Visceral Fat: Definition, Complications, Reduction Tips

Subcutaneous fat is the fat right under your skin—the kind you can pinch. It keeps you warm and stores energy. Your muscles are beneath, and organs like the liver, kidneys, and intestines (colon) are deeper. Visceral fat is the fat that surrounds these organs. It’s also known as belly fat or intra-abdominal fat, as the fat is located inside your abdominal cavity.

Visceral fat cushions your organs. Unlike subcutaneous fat, you can’t see or feel it. Visceral fat makes up about 10-15% of your total body fat. While your body needs a certain amount of visceral fat to stay healthy, too much can cause or increase your risk of certain health conditions. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle through factors like diet and exercise can help prevent this.

Many factors, such as lifestyle, genetics, and hormones, contribute to visceral fat accumulation. Despite the risks of having too much of it, visceral fat has important roles in your body, serving as a backup energy reserve, providing protection, and supporting various body processes.

If you eat more food than your body needs, it gets stored in the form of adipose tissue (body fat), including visceral fat. When your body needs more energy and food isn’t available, it can tap into these energy reserves.

Visceral fat also protects your organs since it sits around them and is active in your body. This type of fat produces certain hormones and chemicals that affect metabolism and other body functions. Scientists have found that fat tissue generally produces over 50 hormones and other chemicals. 

Although some visceral fat is necessary, it can build up beyond healthy levels. Modifiable (changeable) risk factors like your lifestyle habits and unmodifiable risk factors like age, genetics, and assigned sex can all affect how much visceral fat you have.

Lifestyle Habits

The foods you eat, how often you move your body, and how much sleep you get all influence where your body stores fat. These lifestyle factors can all increase your risk of increased visceral fat:

• A diet high in processed and packaged foods
• Asedentary lifestyle and not moving your body frequently
• Excess alcohol consumption
• Lack of sleep, which often causes you to overeat as a way to get extra energy in the form of food

Age, Genetics, and Sex

Some factors that cause visceral fat are out of your control. You may inherit genes or traits from your parents that control your appetite, metabolism, and how fat is stored in your body. As a result, you may be predisposed to storing more fat around your stomach instead of other places in the body.

People assigned male at birth are also more likely to store visceral fat in their stomachs than pre-menopausal women.

Age also plays a role. As people get older, they tend to lose muscle mass and have hormonal changes that cause them to store more fat around their belly. This is especially true among postmenopausal women.

Body fat isn’t all the same, particularly when it comes to health risks. Unlike subcutaneous fat, having too much visceral fat around your organs can lead to complications that put you at a higher risk of certain diseases.

Metabolic syndrome is one of the main conditions linked to high visceral fat. Metabolic syndrome is a group of health issues that often occur together, causing concerns like:

• High blood pressure
• High blood sugar
• Extra body fat around the waist
• Abnormal cholesterol levels

Metabolic syndrome also increases the risk of developing conditions like type 2 diabetes and heart disease—both of which can increase the risk of experiencing a heart attack or stroke.

Too much visceral fat may also trigger or worsen other health conditions, including:

• Fatty liver disease and cirrhosis
• Colorectal, pancreatic, and breast cancer
• Sleep apnea
• Kidney disease
• Early death or lowered life expectancy

Knowing how much visceral fat you have often requires imaging tests. If you want to take a general measurement at home, try measuring your waist size.

Simply wrap a tape measure around your waist at the level of your belly button. A waist circumference over 35 inches (88 centimeters) in females or 40 inches (102 centimeters) in males may indicate excess visceral fat and a higher risk of disease. 

To get a more accurate reading, you can compare your waist circumference to your height. Divide your waist size by your height. A ratio of less than 0.5 is ideal. If a person assigned female at birth is 5 feet 4 inches tall (64 inches) with a waist circumference of 33 inches, the ratio would be 0.52, indicating a higher risk of certain conditions.

Other medical methods can also help you and your healthcare provider learn about your visceral fat levels and give you more detailed results about your overall body composition. These include:

• Computed tomography (CT) scans
• Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
• Ultrasound
• Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scan
• Three-dimensional (3D) body scanning

Factors like body frame size and muscle mass can sometimes influence these measurements. Your provider can interpret and explain these results in the context of your overall health profile.

If you’ve measured your waist circumference or gone in for a medical test and found that you have a higher amount of visceral fat, you can take steps to reduce it. Doing so can also lower your risk of developing certain health conditions. Losing visceral fat can be as challenging as any other weight loss, but making small, sustainable changes in your day-to-day life can help you succeed.

Diet

Certain meal plans are more effective than others for losing visceral fat. Many diets can help with visceral fat loss, and picking one you enjoy and can maintain is important. Here are some options:

• Intermittent fasting (IF): Intermittent fasting reduces the hours of the day you eat. The most common method is to eat during an eight-hour window and fast for the remaining 16 hours. IF has been shown to naturally decrease the amount of food you eat, which can lead to overall weight loss.
• Protein pacing: Combining IF with protein pacing might be an even more effective way to lose visceral fat. Protein pacing means spreading your protein intake throughout the day rather than consuming it all in one meal. Research shows that people who followed this combined method lost nearly twice as much visceral fat than those on a standard calorie-restricted diet.
• Low-fat vegan diet: This diet eliminates all animal products and instead focuses on nutrient-dense plant-based foods. People who follow this diet have been shown to lose a significant amount of overall body fat and visceral fat.
• Ketogenic (keto) diet: In a study comparing this diet to beinaglutide (a weight loss medication), the keto diet resulted in more visceral fat loss and improved blood pressure and blood sugar.

Talk to your healthcare provider before implementing significant dietary changes, especially if you have existing health conditions, as these diets can affect individuals differently.

Exercise

When it comes to exercising for fat loss, the type of workout matters. High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is one of the best forms of exercise to reduce visceral fat levels. HIIT involves short bursts of intense exercise followed by brief rest periods. You might sprint for 30 seconds, walk for a minute, and repeat this cycle several times. 

Aerobic exercise is also good for visceral fat loss. Some examples of aerobic exercise include:

Mixing aerobic exercise or HIIT with strength training can give you even more benefits when losing visceral fat. Lifting weights alone may not be as effective for visceral fat loss.

Other Lifestyle Changes

Getting enough sleep is a lifestyle change that can help reduce visceral fat. Aim for at least eight hours per night.

Cutting back on alcohol can also help, as heavy drinking and binge drinking are linked to higher levels of visceral fat. Even moderate drinking might affect where your body stores fat, so limiting alcohol intake can be an effective way to manage visceral fat.

If you’re concerned about having too much visceral fat or you measured at home and it’s high, make an appointment with your healthcare provider.

They can perform a more thorough health assessment, such as blood tests, to check for related conditions like high cholesterol or diabetes. Your healthcare provider can also help you manage these conditions and get you started on your weight loss journey. 

Your healthcare provider can also refer you to a nutritionist to develop an eating plan that works for you or an exercise expert to help you create a safe exercise routine that fits your lifestyle and goals. If these methods aren’t working for you, they can discuss other weight loss options with you, including weight loss medication or bariatric surgery.

Visceral fat is a type of body fat that’s located around your body’s internal organs. While it’s necessary, too much visceral fat can increase the risk of several health conditions like diabetes and heart disease.

The main causes of excess visceral fat include lifestyle, genetics, and age. Adjusting your diet and incorporating more exercise into your routine can reduce visceral fat, decrease your risk of illness, and improve your overall health.