Shrinking visceral fat requires a holistic approach focusing on lifestyle factors rather than relying on single "magic bullet" solutions, as these factors collectively create a sustainable calorie deficit and optimize the body's fat-burning mechanisms.
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Everybody wants the fastest possible way to shrink visceral fat, but there's so much misinformation
that makes people think there's a magic food or a specialty that's going to melt away your visceral
fat without you having to change anything. Today, I'm going to talk about the factors that really
matter. And along the way, I'm going to show you also why so many claims can be misleading
even when they're backed by real published research. Hello, health champions. Let's talk
about what really works when it comes to shrinking visceral fat. And the first item is to increase
your consumption of carotenoids and kakkins. And carotenoids and other pigments in vegetables. So
carotenoids those are in carrots for example we have other pigments in tomatoes and spinach and
other colorful vegetables and kakans that's an antioxidant that we find in green tea and very
often the effect is a little bit stronger if you combine it with the caffeine that's usually
already in the green tea but keep in mind you have to get the high quality ones like matcha and
sencha because a lot of The green tea soil doesn't really have any kakins and there are published
studies that link these two compounds to reducing visceral fat. So is there a proven mechanism? Yes.
And I'm bringing this up because there was a video with millions and millions of views
who said that all you have to do is eat these two things and exercise and it will melt away.
So even though there's a proven mechanism here, I wanted to give some context and perspective to it.
And I just wanted to point out causation versus correlation. So they have proven both causation
and correlation. But the question is how much? How do we quantify this? And the first thing is
with correlation. Is it possible that people who drink green tea and who consume more vegetables or
either they already eat more vegetables or they increase their consumption of vegetables? Is it
possible? Do you think that they also reduce their consumption of junk food at the same time? And
the answer is obviously yes. When you increase something, you probably reduce something else.
And if you have a health consciousness in one regard, you probably have it in your overall
lifestyle as well. So there's the correlation part. But even though they have proven this
physiological biochemical connection of causation, we want to look at the big picture and and ask
ourselves how much of the total effect of burning visceral fat can we get from these two compounds?
And the answer is probably about 2 to 3% combined between the two of them. So the point I'm trying
to make is that you go ahead and consume these if you like them especially, but just don't expect
a miracle. They're good. They make a tiny little bit of difference, but the big difference is going
to be when you take away the thing that is causing the visceral fat in the first place. If you have a
lifestyle that pumps more visceral fat in than you can possibly burn up, then that little two to 3%
is not going to make one bit of difference. So, I created this graph called the big picture and this
is 100% of all the factors that can help you burn visceral fat. So, we want to put this on the list,
but we want to realize sort of the magnitude of it. It's only a couple of percent. So the second
thing we can do is to reduce or eliminate our alcohol consumption. The reason is that visceral
fat is very closely tied to a fatty liver. What we usually call non-alcoholic fatty liver today
because it's caused by processed foods and sugar. It used to be only caused by alcohol. It was
called alcoholic fatty liver disease. And when the liver fills up with fat, then it sort of spreads
out to the other organs to the spaces between the organs called visceral fat. And the way this works
is that the liver has priorities. And whenever we drink alcohol or wherever we have a toxin,
the liver is going to try to get rid of that before it burns up any fat. And especially in
the case of alcohol because when it starts burning alcohol, it puts the fat burning on pause because
it needs to get rid quickly and the alcohol has almost as much energy per gram as fat. So
it has seven calories, which means that you're going to create a lot of energy from burning up
that alcohol. It's like you're really cranking up the stove, so there's no need to burn fat at that
point. And there's kind of a funny parallel here because it's the same thing with carbohydrates and
blood sugar. When we eat processed foods and sugar and we jack up our blood sugar, then the body is
going to burn that first because high blood sugar is dangerous. So what people think then often is
that oh carbohydrates that's a better fuel because the body burns it first. Well by that analog then
alcohol should be the best fuel or a better fuel than fat because the body burns it first. That's
not how it works. It burns it because it needs to get rid of it. So the first mechanism is that it
puts fat burning on pause. However, there are more mechanisms and if alcohol is also part of excess
fuel, then that excess is going to turn into fat because that's how we store energy in the body.
And the third way is that alcohol also stimulate cravings. So, you tend to overeat and you tend to
have that little extra piece of sugar or dessert or whatever after the other food at the end of
the day. And in terms of the big picture, then we were going to assign 5% of the total weight here.
And this is sort of a little bit arbitrary. I worked with some of the AI engines to come up
with these numbers. And they're no absolutes. I'm just trying to give you some perspective,
some grasp on the relative importance of these. And this would be based on drinking one to two
drinks a day. Maybe one drink for females and two drinks a day for a male. Now, if you're a heavy
drinker and you cut that out, that's obviously going to have a larger weight, a bigger number
than 5%. But if we look here at the big picture now, we see that we're starting to fill out the
scale, but we're only just getting started. And number three is anything to do with stress that
drives cortisol. So, poor sleep will increase cortisol. High stress levels in your life,
in your lifestyle is going to drive up cortisol. And visceral fat has a higher concentration of
cortisol receptors than any other tissue in the body. So therefore, cortisol specifically targets
visceral fat. And there are conditions where people overproduce cortisol called Cushings
syndrome. And then they get enormous bellies and the body also the cortisol makes the body use up
muscle and convert that into glucose which then turns into fat. So they have skinny legs and flat
butts and and big bellies often moon face and and a big hump on the neck as well. So all of those
are symptoms of high cortisol. Now, what cortisol is really trying to do is help you survive an
emergency by giving you more energy. So, it's trying to raise blood sugar and it can do that by
breaking down glycogen or it can try to make you consume something that has fast blood glucose such
as candy and starches and bread and comfort foods. So that's why you always crave comfort foods when
you're stressed because you make cortisol and then you increase your cravings. And now of course if
you eat more of that type of food now you're going to make more visceral fat and so on. And what we
have to understand is that these mechanisms are built in. It's not about willpower. It's
not that you're weak. It's biology. We can fight it for a while but long term we can't
fight this. We have to create a lifestyle where it goes away. So in the big scheme of things,
I'm going to assign 10% of this total value to stress. But just like a lot can vary with alcohol
depending on how much you drink, how much you cut out, the same thing holds true for stress.
and also that there's a great difference between individuals how stress affects them and all their
physiological emotional responses. So we have to know with all these numbers that again I'm just
trying to give you some idea some perspective but these numbers could vary widely and here's
what it looks like when we add it to that graph and we're still not to 20% so we got a lot left.
Number four is exercise. And we're going to talk about some different types. But first realize that
any exercise is better than none. Any type of movement is better than nothing. So the first
type is called aerobic. That means with air. So as you exercise, you breathe a little bit faster,
but if you're in the aerobic zone, you can keep up. And you're going to get a little winded,
but you're not going to be huffing and puffing hard. And at this rate, you should be able to
speak a sentence or at least part of a sentence. And again, it's not like you're sitting in a
chair having a conversation. You'll be a little winded, but you can still talk. And at this point,
because we're supplying oxygen to the increased energy usage, it is almost purely fat that we're
burning. It's like 95% of the energy comes from fat. The second type is anobic, meaning without
air. So we're providing a baseline with aerobic metabolism, but what we can't cover the excess
above that need becomes anobic and we're starting to break down glucose and in addition to the fat.
So here we're starting to breathe a little bit harder because we're not keeping up and the body
is looking for more resources. So at this point we are about 70 to 80% of maximum heart rate and
this is the type of exercise this is if you go to an aerobics class or a spin class or a steady
cardio they call it and most of the research has been done on this type and most of the research
showing an effect and backing up the visceral fat burning. This one is the one that has the
most support of the four types. However, I'm not totally sold on it based on just that because when
you switch into the anorobic now, you're using up a lot of glucose. And whenever we start huffing
and puffing, whenever we have that extra need, we release cortisol to try to generate that extra
energy. And if we do that, that means that we will have more cravings afterwards. In addition to
that, one thing that the cortisol does, it tries to make us eat more, but it also uses up glycogen
stores. So, I don't know the exact percentage, but we're probably burning 30 40% of our energy from
glucose. So that means that we're breaking down our glycogen stores. And if you use something up,
the body is going to notice and it's going to say, "Hey, you had this much. Now you have that much.
Go and eat more carbs so we can fill this back up." So if you use them up, you'll have a greater
tendency to go and eat them again. And here we have to realize that people are going to respond
very very differently based on age and gender, based on their responses, how their nervous system
responds to cortisol, how their insulin resistance level is, what their what their tendency. So not
everyone is going to be the same. This is not a hard and fast rule. So this is going to work
great for some people to do anorobic, but for other people it's going to backfire, especially
if you have a lot of stress in your life. If you don't respond well to emotional stress,
if you have already kind of stressed adrenals now, you don't want to do too much of this
because that's going to tack on extra stress. The third type is called HIT or highintensity interval
training. And this is where you go all out. Some people think that hit is when you can do that for
30 40 minutes. That's not correct. That's not where you go 70 80% and then you do a little
burst. This is all out 95 to 100% of your effort and you're trying to get your heart rate up in
that range as well. And this hit is going to have a very very high demand on cortisol, but it's also
going to produce a lot of human growth hormone. And we'll look at that on the next slide. Four
is resistance training. When you lift weights, you do push-ups, you can do resistance on machines or
body weights or free weights, doesn't matter. But you are putting some resistance on your muscles.
And here it's not really one category or the other. You could do this for any of them. So
if you do very very light and leisurely, it could be aerobic. Now you're not building much muscles,
but you're still putting some tension on your muscles. Anorobic could be if you do like a
circuit training with machines, you go from one to the other and you keep your heart rate up in
that range. It could be anorobic or it could even be a hit. If you do a few very, very heavy lifts,
repetitions to failure. Now, you could very easily get your heart rate up to the maximum range. But
the reason you do the resistance training is that you want to build or maintain muscles,
which is super important for longevity and quality of life. So, let's talk about
how we can use these principles to do correct exercise. And this is my opinion. It's going to
differ depending on who you talk to, but here's my reasoning. You want to do long duration aerobic,
keeping your heart rate in the 60 to 70% range because you can do that as much as you like or as
much as you enjoy. You can go an hour, 90 minutes, two hours day. You can go on a bike ride or a hike
and it's very very little wear and tear. You could do it every day. You can wake up the next day and
do it again. You don't need recovery and you're also not producing hardly any cortisol because
you're running on fat. So, you don't need to dig into the cortisol to raise blood sugar for that.
And then I think that you should do some very short duration highintensity interval training two
to three times a week. And these should be very short duration. And to me that's 20 to 30 seconds.
Now for a lot of people the the limitation here is that it may not be safe to do it at that level
of intensity. So you need to figure out what works for you. Uh, a young person can do jumping jacks.
They can do all sorts of things, but as we get older, we don't want to hurt ourselves. Now,
my favorite thing is to do sprints uphill. And the reason I go uphill is that you can get to
the same heart rate going uphill as you could with twice the speed going flat. So, you don't have to
go very fast when you go uphill. And that makes it much safer. If you're not that fit, you could
even walk fast uphill, especially if you find a really nice steep hill. You could walk quickly up
a flight of stairs or several flights of stairs and and get this effect. And another safe way to
do it is on an exercise bike. It's a little harder to get to those really high heart rates, though,
but play around with it. Do some research and see what might work for you. Now, what we want to keep
in mind for this is that it's very high wear and tear. It's a huge strain. You're really pushing
the body and you're producing enormous amounts of cortisol, but only for a short time. And
then you're making human growth hormone, which is fat burning and muscle building and rejuvenating.
And even though you're just going a short time, short duration, the growth hormone effect stays
on for days. Now, if it only lasts for seconds, that's the good thing. So, I put the good stuff in
green and the bad stuff in red. So, the wear and tear just means that you can't do it every day.
You don't want to. You do it two to three times a week. The cortisol is not a problem because
it only lasts for seconds. we get a quick spike and then it drops back down. And you didn't use
up hardly any glucose because it was so brief. And again, even though it's a short duration,
we still making plenty of that growth hormone. And the reason we can get so much effect from a short
duration is that you're challenging your body. You're pushing it to the max. You're telling it,
"Hey, you better step up. I'm going to do this again and you have to get better. You have to
get stronger. You have to get younger so you can put up with it next time. I'm going to do it. And
then the third kind is resistance training. And yes, you need to do it. And like I said,
it's because it's not to burn fat necessarily. And that's why I don't make a huge deal out of
it here. But muscle strength is one of the best predictors for longevity and quality of life.
So, just do it. And then I think you can do some of the steadystate cardio, the anorobic training,
the spin classes if you like them. I don't think you need them at all, but if you like them,
I think you can do some. And it could be great for some people. And especially if you're busy,
if your office, if where you work has a gym in the basement or someplace you can just jump down for
30 minutes and that's all the time that you have, then that might be a great idea for you. However,
for other people, for some people, like I mentioned, if you have adrenal fatigue,
if you have high stress, if you don't deal with stress very well, now you probably will make
too much cortisol and you will create too much cravings that can tend to backfire. So, again,
we're all different. I'm not saying that this is necessarily the solid golden rule for everybody,
but use these principles as a foundation when you figure it out. So in the big picture, it will add
another 15 to 20% and now we have covered about a third of our 100% of the total picture. So
the fifth factor you want to understand is insulin and food quality. And the reason is refined carbs,
processed foods, sugar, they will create insulin spikes. That food breaks down quickly. It's
full of sugar and starches that get into our bloodstream very fast and it triggers blood
sugar spikes and insulin spikes. And why does that matter? Because insulin stores fat. It's really,
really good at it. That's its main job. There's nothing else really that tells the body to store
fat. And when we have high levels, then it's going to store fat, especially visceral fat because the
visceral fat has more receptors. And when we have chronically high insulin, when we have frequent
consistent insulin spikes, that's going to create insulin resistance. And now with high levels of
insulin because it's so good at storing, it's going to block fat burning. We can't release the
fat and we can't release especially that visceral fat. So if you store a bunch of energy in the form
of fat, but you can't get to it, that's going to make you hungry. That's something a lot of
people don't realize. Again, it's not willpower, it's biology. you've created an adaptation where
insulin locks down the resources and insulin resistance will make you hungry. So when it comes
to food quality, you want to eat whole food and you want to build a foundation on high quality fat
and protein because that's going to stabilize your blood sugar. Instead of having blood sugar swings
of 50 to 80 points on processed foods and junk, you're going to swing maybe five or 10 points. And
without any fluctuations, you're going to have a reduction in hunger over time. And it doesn't take
long. It only takes a few days of cutting out the junk food, the processed starches, and replacing
them with fat and protein before you notice a reduction in hunger. And that's the key because
if certain foods make you hungry, then you're going to overeat and you can't burn off that
visceral fat. Whereas, if your hunger goes down, that's a prerequisite to burn that fat. And the
opposite of that is if we have blood sugar swings, blood sugar roller coasters. Now that also in turn
creates energy swings. You have ups and downs in energy and mood. And that in turn leads to more
cravings and overconumption. And this is why the quality of food matters more than the calories
because the quality of foods and the stabilization of blood sugar is what changes behavior. Okay?
It affects hunger and cravings. It stabilizes all that. So in the big picture that contributes about
25% of the big picture. So now, of course, you're wondering, what is the rest there? And the answer
is you have to have a calorie deficit. And this is going to confuse some people because I've said in
the past that you shouldn't count calories. You shouldn't worry about calories. And we'll get to
that on the next slide here. But you must have a deficit because that's the incentive for the
body to use up some of what you stored. Again, if you put in more than your body is using,
there's no incentive. there is no way to actually burn up what you've stored. So, there's a little
bit of good news with visceral fat, and that is that it's actually relatively active. It
is a little bit easier to gain, it's a little easier to lose than other fat. Unless and if you
had experience that it's a little difficult, it's probably because of high cortisol, high insulin,
high stress that of course creates high cortisol because these effectively block all fat burning
including visceral. So in the big picture we can see that a calorie deficit is indeed the biggest
portion the greatest impact of this because again there's no incentive to burn fat unless we have
a deficit. But here's the real question. Everyone knows you're supposed to have a deficit. They tell
you eat less, exercise more. You you have to eat fewer calories. Well the question is not that. The
question is how do you maintain that deficit? And that's the part they don't understand when
they just say eat fewer calories because indeed you must have a deficit to burn fat. However,
you don't want to focus on the calories. And these sound like the same thing to some people,
but they're completely opposite. You don't want to focus on them. You want to understand calorie
counting diets is deprivation. If you don't change the quality, if you don't change the types,
if you just eat low-fat foods and crackers and so forth and count calories, you will be
deprived. You'll always be a little bit hungry and deprivation is not sustainable. Deprivation
feels bad. Nobody wants to feel bad for the rest of their life. So, they get on a diet,
they get off a diet. And that's why I talked about all these steps in this video in that
order. It wasn't just because of the percentages. It's because the food quality, the improved sleep
quality, the lowering stress levels and cortisol, the correct exercise, the stable blood glucose.
All of those are the foundation for the calorie deficit. It's not counting calories. It's creating
a situation where you naturally will feel better and eat less. So the first few items number one
through five that we talked about, they're all part of creating that deficit without suffering.
But even more importantly, it's also what allows us to sustain that deficit and turn it into
a lifestyle. Because what's the point of doing something temporarily? If you lose a few pounds,
who cares how good a diet is if you're only going to do it for a month? because then you'll stop
doing it and you're back where you started. So, I hope you see that there is no single item that is
a magic bullet. It's by understanding all of them and stacking all of them that you get the fastest
way to burn visceral fat. If you enjoyed this video, you're going to love that one. And if you
truly want to master health by understanding how the body really works, make sure you subscribe,
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