Visceral Belly Fat & How To Lose It

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Visceral Belly Fat & How To Lose It

We’ve talked before about how waist circumference is a much more useful indicator of metabolic health than BMI.

So, let’s say you’ve a bit more around the middle than you’d like, but it stubbornly stays there. What’s going on underneath what you can see, why is it going on, and how can you get it to change?

What is visceral fat?

First, let’s talk about subcutaneous fat. That’s the fat directly under your skin. Women usually have more than men, and that’s perfectly healthy (up to a point); it’s supposed to be that way. We (women) will tend to accumulate this mostly in places such as our breasts, hips, and butt, and work outwards from there. Men will tend to put it on more to the belly and face.

Side-note: if you’re undergoing (untreated) menopause, the changes in your hormone levels will tend to result in more subcutaneous fat to the belly and face too. That’s normal, and/but normal is not always good, and treatment options are great (with hormone replacement therapy, HRT, topping the list).

Visceral fat (also called visceral adipose tissue), on the other hand, is the fat of the viscera—the internal organs of the abdomen.

So, this is fat that goes under your abdominal muscles—you can’t squeeze this (directly).

So what can we do?

Famously “you can’t do spot reduction” (lose fat from a particular part of your body by focusing exercises on that area), but that’s about subcutaneous fat. There are things you can do that will reduce your visceral fat in particular.

Some of these advices you may think “that’s just good advice for losing fat in general” and it is, yes. But these are things that have the biggest impact on visceral fat.

Cut alcohol use

This is the biggie. By numerous mechanisms, some of which we’ve talked about before, alcohol causes weight gain in general yes, but especially for visceral fat.

Get better sleep

You might think that hitting the gym is most important, but this one ranks higher. Yes, you can trim visceral fat without leaving your bed (and even without getting athletic in bed, for that matter). Not convinced?

So, the verdict is clear: you snooze, you lose (visceral fat)!

Tweak your diet

You don’t have to do a complete overhaul (unless you want to), but a few changes can make a big difference, especially:

If you’d like to learn more and enjoy videos, here’s an informative one to get you going!

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  • The Seven Circles – by Chelsey Luger & Thosh Collins

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    At first glance, this can seem like an unscientific book—you won’t find links to studies in this one, for sure! However, if we take a look at the seven circles in question, they are:

    1. Food
    2. Movement
    3. Sleep
    4. Ceremony
    5. Sacred Space
    6. Land
    7. Community

    Regular 10almonds readers may notice that these seven items contain five of the things strongly associated with the “supercentenarian Blue Zones”. (If you are wondering why Native American reservations are not Blue Zones, the answer there lies less in health science and more in history and sociology, and what things have been done to a given people).

    The authors—who are Native American, yes—present in one place a wealth of knowledge and know-how. Not even just from their own knowledge and their own respective tribes, but gathered from other tribes too.

    Perhaps the strongest value of this book to the reader is in the explanation of noting the size of each of those circles, how they connect with each other, and providing a whole well-explained system for how we can grow each of them in harmony with each other.

    Or to say the same thing in sciencey terms: how to mindfully improve integrated lifestyle factors synergistically for greater efficacy and improved health-adjusted quality-of-life years.

    Bottom line: if you’re not averse to something that mostly doesn’t use sciencey terms of have citations to peer-reviewed studies peppered through the text, then this book has wisdom that’s a) older than the pyramids of Giza, yet also b) highly consistent with our current best science of Blue Zone healthy longevity.

    Click here to check out The Seven Circles, and live well!

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  • The Epigenetics Revolution – by Dr. Nessa Carey

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    If you enjoyed the book “Inheritance” that we reviewed a couple of days ago, you might love this as a “next read” book. But you can also just dive straight in here, if you like!

    This one, as the title suggests, focuses entirely on epigenetics—how our life events can shape our genetic expression, and that of our descendants. Or to look at it in the other direction, how our genetic expression can be shaped by the life experiences of, for example, our grandparents.

    The style of this book is very much pop-science, but contains a lot of information from hard science throughout. We learn not just about longitudinal population studies as one might expect, but also about the intricacies of DNA methylation and histone modifications, for example.

    Depending on your outlook, you may find some of this very bleak (“great, I am shackled by what my grandparents did”) or very optimism-inducing (“oh wow, I’m not nearly so constrained by genetics as I thought; this stuff is so malleable!”). This is also the same author who wrote “Hacking The Code of Life“, by the way, but we’ll review that another day.

    Bottom line: this book is the best one-shot primer on epigenetics that this reviewer has read (you may be wondering how many that is, and the answer is… about seven or so? I’m not good at counting).

    Click here to check out The Epigenetics Revolution, and learn how dynamic you really are!

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  • When You “Can’t Complain”

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    A Bone To Pick… Up And Then Put Back Where We Found It

    In today’s Psychology Sunday feature, we’re going to be flipping the narrative on gratitude, by tackling it from the other end.

    We have, by the way, written previously about gratitude, and what mistakes to avoid, in one of our pieces on positive psychology:

    How To Get Your Brain On A More Positive Track (Without Toxic Positivity)

    “Can’t complain”

    Your mission, should you choose to accept it (and come on, who doesn’t like a challenge?) is to go 21 days without complaining (to anyone, including yourself, about anything). If you break your streak, that’s ok, just start again!

    Why?

    Complaining is (unsurprisingly) inversely correlated with happiness, in a self-perpetuating cycle:

    Pet Peeves and Happiness: How Do Happy People Complain?

    And if a stronger motivation is required, there’s a considerable inverse correlation between all-cause happiness and all-cause mortality, even when potential confounding factors (e.g., chronic health conditions, socioeconomic status, etc) are controlled for, and especially as we get older:

    Investing in Happiness: The Gerontological Perspective

    How?

    You may have already formulated some objections by this point, for example:

    • Am I supposed to tell my doctor/therapist “I’m fine thanks; how are you?”
    • Some things are worthy of complaint; should I be silent?

    But both of these issues (communication, and righteousness) have answers:

    On communication:

    There is a difference between complaining, and giving the necessary information in answer to a question—or even volunteering such information.

    For example, when our site went down yesterday, some of you wrote to us to let us know the links weren’t working. There is a substantive difference (semantic, ontological, and teleological) between:

    • The content was great but the links in “you may have missed” did not work.❞ ← a genuine piece of feedback we received (thank you!)
    • Wasted my time, couldn’t read your articles! Unsubscribing, and I hope your socks get wet tomorrow! ← nobody said this; our subscribers are lovely (thank you)
    • Note that the former wasn’t a complaint, it was genuinely helpful feedback, without which we might not have noticed the problem and fixed it.
    • The latter was a complaint, and also (like many complaints) didn’t even address the actual problem usefully.

    What makes it a complaint or not is not the information conveyed, but the tone and intention. So for example:

    “You’ve only done half the job I asked you to!” → “Thank you for doing the first half of this job, could you please do the other half now?”

    Writer’s anecdote: my washing machine needs a part replaced; the part was ordered two weeks ago and I was told it would take a week to arrive. It’s been two weeks, so tomorrow I will not complain, but I will politely ask whether they have any information about the delay, and a new estimated time of arrival. Because you know what? Whatever the delay is, complaining won’t make it arrive last week!

    On righteousness:

    Indeed, some things are very worthy of complaint. But are you able to effect a solution by complaining? If not, then it’s just hot air. And venting isn’t without its own merits (we touched on the benefits of emotional catharsis recently), but that should be a mindful choice when you choose to do that, not a matter of reactivity.

    Complaining is a subset of criticizing, and criticizing can be done without the feeling and intent of complaining. However, it too should definitely be measured and considered, responsive, not reactive. This itself could be the topic for another main feature, but for now, here’s a Psychology Today article that at least explains the distinction in more words than we have room for here:

    React vs Respond: What’s the difference?

    This, by the way, also goes the same for engaging in social and political discourse. It’s easy to get angry and reactive, but it’s good to take a moment to pick your battles, and by all means fight for what you believe in, and/but also do so responsively rather than reactively.

    Not only will your health thank you, but you’re also more likely to “win friends and influence people” and all that!

    What gets measured, gets done

    Find a way of tracking your streak. There are apps for that, like this one, or you could find a low-tech method you prefer.

    Bonus tip: if you do mess up and complain, and you realize as you’re doing it, take a moment to take a breath and correct yourself in the moment.

    Take care!

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  • Body on Fire – by Dr. Monica Aggarwal and Dr. Jyothi Rao

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    There are times when you do really need a doctor, not a dietician. But there are also times when a doctor will prescribe something for the symptom, leaving the underlying issue untouched. If only there were a way to have the best of both worlds!

    That’s where Drs. Rao and Aggarwal come in. They’re both medical doctors… with a keen interest in nutrition and healthy lifestyle changes to make us less sick such that we have less need to go to the doctor at all.

    Best of all, they understand—while some things are true for everyone—there’s not a one-size-fits all diet or exercise regime or even sleep setup.

    So instead, they take us hand-in-hand (chapter by chapter!) through the various parts of our life (including our diet) that might need tweaking. Each of these changes, if taken up, promise a net improvement that becomes synergistic with the other changes. There’s a degree of biofeedback involved, and listening to your body, to be sure of what’s really best for you, not what merely should be best for you on paper.

    The writing style is accessible while science-heavy. They don’t assume prior knowledge, and/but they sure deliver a lot. The book is more text than images, but there are plenty of medical diagrams, explanations, charts, and the like. You will feed like a medical student! And it’s very much worth studying.

    Bottom line: highly recommendable even if you don’t have inflammation issues, and worth its weight in gold if you do.

    Get your copy of Body on Fire from Amazon today!

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  • Why do I poo in the morning? A gut expert explains

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    No, you’re not imagining it. People really are more likely to poo in the morning, shortly after breakfast. Researchers have actually studied this.

    But why mornings? What if you tend to poo later in the day? And is it worth training yourself to be a morning pooper?

    To understand what makes us poo when we do, we need to consider a range of factors including our body clock, gut muscles and what we have for breakfast.

    Here’s what the science says.

    H_Ko/Shutterstock

    So morning poos are real?

    In a UK study from the early 1990s, researchers asked nearly 2,000 men and women in Bristol about their bowel habits.

    The most common time to poo was in the early morning. The peak time was 7-8am for men and about an hour later for women. The researchers speculated that the earlier time for men was because they woke up earlier for work.

    About a decade later, a Chinese study found a similar pattern. Some 77% of the almost 2,500 participants said they did a poo in the morning.

    But why the morning?

    There are a few reasons. The first involves our circadian rhythm – our 24-hour internal clock that helps regulate bodily processes, such as digestion.

    For healthy people, our internal clock means the muscular contractions in our colon follow a distinct rhythm.

    There’s minimal activity in the night. The deeper and more restful our sleep, the fewer of these muscle contractions we have. It’s one reason why we don’t tend to poo in our sleep.

    Diagram of digestive system including colon and rectum
    Your lower gut is a muscular tube that contracts more strongly at certain times of day. Vectomart/Shutterstock

    But there’s increasing activity during the day. Contractions in our colon are most active in the morning after waking up and after any meal.

    One particular type of colon contraction partly controlled by our internal clock are known as “mass movements”. These are powerful contractions that push poo down to the rectum to prepare for the poo to be expelled from the body, but don’t always result in a bowel movement. In healthy people, these contractions occur a few times a day. They are more frequent in the morning than in the evening, and after meals.

    Breakfast is also a trigger for us to poo. When we eat and drink our stomach stretches, which triggers the “gastrocolic reflex”. This reflex stimulates the colon to forcefully contract and can lead you to push existing poo in the colon out of the body. We know the gastrocolic reflex is strongest in the morning. So that explains why breakfast can be such a powerful trigger for a bowel motion.

    Then there’s our morning coffee. This is a very powerful stimulant of contractions in the sigmoid colon (the last part of the colon before the rectum) and of the rectum itself. This leads to a bowel motion.

    How important are morning poos?

    Large international surveys show the vast majority of people will poo between three times a day and three times a week.

    This still leaves a lot of people who don’t have regular bowel habits, are regular but poo at different frequencies, or who don’t always poo in the morning.

    So if you’re healthy, it’s much more important that your bowel habits are comfortable and regular for you. Bowel motions do not have to occur once a day in the morning.

    Morning poos are also not a good thing for everyone. Some people with irritable bowel syndrome feel the urgent need to poo in the morning – often several times after getting up, during and after breakfast. This can be quite distressing. It appears this early-morning rush to poo is due to overstimulation of colon contractions in the morning.

    Can you train yourself to be regular?

    Yes, for example, to help treat constipation using the gastrocolic reflex. Children and elderly people with constipation can use the toilet immediately after eating breakfast to relieve symptoms. And for adults with constipation, drinking coffee regularly can help stimulate the gut, particularly in the morning.

    A disturbed circadian rhythm can also lead to irregular bowel motions and people more likely to poo in the evenings. So better sleep habits can not only help people get a better night’s sleep, it can help them get into a more regular bowel routine.

    Man preparing Italian style coffee at home, adding coffee to pot
    A regular morning coffee can help relieve constipation. Caterina Trimarchi/Shutterstock

    Regular physical activity and avoiding sitting down a lot are also important in stimulating bowel movements, particularly in people with constipation.

    We know stress can contribute to irregular bowel habits. So minimising stress and focusing on relaxation can help bowel habits become more regular.

    Fibre from fruits and vegetables also helps make bowel motions more regular.

    Finally, ensuring adequate hydration helps minimise the chance of developing constipation, and helps make bowel motions more regular.

    Monitoring your bowel habits

    Most of us consider pooing in the morning to be regular. But there’s a wide variation in normal so don’t be concerned if your poos don’t follow this pattern. It’s more important your poos are comfortable and regular for you.

    If there’s a major change in the regularity of your bowel habits that’s concerning you, see your GP. The reason might be as simple as a change in diet or starting a new medication.

    But sometimes this can signify an important change in the health of your gut. So your GP may need to arrange further investigations, which could include blood tests or imaging.

    Vincent Ho, Associate Professor and clinical academic gastroenterologist, Western Sydney University

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • Coughing/Wheezing After Dinner?

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    The After-Dinner Activities You Don’t Want

    A quick note first: our usual medical/legal disclaimer applies here, and we are not here to diagnose you or treat you; we are not doctors, let alone your doctors. Do see yours if you have any reason to believe there may be cause for concern.

    Coughing and/or wheezing after eating is more common the younger or older someone is. Lest that seem contradictory: it’s a U-shaped bell-curve.

    It can happen at any age and for any of a number of reasons, but there are patterns to the distribution:

    Mostly affects younger people:

    Allergies, asthma

    Young people are less likely to have a body that’s fully adapted to all foods yet, and asthma can be triggered by certain foods (for example sulfites, a common preservative additive):

    Adverse reactions to the sulphite additives

    Foods/drinks that commonly contain sulfites include soft drinks, wines and beers, and dried fruit

    As for the allergies side of things, you probably know the usual list of allergens to watch out for, e.g: dairy, fish, crustaceans, eggs, soy, wheat, nuts.

    However, that’s far from an exhaustive list, so it’s good to see an allergist if you suspect it may be an allergic reaction.

    Affects young and old people equally:

    Again, there’s a dip in the middle where this doesn’t tend to affect younger adults so much, but for young and old people:

    Dysphagia (difficulty swallowing)

    For children, this can be a case of not having fully got used to eating yet if very small, and when growing, can be a case of “this body is constantly changing and that makes things difficult”.

    For older people, this can can come from a variety of reasons, but common culprits include neurological disorders (including stroke and/or dementia), or a change in saliva quality and quantity—a side-effect of many medications:

    Hyposalivation in Elderly Patients

    (particularly useful in the article above is the table of drugs that are associated with this problem, and the various ways they may affect it)

    Managing this may be different depending on what is causing your dysphagia (as it could be anything from antidepressants to cancer), so this is definitely one to see your doctor about. For some pointers, though:

    NHS Inform | Dysphagia (swallowing problems)

    Affects older people more:

    Gastroesophagal reflux disease (GERD)

    This is a kind of acid reflux, but chronic, and often with a slightly different set of symptoms.

    GERD has no known cure once established, but its symptoms can be managed (or avoided in the first place) by:

    And of course, don’t smoke, and ideally don’t drink alcohol.

    You can read more about this (and the different ways it can go from there), here:

    NICE | Gastro-oesophageal reflux disease

    Note: this above page refers to it as “GORD”, because of the British English spelling of “oesophagus” rather than “esophagus”. It’s the exact same organ and condition, just a different spelling.

    Take care!

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