The Two Types Of Belly Fat

Although the fat on your stomach may look the same to you, it&undefined;s not. There are actually two types of fat – subcutaneous and visceral.  Subcutaneous is best defined as the fat that you can see and the fat that you can actually feel and grab with your hands. This fat is found everywhere on the body – your arms, thighs, stomach, hips, butt, etc. Visceral fat is the other kind of fat that is deeper inside your body  and is found in the torso.

These two types of fat are very different. For one, subcutaneous fat is something that everyone has and it is actually essential for life. It insulates your body and keeps you warm – too little fat is bad for your health.  Having too much subcutaneous fat is also not good for you. Too much of this type of fat can mean you are overweight or even obese which is associated with higher cholesterol levels, low energy, heart problems, and more. Although too much subcutaneous fat impacts your health negatively, visceral fat is even more problematic. Because visceral fat is found deep within your torso and surrounding your internal organs, it can do much more damage than surface subcutaneous fat. Visceral fat wraps itself around your heart, liver, kidneys and other major organs in the core of our body. For this reason, it is deadly. It remains unseen and even think people can have a large amount of visceral fat inside of them.  Visceral fat has been linked to high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease, high cholesterol, diabetes, breast cancer and dementia. This type of fat harms your body mostly due to it&undefined;s inflammatory properies. Visceral fat causes the body to release an inflammatory chemical which causes many health problems within the body.

Although it is very hard to tell if your levels of visceral fat are in check, it is important to maintain a moderate to high level of activity throughout your lifetime. The best way to beat this internal fat is to engage yourself in a cardiovascular exercise on most days of the week.  Visceral fat is hard to lose so work hard and make sure that you sweat it out for a minimum of 40 minutes 5 days a week.