Targeting Excess Belly Fat, Part 1 – InVite Health Podcast, Episode 353
belly fat
Invite Health Podcast, Episode hosted by Jerry Hickey, Ph.
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Stretching and exercise can offer many benefits to the body, including helping to boost mood, promote joint health and build flexibility, but they also help you lose excess body fat. Excess fat on your belly is dangerous.†
What is VAT fat?
The excess fat on your belly is called VAT fat, or visceral adipose tissue. It causes chronic, low-grade inflammation that radiates out from the fat and travels throughout your body, where it becomes systemic inflammation. VAT fat raises the risk of developing many diseases and also messes with the health of the brain, lungs, heart, liver and more. Belly fat can also interfere with your body’s ability to balance blood sugar.†
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Exercising to help with belly fat
Studies looking at how to lose belly fat have found that cutting calories isn’t enough. Research dating back to the 1980s shows that this method only works for a brief time because the body begins to go into a famine mode, which makes it harder to lose further calories and belly fat. When this happens, eating less food actually becomes more fattening, which creates a vicious cycle.†
In light of this, researchers have found that if you incorporate exercise into your diet, it prevents you from hitting the wall where your body stops burning calories. This allows you to continue to lose fat. In these studies, marrying regular exercise with a good diet helped prevent the body from entering that famine mode while helping it to lose more fat.†
You could go to the gym to exercise, but there are also easy ways to work out at home. This can include riding a bicycle, either inside on a stationary exercise bike or outside when the weather is nice. You can also walk daily, as long as you are frequently changing your pace from moderate to a fast sprint walk. These actions help burn calories and are also great for your heart, lungs, stamina and waistline.†
I also want to emphasize stretching, as most Americans that I see do not do enough stretching. Stretching allows you to get blood to your muscles to help prevent an injury. Instead of doing long, static stretches where you’re stuck in one position, you want to do movement stretches. The static stretches are good for the body post-workout.†
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In this episode, Jerry Hickey, Ph. explains the dangers of excess belly fat. He offers details on studies looking at how working out can help you burn this fat and also provides recommendations for exercises that can help promote this process. Jerry will discuss nutrients that can help with loss of belly fat in part 2 of this podcast episode, coming soon.†
Key Topics:
- How VAT fat invades the heart, liver, lungs and kidneys
- Studies on the relationship between exercise and belly fat
- The benefits of alternating between different exercises
- Exercise recommendations from Jerry Hickey, Ph.
- The importance of stretching
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