be talking about "Beer belly as a myth" I will throw more light on intermittent fasting. Thanks a lot for your contribution @procrastilearner, stay tuned.
Regards!
@njokueruchi I started my steemit day with this post, and I must say not a second of my time was wasted. This is a well detailed write up on belly fats.
by "body fat" here, do you mean both subcutaneous and visceral fats? and this sentence sort of tell me that once I exercise this morning all (84% and 16%) of my "body fats" has been dealt with...did I get it right? If yes, does that mean I can lose "all" my body fats with one exercise? Thanks in anticipation!Now to my question:
Hello @herbayomi! Thanks for commenting.
Hahaha we eat everyday and carry out other activities that adds to our bodies visceral and subcutaneous fat (consciously and unconsciously). You will agree with me that fat loss isn't instantaneous. So chances are, you might not even observe there are gradual changes taking place in your body. Its not a one time fat burning event, its a process. If you lose that body fat today, what about next tomorrow, or next week?
Regards!
Well, I guess you get the point now. Regards!
Yeah I got it now!
I am not fat ooo (I sense you thought I am)... lol
Thanks for the detailed reply @njokueruchi
Hahaha this is steemSTEM @herbayomi. Is there any scientific proof that you are not fat? until then ..hahaha...