Learning About Body Composition and Visceral Fat

In their efforts to achieve noticeable results, countless dieters find themselves cutting calories, exercising more, and even eliminating entire food groups, and all to no avail. Sadly, even the best laid diet plans are bound to fail if they don’t have a needs-specific focus. That’s because every body and its general make-up is different. Some people are more predisposed to storing soft, subcutaneous fat, while others have dangerously high amounts of visceral fat. Some dieters build and maintain lean muscle with ease while others flounder in this area. Learning more about your metabolism, your body composition, and your level of visceral fat is key to arriving at a weight loss plan that actually works. With individualized strategies for dropping pounds and keeping them off, you can improve your appearance, boost your health, and attain a greater sense of overall well-being.

What Is Visceral Fat?

When people assess their body fat, they often do so by looking in the mirror, determining how well their old clothes fit, and by pinching the actual rolls or layers of fat that wrap around their bellies, exist between their thighs, or hang in loose flaps at the backs of their arms. If you’ve ever pinched your mid-section to determine whether you’re losing or gaining weight, what you’re grabbing is called subcutaneous fat. Subcutaneous fat is fat that gets stored right beneath the skin. Having a certain amount of subcutaneous fat is essential for good health. Although too much is definitely cause for concern, this fat performs many important functions such as cushioning and protecting the overall body structure, and plumping or filling the skin out in an aesthetically pleasing way.

Visceral fat has a far less positive reputation in health circles. This is bright-yellowish fat that gets stored at the interior of the abdominal cavity. It is fat that you cannot readily grasp or pinch with your fingers. It is also a development that indicates a general decline in overall well-being, particularly when there’s a lot of it.

Why Is Visceral Fat Dangerous?

Although visceral fat doesn’t exist just beneath the skin like subcutaneous fat does, it can still negatively affect your physical appearance. Lots of this fat in the abdominal cavity can make the stomach hard and bloated-looking. Moreover, cutting calories and exercising won’t produce any rapid changes in the distended appearance of your belly. That’s because this type of fat is much harder to lose than subcutaneous fat. When losing weight becomes a health issue, rather than a purely cosmetic concern, the difficulty in eliminating visceral fat stores can become extremely problematic.

What Is Body Composition?

Body composition details the percentages of bone, water, muscle and fat within a person’s body. Muscle tissues weigh significantly more than fat tissues and thus, muscle takes up less physical space. This explains why sometimes, two people with the exact same body weight can look extremely different. Moreover, these same individuals can also have vastly different health profiles. Although their body weights are equal, one may need a weight loss plan that’s largely focused on eliminating visceral fat. The other might need to spend more time building lean muscle. Determining body composition and assessing the amount of visceral fat that a person has allows weight loss clinics to establish needs-specific and truly effective weight loss plans.

Discover an Exciting Range of Needs-Specific Weight Loss Strategies

Weight loss struggles can be downright disheartening. The best approach to achieving overall wellness is always a needs-specific one. Learning more about your body composition will give you a better understanding of where your problems lie. You may require targeted strategies for eliminating harmful deposits of visceral fat, strength-training exercises for increasing your lean muscle mass, or other individualized recommendations for streamlining and sculpting your overall physique.

Consider our team here at Enhanced Wellness Living if you are interested in body composition and weight loss. We are proudly serving residents in the Jackson, Ridgeland, Bolton, Brandon, Canton, Clinton, Madison & Vicksburg, Mississippi area. Contact us today to schedule your consultation.
Call 601-202-5978. We look forward to hearing from you!