Can You Really Be Skinny Fat?

Take it from me, it exists. My mates even used to call me the SFB (Skinny Fat Bastard)!

After I lost 20 kilos over 12-18 months, I thought 'you beaut I'm as fit as a bull' but after I had been training in the gym relentlessly and not seeing much progress in body composition (I didn't look like Chris Hemsworth), I decided to ship off to a dietitian who proceeded to send me off to have a DEXA scan, which is one of the most accurate ways of assessing your body fat and muscle distribution.

And the results were quite a surprise.

In essence, a life of beer and pizza had deposited a "healthy" amount of visceral fat in and around my organs, and whilst visceral fat is normal to a point, a large amount is not.

Keeping this scarily simple, visceral fat (and being overweight) may lead to a number of health conditions, which include:

1. Insulin resistance - reference - 10.3390/nu5062019

2. Type 2 Diabetes

3. Raised blood pressure

4. Colorectal cancer

5. Alzheimers Disease

So whilst, I had lost a lot of weight and my visible belly fat had reduced in appearance and size, I was as they say SKINNY FAT!

How to Know You Have High Levels Of Visceral Fat.

It's really quite hard to assess your levels of visceral fat without some sort of scan, such as DEXA.

However, two simple methods of gaining an indication to your health, is to measure your waist circumference and your hip-to-weight ratio.

Waist Circumference (WC)

For Aussie blokes, a waist circumference of 94cm or greater will be an indicator you may want to address your health via diet and exercise, or see your GP or Dietitian to discuss the best strategies for your circumstances.

To measure your WC, grab a tape measure and using your belly button as the starting point, wrap the tape measure around your body.

Waist-to-hip Ratio (WHP)

Again, for Aussie blokes, a waist-to-hip ratio of 1.0 or higher is generally an indicator you may want to address your health via diet and exercise and of course see your GP or other specialist, health professional.

To measure your WHP, using your tape measure, wrap this around your belly and then around the widest part of your hips (usually the point where your bum sticks out the most).

Divide the waist measurement by the hip measurement.

0.95 is generally a good measurement, whilst over 1.0 is a sign you may want to hit that treadmill and gym and take a look at the foods you are eating.

What You Can Do To Reduce Visceral Fat

The most common and simple way to address being overweight and possibly having high visceral fat, is to exercise and change your diet.

The dietitian I met, put me on a high fat, low carb diet and whilst, to me, this went against everything I imagined would work (A HIGH FAT DIET - WTF), it worked and I lost weight but also ended up with a nice flat stomach.

I wont preach to you the benefits of one method of eating/diet versus another because we are all individuals and our bodies most certainly will adapt to different levels of exercise and to the types of foods we consume. But one thing is for certain, if you are worried about your health because you feel you are carrying a few too many kilos, go see your GP or Dietitian and start exercising and changing your diet.

And Get back to healthy living.