STUBBORN BELLY FAT (Part 6): The Connection Between Belly Fat And Diabetes

Is there really a connection between belly fat and diabetes? Unfortunately, there is. It's a statistic that people who carry more fat around their midsection and other parts of the body tend toward something called metabolic syndrome. Heart disease, high cholesterol, and blood pressure, and diabetes all seem to plague people with more belly fat.

Body types are given fruit names. Pear-shaped people suffer from these problems far less than people shaped like apples with round middles and lots of weight above the waist. So if you have a lot of abdominal fat, are you headed for diabetes on a one-way train that you can't stop?

Definitely not. It's not really known whether people who carry more belly fat are more prone to diabetes or if it’s because they're born with a tendency toward diabetes and that causes the fat to settle around the middle.

In other words, when it comes to metabolic syndrome and abdominal fat, doctors and researchers don't know if the chicken or the egg came first. Does the fat cause diabetes, or do you have the fat because you're more prone to diabetes? However, one thing is certain. Losing belly fat lowers your chances of diabetes.

In fact, statistics show that type II diabetes, also called adult-onset diabetes, is preventable in almost all cases. Type I diabetes typically happens in childhood and is called juvenile diabetes. This strikes young people when their pancreas simply stops producing enough insulin or it stops producing any insulin at all.

Type I diabetes has nothing to do with being overweight or having belly fat. Type II diabetes, by comparison, is a disease this is believed to be mostly caused by lifestyle. Poor eating habits and no exercise or very little exercise are believed to mostly be the cause of this disease.

Even if everyone in your family has diabetes, you can take steps to try to prevent it in yourself. If you have a lot of abdominal fat, diabetes is a definite danger for you. Losing the fat might not directly affect your chances of diabetes. If someone could peel the fat off your stomach without you changing your lifestyle, you might still be headed for diabetes.

But the action you take to lose that abdominal fat affects your health so positively that you lower your risk of diabetes dramatically. Even losing 10 pounds drops your risk of so many different things like diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, and even knee problems.

So it's not the belly fat loss that directly makes a difference. It's the healthy choices you make that cause yourself to lose fat that can help save you from diabetes.

The steps are simple. Eat complex carbohydrates like oatmeal and whole grains. Make vegetables, fruit, whole grains, and very lean proteins the core of your diet, and don’t forget to get plenty of exercises. The belly fat diabetes connection means these healthy choices can help you avoid this chronic and potentially debilitating disease.

Make sure you look for the next post of this series.