You might have experienced this yourself, or might have observed in other women, that they tend to become obese after menopause. In such cases, fat is mainly stored in the intra-abdominal area.
Body fat can be subcutaneous fat or visceral fat. The former lies below your skin whereas the latter remains hidden below the muscles. The kind that should worry us more is the visceral fat. The reason is that lies around important organs and that the liver converts it into cholesterol.
The fat that is a cause of concern usually remains hidden from the naked eye. Techniques like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are used to detect this kind of fat.
Reasons for visceral fat
About 30-60% responsibility goes to your genes. However, even the daily amounts of physical activity that you do as well as your diet are important determining factors.
If you take loads of saturated fat and do not exercise enough, you will deposit visceral fat.
How can I know if I have visceral fat?
A smart thing to do is to keep an eye on your waistline. The National Institutes of Health say that if a woman has a waist circumference of more than 88 centimetres or 35 inches, then chances are that you carry significant amount of visceral fat.
Ways to reduce visceral fat
Simply replacing saturated fats with polyunsaturated fats can reduce your visceral fat content.
Doing moderate exercises like swimming, walking or even playing tennis almost everyday, can make you less prone to accumulating visceral fat. In order to lose the visceral fat that is already present, you can go for vigorous exercises at regular intervals.
Weight lifting and muscle building exercises also are helpful. Muscles burn more calories. Therefore, more muscles means more burnt calories.
Adipocytes store fat. Once you start exercising, the hormones order these adipocytes to release fat. Once they release fat, they become shrunk in size and as a result, your body reduces in size.
However, if you do not give up eating extra fat, then it will return to the adipocytes.
The bottomline is this. You can lose weight only if you burn more than you put in. Therefore, if you eat 2500 calories, burn 3000 calories.