One type of fat is known medically as “visceral fat.” It’s basically deep abdominal fat that becomes a great risk factor for disease the longer it’s allowed to hang around. This is the kind of fat that sedentary people (those who give little credence to exercise) are bound to develop, as the fat, cholesterol, and triglycerides ingested during a meal are not adequately burned off with exercise. When this happens every day, your body stores the excess fat for potential future use.
A new study has looked into visceral fat and its relation to obesity or being overweight, where researchers have found that if people perform regular exercise they can reverse this increasing amount of abdominal fat and start to lose the extra pounds as a result. It’s simple really, as an exercising body needs to use fat for energy once it’s burned through any lingering sugar and triglycerides from a recent meal. It turns out that exercise can make a serious dent in visceral fat, too.
This is an important finding, as a high level of visceral fat greatly increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, and a handful of other metabolic health problems. In any event, the researchers found that overweight individuals who used treadmills and stationary bicycles started to lose their storage of visceral fat. As for the individuals who didn’t start to exercise — remaining sedentary for a half-year — they kept putting on the pounds, adding to their storage of visceral fat.
These new findings show that exercise can help get rid of even the deepest forms of fat — the ones that are hardest to shed. Even moderate exercise — such as brisk walking for 40 minutes or so — can help prevent putting on this form of abdominal fat. In fact, exercise can even reverse the process entirely. It’s best to get as much exercise as you can manage, as the study participants who did the most lost both visceral fat and the kind of superficial fat that generates “love handles.” The amount of exercise they got equaled about 20 miles of jogging a week.
In all, it’s the amount of exercise you do — not the intensity — which counts. The more exercise you do the better the results will be. The researchers found that people who did the most exercise had an average loss of 7% visceral fat while participants who stayed sedentary gained nearly 10% over the six months.
By engaging in moderate exercise over the long-term, you will do much more for your body than any diet every will. Stay motivated, and do something active every day. Even a half-hour walk will suffice on days when you don’t feel inspired to do more. Think of it all this way: we eat every day, so why shouldn’t we exercise every day?
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Tags: exercise, obesity
