CAN YOU REALLY TARGET BELLY FAT FOR WEIGHT LOSS?

There's a lot of advice about exactly what you should do to shift that spare tyre around your waist. Does any of it add up?

- REBECCA DUMBELL

We've all seen the adverts. 'This one, simple trick will blitz the blubber around your belly'; "Turn your body into a furnace and burn off your spare tyre with this diet hack'; 'Get Adonis abs by doing this five-minute workout'. But exactly how sceptical of their claims should we be? What does science actually tell us about getting rid of belly fat?

Well, the first thing to say is that not all fat is bad. To maintain good health, it's critical that our bodies can store excess energy, and they do this using fat. Fat tissue is also structurally important in our bodies - it helps keep us warm through insulation and it cushions the palms of our hands, the soles of our feet and, yes, our bottoms. The fat just under our skin, known as subcutaneous fat and often found on the hips and buttocks, can be healthy. Ultimately, without any fat storage in our bodies, we would be unwell and very uncomfortable.

That said, losing excess belly fat is a good idea. A sizeable gut could indicate a person is carrying a large amount of 'deep' abdominal fat, known as visceral fat, which can surround our organs and make us more likely to be ill. Visceral fat is more insulin-resistant than other fat tissue meaning it's worse at absorbing blood glucose. It's also more linked to inflammation and is more likely to release fats into the blood in response to stress hormones, increasing a person's risk of metabolic disease.

There are various ways to see if your levels of visceral fat are high, but the easiest is to check your waist-hip ratio.

Using a tape measure, measure the widest part of your hips and the narrowest part of your waist, then divide the your waist measurement by your hip measurement. According to the World Health Organization, the healthy ratios for men and women are below 1 and 0.85 respectively (the difference is due to women having broader hips).

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