For one way to know if you’re at your Happy Weight, you have only to look in the mirror and try on or imagine yourself in a bikini or a Speedo. Nice picture? If there’s a pronounced belly effect in this image, you’re probably carrying too much visceral fat.

That’s the fat that’s actually inside your body, wrapping itself around your liver and other vitals. Not only that, it doesn’t just sit there quietly destroying your buff image. Oh no. Those fat cells are veritable factories, gushing bad hormones and spitting out factors that shut down the production of the good ones.  Recent studies have implicated excess visceral fat as increasing the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and, possibly, dementia and some types of cancer. Not a pretty thought.

For instance, in a study on 27,000 people in 52 countries, scientists found that the body mass index, a commonly used indicator of obesity which uses a weight to height ratio, wasn’t really different in people who had heart attacks compared to those who didn’t. But the waist-to-hip circumference ratio, a measurement of visceral fat, was significantly higher in the heart attck victims, regardless of gender or other risk factors.

Other studies on show just as chilling results for those high visceral fat with respect to risk for metabolic syndrome, dementia, gallstones, breast cancer in women, and overall death in men.

So there we are. Besides being something we don’t like to see in the mirror, this kind of fat is actually dangerous. Fortunately, the doctors say it is also realtively easy to release this kind of fat. Since those fat cells are so metabolically active, it responds to proper diet and exercise, though not to sit-ups and liposuction, natch.

Sorry, I’ve got to go find my tape measure. Later. -Di

technorati tags:weight, loss

In an interesting study, Australian reserachers attempted to anwer the question of whether people who had lost weight could maintain their weight loss by eating a diet high in carbohydrates or if they would do better on a high protein diet. They put 173 overweight or obese people on a low calorie diet for 12 weeks. Then they switched them randomly to either a low fat, high (low glycemic index) carbohydrate diet or a high protein diet for a year and measured which group maintained their weight loss better.

It turned out that there was no significant difference between the groups. So that means, if confirmed, that those of us who need to release some poundage do not have to say goodbye forever to our favorite whole grain breads and cereals and the like. Happy?

Of course, white flour and sugar are still gone forever. -Di

High-carb diet effective for weight loss (Sydney Morning Herald)

High-carb diets are just as effective in maintaining weight loss as other popular diets, researchers now claim. -

technorati tags:weight, loss, maintenance, high, carb, diet, high, protein, diet