Many people look in the mirror and see their waistline expanding. Some call it ‘beer belly’, others call it a ‘pot belly’, but whatever name you have for it, this “middle” is a very difficult area of fat to shift.
By middle – most of us refer to our abdomen and indeed in western society, increasing abdominal girth is a major problem.
Every week there is a news story saying that increasing abdominal girth is a dangerous thing for the nations health, related to diabetes, high blood pressure and heart attack.
You may think the solution is easy. Eat too much = get fat? It’s not quite that easy, alas – as anyone who’s tried to get rid of it through exercise will tell you.
Abdominal Fat
There are 2 principle storage places for fat in the abdomen:
Subcutaneous Fat
Subcutaneous fat is the fat just under the skin. If you pull your belly in tight as possible and pinch your belly, this gives a good approximation of Subcutaneous Fat.
This fat has a very poor blood supply, does not respond to dieting very well and stretches the skin so that when you lose weight the skin can be left in folds. At present apart from causing problems with those jeans we do not believe it does a great deal of metabolic damage.
This is the fat that can be removed by a cosmetic procedure called BodyTite.
Visceral Fat
You may have found that you could only pinch a small amount, yet your belly sticks out. This is because the distension of the abdomen results from some cause inside the abdominal cavity, often called the beer belly.
Apart from loose muscles there are 5 causes of abdominal distension:
Fluid, faeces, flatus, foetus and fat.
Leaving aside the others at present, you might be surprised as to why fat should be stored inside the abdominal cavity.
Anyone who has eaten fois gras pate and knows how it is made will be well aware of how fat is stored in goose liver and how it looks when saturated with fat.
The human liver is not much different. Most have heard of fatty liver – not a term of endearment but a serious medical condition that can lead to cirrhosis and death.
Unfortunately having fat in your liver affects its function and how effectively it deals with the thousands of poisons we generate and eat.
It is now believed that this internal fat is closely linked with the so called “metabolic syndrome”. The livers ability to manage sugar becomes damaged and this has far reaching consequences.
So what do you do?
1) Lose weight – if you have a lot of weight to lose or have failed repeatedly, a weight loss programme is helpful. There is a successful programme called ALIZONNE which you might be interested in.
2) If your weight is within striking distance of normal but you have resistant pockets of fat on the abdomen or elsewhere then BodyTite is the answer.
3) Some patients benefit tremendously from a BodyTite procedure to remove a substantial amount of their belly followed by a supervised weight reduction programme.
4) Some lucky individuals are slim, also having good skin, but despite several months in the gym cannot get that 6 pack that they want. This is because of a very dense layer of fat sitting on the muscles.
The good news for them is BodyTite HD. This procedure will give you the definition they desire and otherwise may never get.
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