Nowadays, weight management has become one of the important tasks for many people to live a healthy life, but some people still have such troubles, why do I not look fat, but my body fat is high, or even visceral fat is high? He became a veritable "skinny fat man". China PEACE Million Population Project research found that 1 in 7 people is obese, and the detection rates of abdominal obesity are as high as 32.7% in women and 36.6% in men.

How to define obesity - from weight to body composition

　　Body composition refers to the content of various components in the body. Total weight is body weight, including fat and non-fat components. The percentage of body fat weight in body weight is called body fat rate, and the remainder including protein, water, and minerals is lean body mass (lean body mass). Compared with BMI, body composition can explain body weight more accurately and accurately reflect the proportion of human body muscle, fat tissue and other components. In other words, to accurately determine whether a person is a "fat person", it is not enough to measure weight alone. Body fat rate is the golden indicator.

Subcutaneous fat or visceral fat – can’t tell the difference?

　　Human body fat is divided into subcutaneous fat and visceral fat. Subcutaneous fat is fat that we can feel. It is stored under the skin and can be easily pinched out from any part of the body, such as girls' fat and thick legs. Visceral fat is difficult to feel or pinch. Visceral fat is usually stored in the abdominal cavity, surrounding several important organs, such as the liver, stomach, intestines, etc. Since visceral fat mainly exists inside the abdominal cavity, the common visceral fat obesity is mainly abdominal obesity, which looks like a potbelly. As everyone knows, visceral fat is called "the most dangerous fat".

Visceral fat – a health hazard that cannot be ignored

　　A harms cardiovascular health

　　Often, different fat sites are correlated and it is difficult to distinguish their independent effects, but multiple measurement studies have shown that higher visceral fat mass is independent of total fat mass and can predict increased risk of cardiometabolic diseases. Higher visceral fat mass is associated with an increased risk of high blood pressure, heart attack, angina, type 2 diabetes, and hyperlipidemia.

　　BCognitive decline

　　In 2023, Singaporean scholars published a data analysis based on more than 8,000 Asian people in The Lancet and found that excessive obesity is a key metabolic risk factor for cognitive decline. Another danger of excess visceral fat is cognitive impairment. Yes, you heard it right, excess visceral fat may lead to Alzheimer’s disease. Every 0.27kg increase in visceral fat is associated with 0.7 years of cognitive aging.

How to lose “bad” fat in the new year

　　A sleep well

　　A research paper published by researchers at the Mayo Medical Center in the United States in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC) found that insufficient sleep can promote the accumulation of abdominal fat, especially visceral fat, in young adults, and lead to an increased risk of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. Researchers say that under normal circumstances, fat is preferentially deposited under the skin. However, lack of sleep appears to move fat to more dangerous visceral areas. What's more, even if caloric intake and weight are reduced, sleep deprivation can still cause visceral fat to continue to increase. This suggests that sleep deprivation is a previously unrecognized trigger for visceral fat deposition. Therefore, if you want to lose weight, you must strive to go to bed early, preferably before 11 o'clock. The length of sleep every night is also very important, try not to be less than 6 hours.

　　B Eat well

　　Research has found that compared to a low-fat diet or a balanced diet, a low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet is more conducive to reducing visceral fat, especially in the short term. A large number of studies have also proven that light fasting can not only slow down aging, but also help break down fat stored in the internal organs by improving insulin sensitivity, accelerating glucose and lipid metabolism. Low-sugar diet and light fasting methods are recommended, that is, reducing sugar intake and increasing the intake of cereals and carbohydrates. When eating, focus on vegetables and fish, reduce the intake of staple foods such as rice, pasta, and bread, and eat vegetables first and then staple foods. The order of eating will also affect the size of your waistline, so you can drink vegetable soup first and then eat staple food last. In addition, you can compress the eating time of the day to less than 8 hours and adopt the 168 light fasting method. This kind of diet can be adhered to for a long time and is not easy to gain weight. Stick to it for two weeks and you will notice a difference in yourself. It should be noted that within 8 hours of consuming food, do not overeat and pay attention to calorie control.

　　C exercise well

　　Avoid sitting for long periods of time. If you sit for long periods of time, your body's metabolism will slow down, and excess calories will easily turn into fat and accumulate in your belly. Studies have shown that if you sit for 1.5 hours more every day, your waist circumference will increase by 0.57 cm, and your body fat will also increase by 0.44%. Before exercising, we must first reject a sedentary lifestyle. Every time we sit for an hour, stand up and walk around for 5 to 10 minutes.

　　Snack exercise method anytime, anywhere. The snack exercise method refers to a fragmented, stop-and-go exercise method like snacks, that is, using the gaps in time and space as much as possible to maintain the rhythm of exercise. It can be as short as 20 seconds or as long as 10 minutes, adjust according to your rhythm. This "snack exercise" is also called intermittent vigorous lifestyle or physical activity (VILPA). Simply put, compared to actively going to the gym or exercising outdoors, VILPA is equivalent to completing exercises inadvertently in daily life. For example, when brushing your teeth and washing your face in the morning, do regular tiptoe stretching exercises; when cooking and cooking, you can do squat exercises while washing the dishes; after you have eaten a full meal and don’t want to go out for exercise, you can walk back and forth in the living room for a dozen times. ; Go out for a walk or ride instead of driving. If the distance is too far, try parking 500 meters away from your destination and allow yourself to walk a distance, etc.

　　High-intensity interval exercise is better. High-intensity intermittent exercise (HIIT) typically involves short bursts of high-intensity exercise, followed by a period of lower-intensity exercise or rest. Simply put, high-intensity interval exercise combines high-intensity and low-intensity training in cycles. This is also a very popular aerobic exercise training method in the sports medicine field in the past decade. For example, it could include a 5-10 minute warm-up, a 15-second high-intensity phase, a 2-3-minute low-intensity phase, 5-10 repetitions of the cycle, and finally a cool-down phase. A study in the Journal of Applied Physiology found that seven sessions of HIIT training over a 2-week period could improve body fat burning and increase the ability of skeletal muscles to burn fat. Many studies have shown that HIIT can not only reduce subcutaneous fat, but also reduce visceral fat. You might as well try it.

　　(Published every Wednesday)

　　Jointly produced by Jiangsu Provincial Sports Bureau and Yangzi Evening News

　　Huang Jianya, Jiangsu Sports Science Institute

　　Source: Yangtze Evening News