How to Get Rid of VISCERAL FAT (FAST!)
In today’s post, we’re going to be talking about how to get rid of visceral fat. Visceral fat is a type of fat that is stored within the abdominal cavity. It is one of the key indicators of metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance. This type of fat is particularly concerning because it surrounds vital organs, including our liver, our stomach, and our intestines. Visceral fat cells produce inflammatory markers, which lead to chronic inflammation and eventually chronic diseases such as heart disease. Reducing visceral fat can significantly reduce your disease risk while improving your health and improving your overall quality of life. So in today’s post, I’m going to give you five actionable steps you can take to start reducing visceral fast today. If you liked this post, please give it a thumbs up. Feel free to share and make sure to subscribe and make sure to follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, where I share new posts every weekday.
Today, we are going to start by talking about what visceral fat is and why it is particularly dangerous. And then we will get into the five steps you can take to reduce visceral versus subcutaneous fat. Visceral fat is a type of fat that is stored in our abdominal cavity surrounding our organs. The other type of fat is subcutaneous fat, which is stored just beneath our skin in various areas around our body. Subcutaneous fat is considered to be good fat because it is less harmful than visceral fat. This is your body’s stored energy supply. So having some subcutaneous fat is normal and healthy. Any fat you can pinch on your body is subcutaneous fat. Visceral fat is hard and large amounts will result in a protruding belly, but you can still have visceral fat even if you cannot see it. Like subcutaneous fat, some visceral fat is normal and healthy, but when you have an excess of it, this is when it starts to become a problem. Excess visceral fat can be caused by a few different factors, which we’ll talk about more as we go through this post, but now let’s get into the five steps you can take to reduce visceral fat and make sure to stick around until the end because the last one you might not expect.
Number one reduced fructose. Fructose is a type of simple sugar that makes up 50% of table sugar and is also found naturally in fruit. Fructose has to be processed by the liver to be used, whereas with glucose, it doesn’t, and it can be used for energy immediately. Excess fructose tends to get stored as visceral fat, whereas excess glucose tends to get stored as subcutaneous fat. In a study done on 41 children, fructose was replaced with starch in the diet, providing the same amount of calories. In just 10 days, visceral fat was reduced by over 10%. The main sources of fructose in modern-day diets are sugar-sweetened beverages and fruit juice. These drinks allow us to consume massive amounts of fructose that we wouldn’t be able to consume from whole food sources, such as fruit. The average American consumes 85 to 100 grams of fructose every single day. This is equivalent to 25 teaspoons of sugar. Now, of course, pop is a huge problem here. A bottle of Coke has over 35 grams of fructose, but fruit juice is also a concern. One cup of orange juice has 14 grams of fructose. Whereas one orange in whole food form contains only six grams. Now some people choose to decrease their fruit intake entirely and only stick to low sugar fruit. But I don’t think that is necessary for everyone. If you could at least cut out pop and fruit juice, this will significantly reduce your fructose intake. And in turn, lead to a reduction in visceral fat.
Number two increase stearic acid. Stearic acid is a type of saturated fat that has been highly associated with fat loss and specifically visceral fat loss stearic acid is found in the fat of meat. It is found in animal fat used for cooking, such as tallow and butter, and also in some fatty plant foods, such as cacao butter. In one study done on mice where the mice were fed a diet enriched with either steric acid, which has saturated fat, linolenic acid, which is polyunsaturated fat, or lactic acid, which is modeled on saturated fat. They didn’t see much difference in the total body weight between groups at the end of the study. However, the stearic acid group saw a 70% reduction in visceral fat and an increase in lean body mass when compared to the other groups. This study is of course done on mice and not humans. So we have to take it with a grain of salt, but it’s very interesting. Nonetheless, swapping your cooking oil for one that is high in stearic acids, such as tallow or butter can help to boost your steric acid intake.
Number three, improve insulin sensitivity. Insulin resistance is the driving force behind visceral fat. In a lot of cases, it occurs when our body stopped accurately responding to insulin due to an overproduction of it. When you’re insulin resistant, fat gets stored in places such as around our organs in our abdomen. If you can reduce your insulin resistance and improve your insulin sensitivity, this will help to prevent and reduce visceral fat. The best strategies to improve insulin resistance are low carb diets and intermittent fasting. Both of these stimulate insulin only minimally or in the case of fasting, not at all, which is what you want.
Number four, reduce alcohol intake. Visceral fat is also highly associated with excess alcohol consumption. Like fructose, alcohol has to be processed by our liver and excess consumption can lead to more fat being stored in the abdomen. And one study done on 8,000 men found that those who drank more alcohol also had the largest waist circumference. And I think a lot of people know that excess alcohol consumption has this effect. As we often refer to this fat accumulation as a beer belly, cutting back on your alcohol consumption can help to reduce visceral fat.
Number five, reduce stress. And finally, we’re going to talk about the role stress plays in visceral fat. When we are stressed, our bodies produce more cortisol, which is the stress hormone. And this has been shown to increase the amount of fat stored in the abdomen. Reducing stress is of course easier said than done. Periodic stress is normal and even beneficial. But when we are chronically stressed, it might be time to take a step back and evaluate how we can reduce our stress load.
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