Attack of the fat! Beware of central obesity, it can make you sad

We all know that body weight = bone weight + muscle weight + body fat weight + others (blood, body fluids, etc.). Body mass index (BMI) is calculated by dividing weight (kg) by height (m) squared. It is convenient but a bit rough. Therefore, using BMI to assess physical condition is not objective. With the same BMI data, one person may have more muscles while another may have more body fat (the most popular comparison on the Internet is between Jeremy Lin and Lien Shengwen).

The correlation between BMI and mortality can be traced back to a 1979 paper; an analysis of 750,000 non-smoking and disease-free men and women found that BMI had a nonlinear correlation with mortality; that is, the higher the BMI, the higher the mortality rate.

But there are exceptions. In some cases, overweight or obese people may have a lower mortality rate than people with normal BMI, such as those who have undergone cardiac catheterization or coronary artery bypass surgery, heart failure treated with ventricular assist device, chronic renal failure receiving hemodialysis, hip fracture, rheumatoid arthritis and tuberculosis. This situation is also called the BMI paradox.

If we remove the body fat first, the remaining is called lean body mass = muscle weight + bone weight + others (blood, body fluids, etc.). As a general rule, excluding the situation of excess body fluid (such as edema), we can conclude that the heavier a person's fat-free body weight is, the better the physical fitness is indirectly (because the muscle and bone quality are high).

The less body fat the better! Some professional athletes pursue low body fat for competitions (such as bodybuilding competitions), which is not healthy and is not recommended as a goal for ordinary people. In order to maintain good health, fat is necessary! In addition to storing fat, adipose tissue (Adipocyte) can also secrete hormones (Leptin, Resistin, Angiotensinogen, Adiponectin, Estrogens, Visfatin, Angiopoietin, etc.) and cytokines (Interleukins, monocyte chemoattractant protein 1, interferon-γ, tumor necrosis factor-α, etc.), playing a vital role in the endocrine and immune systems!

If you have too much body fat or a high body fat percentage, whether you are overweight or normal (such as a puff man), you should pay more attention. In addition, the distribution of body fat in the body is also important! If body fat is concentrated in the belly (central obesity), there is a higher risk of metabolic-related diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and (ischemic) heart disease; if body fat is mostly located outside the belly (peripheral obesity, such as in the lower body and limbs), previous studies have shown that it can reduce the risk of metabolic complications. A paper published in the International Journal of Obesity in 2010 pointed out that central obesity increases the risk of myocardial infarction in both men and women; further analysis of peripheral obesity shows that although the risk of myocardial infarction is lower in girls, it still increases the risk for men, so be careful!

How to beat belly fat? Doing sit-ups all the time is not very effective in eliminating fat, and sit-ups put a huge strain on the lumbar spine. Before you lose weight, your lumbar spine will have problems first! Simply put, to lose belly fat, you must first achieve a negative calorie balance, but this negative calorie balance must be based on the right diet menu in order to lose fat and reduce muscle loss; in other words, if you want your abdominal muscles to show up again, a lot of factors are related to diet. Medically, a (very) low-calorie diet is one of the treatment options for obese patients, but it must be implemented under the supervision of professional medical personnel.

Relying solely on a negative calorie balance may show some effects in the early stages, but in the long run, the body's metabolic rate will decrease and may even cause unnecessary muscle loss! In addition to dietary adjustments, an appropriate training menu must also be used (anaerobic + aerobic exercise, new articles will be added slowly when I have time). Remember, unless you have local liposuction, you cannot eliminate local fat through normal means (diet control or exercise)!

Summary: Many people cherish their abdominal muscles, so they use thick fat to protect them. If you accumulate too much belly fat, it will cause metabolism-related diseases! Fat is produced over time. Without the intervention of drugs or surgery, to defeat central obesity, one must be mentally prepared for a long-term battle. Therefore, if you love your abdominal muscles, please let the excess belly fat go to hell like the Colossal Titan!

This article comes from: Ye Junyuan's Healthy Factory

※For more information, please visit Dr. Yeh Jun-kwan’s blog