The Truth About Belly Fat

What's the best way to trim your tummy?

Having a flat belly or so-called "six-pack abs" is a dream of most adults. If you're middle-aged, have ever been pregnant, or sometimes indulge in too much food or one too many beers, you probably have a spare tire you'd like to get rid of. So what's the best strategy for banishing belly fat? Is it as simple as adding certain foods to your diet, or doing particular exercises?

WebMD turned to the experts for answers on belly fat -- and the best ways to lose it.

Don't despair; you can lose that spare tire, experts say. But there's no secret formula.

"There is no magic bullet, diet plan, specific food, or type of exercise that specifically targets belly fat. But the good news is belly fat is the first kind of fat you tend to lose when you lose weight," says Michael Jensen, MD, a Mayo Clinic endocrinology specialist and obesity researcher.

Whether you're an "apple" shape with excess belly fat, or a "pear" with wide hips and thighs, when you lose weight, you'll most likely lose proportionately more from the abdominal region than elsewhere.

"Ninety-nine percent of people who lose weight will lose it in the abdominal region before anywhere else -- and will lose proportionately more weight from the upper body," says Jensen, also a professor of medicine.

And why is that? "Visceral fat, the kind tucked deep inside your waistline, is more metabolically active and easier to lose than subcutaneous fat under the skin, especially if you have plenty of it," explains Penn State researcher Penny Kris-Etherton, PhD, RD.

And the more weight you have to lose, the more quickly you're likely to start losing your belly fat, experts say.

"People who are significantly overweight may see quicker results in their belly than someone who has less to lose in that area, such as a postmenopausal pouch," says Georgia State University nutrition professor, Christine Rosenbloom, PhD, RD.

A recent study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that a calorie-controlled diet rich in whole grains trimmed extra fat from the waistline of obese subjects.

Study participants who ate all whole grains (in addition to five servings of fruits and vegetables, three servings of low-fat dairy, and two servings of lean meat, fish, or poultry) lost more weight from the abdominal area than another group that ate the same diet, but with all refined grains.

"Eating a diet rich in whole grains while reducing refined carbohydrates changes the glucose and insulin response and makes it easier to mobilize fat stores," says study researcher Penny Kris-Etherton, PhD, RD, a distinguished professor of nutritional sciences at Penn State University.

"Visceral fat is more metabolically active and easier to lose than subcutaneous fat, especially if you have plenty of it and the right conditions are met, such as the ones in our study."

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New Genes Linked to Obesity

Research Reveals Genes That Affect Obesity and Where the Extra Fat Goes
Oct. 11, 2010 -- Your genes may influence how you look in your skinny jeans.
Two studies have identified 18 new genes linked to overall obesity and 13 more that influence whether your weight goes to your belly or to your thighs.
The findings come from the Genetic Investigation of Anthropomeric Traits (GIANT) consortium and appear in Nature Genetics; if validated, they may play a role in how obesity is categorized and treated.
In the first study, researchers conducted an analysis of 46 studies of 123,865 people and identified 18 new genetic regions associated with body mass index (BMI). They also confirmed 14 regions that had been noted before. Some of these genes affect appetite control and others may play a role in metabolism.
The more obesity genes a person had, the greater their risk of being obese, the study showed. Individuals who carried 38 or more BMI-associated genes weighed 15 to 20 pounds more, on average, than those who had fewer than 22, the researchers report. Still, these variants explain only a small fraction of the overall variation in body weight because many other genetic and environmental factors also contribute to obesity risk.
In the second study, researchers analyzed 32 studies of 77,167 people to identify genes associated with hip-to-waist ratio, which is a measure of body fat distribution. Belly fat is a known risk factor for type 2 diabetes and heart disease, while fat stored in the hips and thighs may actually be protective against diabetes and high blood pressure.
This study yielded 13 novel genes, and of these, seven genes had a more pronounced effect among women.
"We know that 50% of our predisposition to weight is genetic and our study is trying to uncover the underpinnings of this," says Elizabeth K. Speliotes, MD, PhD, MPH, an instructor of medicine and gastroenterology at Massachusetts General Hospital and a fellow at the Broad institute in Boston.
The new findings may help explain why blanket recommendations about exercise and eating right just don’t work for a lot of people, she says.

"Most of these genes are completely novel, and that tells us that we really didn't understand what we were dealing with in terms of obesity, so it's not surprising that most of our recommendations to control weight don't work," she tells WebMD.  "We hope that with further work we can narrow down how these genes work and develop new ways to sub-classify obesity and tailor treatments."

"Genes load the gun, the environment pulls the trigger," says Scott Kahan, MD, co-director of the George Washington University Weight Management Program in Washington, D.C., in an email. "Even as we continue to educate people about obesity, healthy eating, physical activity, etc., ultimately we're not going to get very far until we address the root cause of obesity/weight gain in our population."