Body Fat Distribution

Everyone knows that having a high body fat percentage could be bad for your health, but where you carry your fat is also worth discussing. Your body fat distribution has a significant impact on your overall health. Learn more about the two main types of body fat and tips to achieve healthier fat distribution.

Subcutaneous vs. Visceral Fat

The word “subcutaneous” means “under the skin.” This type of fat is pinchable, pokable, and jiggly, with the most accumulation around your hips, rear end, thighs, and belly. About 90 percent of stored fat is subcutaneous.

Surprisingly, small amounts of subcutaneous fat can be beneficial. After all, it generates the hormone leptin, which helps regulate appetite and metabolism. It also produces an anti-inflammatory hormone called adiponectin that helps modulate blood sugar levels

The term “visceral” describes anything related to the internal organs. As such, this type of fat sits deep inside your abdominal cavity and surrounds your vital organs. You can’t detect visceral fat from the outside, but it poses major health risks.

If visceral fat finds its way into your liver, it converts into cholesterol, an artery-clogging, heart attack-causing lipid that many people have in dangerous excess. Visceral fat may also increase chronic inflammation and contribute to type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, breast and colorectal cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease.

What Affects Body Fat Distribution?

Your diet and exercise habits directly impact your body fat percentage. However, you don’t get much choice over whether fat stores in subcutaneous or visceral deposits. Here are the top factors that affect body fat distribution:

  • Gender: Men tend to accumulate fat in their midsection for an apple-shaped body, while women usually store fat in their hips, thighs, and buttocks for a more pear-shaped silhouette.
  • Genetics: If most of your family members have either round bellies or full hips, odds are your body will follow suit.
  • Age: Due to factors such as a slowing metabolism, gradual loss of muscle mass, and decline in sex hormones, your body fat percentage tends to increase as you age. And most of the extra fat your body tucks away is visceral rather than subcutaneous.

BMI Doesn’t Predict Body Fat

It’s difficult to tell how much visceral fat you have because it surrounds your organs rather than sitting directly below your skin. You might think your body mass index (BMI) would reveal all, but this isn’t a measurement of body fat—it’s simply a ratio of your weight and height. A bulky, toned bodybuilder could have the same BMI as an overweight couch potato, a fact that makes the limitations of BMI very apparent.

While you’re more likely to have a high body fat percentage if your BMI is 25 or above, 22 percent of men and 8 percent of women in the “normal” BMI range of 18.5 to 24.9 also have too much visceral fat. The opposite can also be true—22 percent of men and 10 percent of women in the “obese” BMI range of 30 or higher have healthy levels of visceral fat.

The most precise way to measure body fat distribution is with an MRI or CT scan. Your waist circumference also offers a hint. If you’re a man with a 40-inch or larger waist, or a woman with a waist size of 35 inches or higher, you likely have too much visceral fat.

How to Get Rid of Unhealthy Visceral Fat

Making healthy lifestyle choices can improve your body fat distribution and help you decrease your overall body fat percentage. Here are some tips:

  • Eat complex carbs, lean protein, and healthy fats: Cut back on added sugar and food with saturated fat. In their place, focus on eating more whole grains, beans, legumes, poultry, nuts, seeds, fruits, and veggies.
  • Exercise daily: Sitting for long periods increases the chance of having a large waist circumference. If you have a desk job, get up and stretch once every hour. Then, incorporate formal exercise into your daily routine. Include aerobic exercise, which raises your heart rate, and weight lifting, which increases muscle mass.
  • Lower your stress levels: Chronic stress promotes excess visceral fat. Improve your body fat distribution with relaxation techniques such as meditation, deep breathing, yoga, and massage.
  • Get the ideal amount of rest: In a five-year study, researchers found that people getting five or fewer hours of sleep, as well as participants getting eight or more hours of sleep, had higher BMIs than those getting six to seven hours of sleep. So rest up, but don’t overdo it!
  • Limit your alcohol intake: Beer is packed with empty calories. Having several drinks in a row increases the chance that these calories will be stored as visceral fat. Heavy drinkers are also more likely to have “beer bellies,” so stick to just one or two drinks per day to promote a healthy body fat percentage.

Support Healthy Body Fat Distribution with Proper Spine Care

When you make wise choices to improve your body fat distribution, your overall health improves. This helps your body heal from chronic illnesses and acute injuries more effectively. As a result, the treatments you receive at Spine Correction Center of the Rockies are more effective.

Whether you’re looking for personalized nutritional and lifestyle advice, or you hope to find a non-invasive, drug-free therapy that can help your chronic back pain, we can help! Please contact our Fort Collins office at (970) 658-5115 to schedule a free consultation today.