You could be able to reduce visceral fat by reducing your overall intake of carbs and added sugar, besides other dietary changes. Some habits, like getting enough sleep and performing aerobic exercise cand definitely help. Visceral fat exists inside the abdominal cavity and wraps around your internal organs.
If you have too much visceral fat, it could kick off the risk of cardiometabolic factors that will ultimately lead to chronic conditions like diabetes, obesity, and even heart disease. This particular type of fat is quite different from subcutaneous fat, which is the one that’s stored just below your skin, and that you can pinch easily.
Eat a well-balanced diet
If you follow a well-balanced diet, you’re already doing the most important thing to manage your body weight and visceral fat. A balanced diet is based on eating whole foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins while also minimizing ultra-processed foods and other additives like sugar.
Research also implies that maintaining a calorie deficit is the number one thing for losing weight. This basically means consuming fewer calories than you burn throughout the day. But experts also recommend avoiding drastic calorie restrictions, especially since they could lead to nutrient deficiencies, starvation, yo-yo dieting, and even more serious health complications.
Instead, you should consider reducing your daily calorie intake by 500 calories. This could definitely help you lose around 1 pound on a weekly basis, which also falls within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) weekly weight loss targets of 1 to 2 lb.
Here’s a list of other dietary tips that could also contribute to getting rid of visceral fat, such as: eating more high-protein food, like eggs, lean meats, nuts
- eating more high-fiber foods, like whole grains and legumes
- eating foods high in unsaturated fats and omega-3 fatty acids
- limiting the daily intake of added sugars, trans fats, and alcohol
- trying specific diets, like the Mediterranean diet, low-carb diet, and ketogenic diet
How to eat for visceral fat loss
There’s plenty of information about eating for weight loss. Navigating this space could feel a bit overwhelming, and not everything we read is backed by science, nor is it safe. If you’re still not sure where to start when it comes to your dietary changes for visceral fat loss, you should speak with a registered dietitian or a healthcare professional.
They might help you develop a safe, sustainable, and effective eating plan.
Engage in more physical activity
Exercise is by far one of the most important aspects of keeping a moderate weight and managing visceral fat. Moderate-intensity aerobic exercise, or cardio, can definitely increase your heart rate and burn visceral fat.
Besides, research proved that resistance training is mandatory when it comes to reducing visceral fat while maintaining muscle mass. Combining these two types of exercise with a strongly-balanced diet is by far the most effective way to burn visceral fat.
The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans also advise adults to exercise at a moderate intensity for a minimum of 150 to 300 minutes on a weekly basis or at least at a high intensity for a minimum of 150 minutes (a week).
If you’re not sure where to start, you can speak with a healthcare professional or personal trainer. They could help you develop a safe and effective exercise plan that fully meets your goals.
Get enough sleep
Getting enough high-quality sleep is mandatory for proper health. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), sleep plays an essential role in:
- keeping a healthy weight
- preventing chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes, stroke, and high blood pressure
- reducing stress and improving your mood
Research proved that a lack of sleep could raise your risk of visceral fat gain. At the same time, increasing your sleep quality can help reduce visceral fat. The CDC also recommends adults to get a minimum of 7 hours of sleep every night.
Reduce your stress levels
Some research also proves that chronic stress is often associated with both visceral and subcutaneous fat. Moreover, ongoing stress could also lead to several behaviors that can easily contribute to increasing visceral fat and body weight, such as overeating, eating foods that are high in added sugars and calories, maintaining a sedentary lifestyle, and not getting enough sleep.
Stress can also stimulate many hormones that can easily trigger hunger, like ghrelin. You can reduce stress levels by meditating, exercising, practicing yoga, going for a walk, writing in a journal, or speaking with a friend, family member, or therapist.
Probiotics and prebiotics
Probiotics are “good” live bacteria that can benefit your gut and digestive health. They can be found in foods such as yogurt, kefir, and sauerkraut, and they are available as supplements. Prebiotics are the foods that feed such bacteria, and they are essential for the health of your gut microbiome.
There’s a 2022 study that explained how supplementing with more prebiotics and probiotics for 90 days helped reduce visceral fat by over 35% in participants who were overweight compared with those who were supplemented with a placebo.
However prebiotic and probiotic supplementation had zero impact on body weight and body fat percentage. A 2021 review also discovered that probiotic supplementation can easily eliminate visceral fat, waist-to-hip ratio, and body mass index as well.
These are all important markers of chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease. Even if we have so many positive findings, more research is required to fully support the use of prebiotic and probiotic supplementation for losing visceral fat.
Intermittent fasting is an effective solution
Intermittent fasting is an eating technique that involves cycling between periods of eating and fasting. Unlike dieting, intermittent fasting doesn’t really restrict foods. It just focuses on when you should eat them.
A popular cycle is to fast for 16 hours and have an 8-hour eating window. A 2022 study discovered that intermittent fasting can be one of the most effective dietary remedies for losing the most visceral fat, boosting energy, managing your hunger, and improving cardiometabolic factors and body fat composition.
Visceral fat and heart disease
Studies proved there’s a link between visceral fat and heart disease. For example, one study discovered that women with the biggest waists relative to their hip size were twice as likely to suffer from heart disease.
Otherwise, healthy women who weren’t smokers had a 10% increase in heart disease risk since their waist size went up by 2 inches. However, most studies don’t measure visceral fat directly.
Visceral fat and Alzheimer’s disease
Another relevant study concluded that people with more belly fat and visceral fat had three times the risk for dementia including Alzheimer’s disease, compared to people with the least belly fat.
Visceral fat and cancer
There’s also a link between visceral fat and cancer, including colorectal cancer. In one study, people with the most visceral fat were three times as likely to get precancerous polyps in their colons.
How knowing your BMI can help you
Body mass index is a complex formula for how much you weigh compared to your height. Online calculators can do the math for you. A BMI of 30 or higher is widely known as obese for someone who is 5 feet 9 inches tall.
A higher BMI could also be a sign you have more visceral fat than it’s advised. If you are Asian American, a BMI of 23 or higher could also be concerning. Warning: BMI doesn’t work that well to estimate exactly how much fat you have, due to differences among people in body composition (that means the amount of fat, muscle, and bone you have), but also their shape.
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