An unsightly protruding tummy can increase your risk for certain health issues. Women with waist measurements of 35 inches or greater and men with 40-inches waist measurements have unhealthy levels of visceral fat accumulation.
Visceral fat can be harder to detect than subcutaneous fat (the kind you can pinch), so many don’t realize they have excess belly fat until after symptoms appear. But there are ways you can tell for sure!
Waist Measurement
Waist measurements provide invaluable clues as to visceral fat accumulation and health risk, though this test cannot provide definitive answers. A healthy-weight person could still have significant abdominal fat; even those within “normal” BMI range could have too much visceral fat.
Approximate measurements like BMI and waist circumference can be misleading; to get a clearer picture of belly fat, a doctor can use imaging tests or body fat analyzers. Unfortunately, such testing can be expensive and require visiting their office; but such services could help people better understand their visceral fat levels more accurately and make changes that will improve their health.
If a man or woman’s waist measurement exceeds 40 inches for men and 35 inches for women, this indicates too much visceral fat is present. Visceral fat increases their risk for high blood pressure, sleep apnea, and heart disease – visiting their physician will give insight into these long-term risks as well as providing tips to lower visceral fat levels through diet and exercise.
Women or men with too much abdominal fat are at an increased risk for insulin resistance, which increases their likelihood of type 2 diabetes and high cholesterol. To reduce visceral fat accumulation, diet and lifestyle modifications such as eating meals that include lean proteins, whole grains, low-fat dairy and fruits & vegetables while cutting back on trans fats, sodium & sugar consumption is beneficial; exercise as well as getting enough sleep are additional assets.
One way of measuring abdominal fat is calculating a waist-to-hip ratio by wrapping a tape measure around your waist (over the belly button) and taking measurements from both hips (as if sitting on a chair). Once these numbers have been calculated, divide your waist measurement by your hip measurement: any ratio over 0.8 indicates you may be at increased risk for obesity-related illnesses.
Visceral fat can be difficult to shed, but maintaining a nutritional and active lifestyle may provide assistance in losing it. A doctor can suggest an exercise and diet program tailored specifically for each person’s health requirements.
Body Composition Test
Your body is composed of both fat and muscle tissue. While having some fat can be healthy, too much visceral fat can lead to serious health conditions like cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes. How you store this type of fat affects how your hormones work as well as risk factors associated with these illnesses.
Visceral fat levels in individuals are determined by both genetics and environmental influences such as diet, exercise and stress levels. While your genes will largely dictate how much visceral fat you store, diet may play a part as too many fatty foods and carbohydrates (sugars) consumed may lead to high visceral fat accumulations. Furthermore, those who sleep less than seven hours each night tend to store increased amounts of visceral fat.
An accurate and reliable way of determining body composition is with dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA/DXA). This method provides a detailed report, detailing total body fat percentage as well as breakdowns by arms, legs, android (waist) and gynoid (hips).
BMI can be an accurate measure of overall obesity; however, it doesn’t account for visceral fat deposits and levels. Therefore, many doctors advise their patients to undergo a body composition test in order to accurately gauge their visceral fat level and assess if it has reached dangerously high levels.
Absorbed abdominal fat is an integral factor in the development of obesity, yet can be difficult to measure with traditional tools like BMI and waist circumference. Luckily, noninvasive yet cost-effective techniques such as bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) and computed tomography (CT) offer non-invasive and cost-effective techniques for monitoring visceral fat. For example, BIA provides widely accessible body composition measurements that have shown strong correlation with CT-derived reference cutpoints for visceral obesity assessment in adults.
BMI Calculator
BMI (body mass index) is an easy and cost-effective screening tool designed to assess body fat. However, it does not differentiate between subcutaneous and visceral fat deposits, with visceral fat being linked with increased risks for metabolic conditions (type 2 diabetes), cardiovascular diseases such as coronary artery disease or ankylosing spondylitis inflammation as well as oncological diseases like Crohn’s disease ankylosing spondylitis as well as dementia or early death independently of weight and BMI.
This calculator takes your gender, age, sex and height and uses several estimation methods to calculate your percentage of body fat. Adult men and women will use the US Navy formula, while children and adolescents can utilize clinical growth charts as estimation methods. Furthermore, this calculator offers you a comparison table so you can see how your BMI compares with others of similar ages and sexe.
This approach does not take into account which components of your body fat consist of muscles, bone and water. Furthermore, this measure does not give an accurate picture of overall health because it doesn’t reveal how much abdominal body fat increases your risk for heart disease and other health complications.
There are also online calculators that estimate body fat percentage using circumference measurements like waist, hip and forearm circumference measurements along with gender, height and weight information to make an estimation. While more accurate than BMI calculations, these methods still have some limitations. A more reliable approach would be using skinfold calipers to take measurements at multiple spots on your body at least twice each; most commonly these would include chest, abs and thigh thickness measurements at different points after breathing out to get an approximate percent body fat estimate.
Getting Started
To accurately gauge your visceral fat levels, the best approach is to seek advice from healthcare providers. They will conduct a full health exam and customize a diet and exercise plan specifically for you. Be sure to schedule an appointment so that your physician can measure your waist while considering other health factors like high blood pressure or diabetes that could potentially pose risks.
Visceral fat differs from subcutaneous fat in that it lies deep within your abdominal wall and surrounds organs such as your liver and intestines. It accounts for one-tenth of total body fat. A large belly or wide waistline are often indicators of visceral fat build-up; its presence has been linked with higher blood pressure, heart disease, cholesterol levels, type 2 diabetes and sleep apnea.
Visceral fat can release chemicals into your system that can trigger inflammation and affect body processes, interfering with normal functioning as well as increasing risk for type 2 diabetes. Insulin resistance increases this risk.
Visceral fat can be lost through diet and exercise programs similar to those used to lose weight, including eating a low-sodium diet with plenty of vegetables, lean proteins and whole grains. You should also reduce sugar consumption since this contributes significantly to visceral fat storage in your abdomen; examples include sodas, fruit juices and bakery products containing sugar.
Regular exercise is another key element to successfully managing visceral fat. Focus on doing both cardiovascular exercises that raise your heart rate and strength training exercises that help build muscle. Furthermore, stress management techniques may be useful as visceral fat is more likely to form in individuals who are chronically stressed.
Visceral fat can be easier to lose than subcutaneous fat, since its metabolism is faster. Your body should flush it out through sweat or pee, with results evident within two or three months if you stick with healthy habits.
