Fat – we all have it. Some have a little, some have a lot – most of us don’t know much about it. So here are 10 fat facts to inform and amaze you – and yes, help you get rid of it:
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“The average woman carries about 20 to 25kg of fat,” says Dr Jarrod Meerkin from MeasureUp, a body composition scanning service.
“That fat provides back-up energy when blood sugar runs out, it insulates the skin from cold and heat and helps transport nutrients across cell membranes.
It also provides the building blocks for hormones.”
…but even scientists didn’t know that until earlier this year.
It seems the subcutaneous fat that lies just under the skin’s surface actively protects us against invaders. Within hours of exposing an area of skin to Staphylococcus aureus bacteria in a lab, fat cells around the site were producing anti-microbial chemicals to kill the bug.
The moral of this story: low body fat is healthy – but very low body fat is not better. “A normal body fat percentage for women is 21 to 33 per cent, depending on age,” says Dr Meerkin.
Fat around the middle is more dangerous to health than fat around your hips and thighs. One simple way to measure if you have too much tummy fat has been created by British doctor Margaret Ashwell. Cut a piece of string the same length as your height, fold it in half and wrap it around your waist.
If the ends don’t meet, you’re carrying too much fat here. “You need to keep your waist to less than half your height if you want to stay healthy,” she says.
While it’s well-known that excess kilos increase your risk of developing health problems like heart disease or diabetes, recently scientists have learned something strange: people carrying a few extra kilos are less likely to die of these problems than the underweight.
The University of Queensland’s Dr Carl Lavie, author of The Obesity Paradox, was one of the first doctors to spot this. “Very thin people often have the worst prognosis – especially if they are unfit,” he says.
The so-called ‘apple’ body shape is caused by visceral fat – a type of body fat which accumulates within the abdomen and around internal organs such as the liver and pancreas – a major risk factor for Type 2 diabetes, heart problems and liver disease.
Exercise reduces this harmful visceral fat, even if you don’t seem to drop kilos. In a recent Australian study, 45-minute workouts of any kind three times a week did the trick.
Believe it or not, until last year we didn’t have a clue what happened to any fat lost through diet or exercise. But then researchers at the University of New South Wales discovered we actually breathe most of it out with the carbon dioxide we exhale.
Sadly, this does not mean breathing faster triggers weight loss – unless you’re doing it because you’re sprinting!
Two studies have recently discovered that you can’t cheat your fat cells. When women had liposuction – on their thighs in one trial and on their tummies in the other – within a year an equivalent amount of the fat they’d had sucked out came back.
And the fat came back as dangerous visceral fat that collects deep in the abdomen. To avoid this you have to exercise.
…and you make it by turning on the air conditioning. It’s called brown fat and it collects around the neck, shoulders and chest. As babies we use this type of fat to keep us warm and until recently it was thought that we lost it as adults, but now scientists have discovered most of us still possess it.
We just need to reawaken it – and one way is by feeling cold. So why do you want brown fat? It burns calories and can help you manage your weight.
And the messages they send aren’t good ones.
In 2013 a team in Texas found that fat cells actually make our immune system believe that it’s under attack. The immune system then mounts an inflammatory response to stop this which causes chronic inflammation in the system.
Losing weight obviously helps fight this, but using turmeric (in cooking or as a supplement) and taking a good quality fish oil daily can also be beneficial.
A chemical in the grapes called ellagic acid aids fat-burning and slows down how fast existing fat cells form or grow, shows a US study.
This doesn’t mean you can go on a wine diet to get thin, though.
To lose fat you can actually see and feel, try eating dairy. In another US study, people who consumed 1100mg of calcium from dairy daily (about three 250ml glasses of milk) n lost 1.5kg more body fat than those who didn’t.
(Text by Helen Foster, bauersyndication.com.au / Additional reporting by Natalya Molok)