Flat Belly [Second Edition]: Pocket Guide to a Flat Belly Diet and Flat Belly Recipes for Everyone

By Michelle Anders

Flat Belly [Second Edition] A Pocket Guide to a Flat Belly Diet and Flat Belly Recipes for Everyone Now [Second Edition], with the following changes: * New introduction additional text - 500+ words. * New content: Multiple recipes - over 3700 words. * Improved formatting and editing A flat belly - it's something that all of us want, but at the same

• Language: English
• Publisher: WebNetworks Inc
• Release date: Dec 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781630227296

Book preview

The World is in a Fat Epidemic

Beer Belly, Muffin Top, Pot Belly, Spare Tire, Love Handles, belly fat has a lot of different names. Doctors even have a cutesy phrase for it, Apple Shape. The truth is it really doesn’t matter what you call it. It’s still belly fat.

Life expectancy can drop 10% or more, disposable income can decrease up to 18%, and your health-care costs can increase by 25%.

Losing 10% of your lifetime may seem small until you consider that our average life expectancy is 72. Lop of 10% and you lose a little over 7 years of life. You cheat yourself out of almost a decade with your grandchildren.

For years doctors have known that a big belly can be a warning sign of serious health problems like heart disease and diabetes.

If you see someone with a big belly, that's a person who is probably at higher risk, says Dr. Samuel Klein, professor of medicine and nutritional science at Washington University School of Medicine. Klein goes on to say, Someone who just has a big butt probably has less risk.

In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s researchers recognized a correlation between big belly’s and cardiovascular disease, diabetes and abnormal cholesterol levels.

Advanced medical imaging (CT scans) was becoming more popular around this time.

Through the use of CT scans scientists could see that abdominal obesity was more closely associated to cardiovascular disease than general obesity. They could get a picture of the effects of belly fat, and it was bad.

There are two basic types of fat that makes up belly fat. There is fat that lies just under the skin called subcutaneous fat and fat that wraps around the internal organs called visceral fat.

While it can weigh you down, scientists say when it comes to health the fat that lies under the skin, subcutaneous fat, appears to be far less important than visceral fat, that fat that surrounds internal organs.

According to a 2004 study led by Dr. Klein, patients could instantly lose 30 pounds or more of subcutaneous fat through liposuction without seeing any of the health benefits normally associated with weight loss, such as lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol and greater sensitivity to insulin.

Dr. Steven Grinspoon, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the program in nutritional metabolism at Massachusetts General Hospital says, Visceral fat is linked to diabetes and cardiovascular problems even more than BMI, or body mass index.

Belly fat can cost you money too. According to Caleb Alexander, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, The total spending on drugs for type 2 diabetes nearly doubled between 2001 and 2007.

Understand that belly fat is both visceral and subcutaneous. We don't have a perfect way yet to determine which is subcutaneous or visceral, except by CT scan, but that's not cost-effective. But if you've got an oversize belly, figuring out how much is visceral and how much is subcutaneous isn't as important as recognizing a big belly is unhealthy, says Kristen Gill Hairston, MD, MPH, an assistant professor of medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem,