Belly fat makes you ill – 2 rules when eating immediately reduce your risk

A little extra on the hips and thighs is usually a more cosmetic issue. It’s different with belly fat. The depot around the middle of the body, medically: visceral fat, is a real health risk – and it is not a minority problem.

Belly fat is especially bad for your health

Two thirds of the population in Germany are affected and thus risk illness and even many years of life. Nevertheless, this problem is rarely discussed. When it comes to body fat, the stomach, legs and bottom often have priority. In their new book “Our Anti-Belly Fat Program”, nutritionist Matthias Riedl and three colleagues show how the waist can be regained – and how you can quickly reduce your risk of belly fat.

FOCUS Online: Why did you decide for your new book on the topic of belly fat and not, for example, overweight?

Matthew Riedl: Belly fat is the central issue when it comes to the poor health of Germans. Someone can definitely be overweight, but if they only have a little bit of abdominal fat, it doesn’t matter to us doctors, then it’s at best a cosmetic problem for the person concerned. And even if you have a normal BMI, you can definitely have too much belly fat. At least two thirds of Germans are affected. Belly fat reflects the entire poor nutritional situation, so to speak.

How do I know if I have too much belly fat?

Riedl: It’s easy to do by measuring your waist circumference: For women, it’s ideally less than 80 centimeters, it shouldn’t be more than 85. For men, 94 to 102 centimeters applies.

Why is belly fat so dangerous compared to say love handles?

Riedl: Belly fat disrupts the entire metabolism, disrupts the regulation of blood pressure and blood lipids, and leads to increased inflammation in the body. We call this silent inflammation or silent inflammation . This inflammation shortens the telomeres in the cell nucleus, which means we age faster. It means exhausting continuous stress on the immune system.

So belly fat permanently overloads our immune system?

Riedl: Yes, the immune system can no longer fine-tune the reactions to pathogens. Those affected often have a much more severe course of infectious diseases. We see that with Covid. This leads to excessive, dramatic overreactions that have ruined the lung tissue in a very short time. It was no longer about the virus, but about an unleashed detonation, a chain reaction that could no longer be stopped, with a fatal outcome.

If we succeed in this silent inflammation turning back, we can not only survive diseases better, but also slow down aging and also arthrosis, arteriosclerosis, i.e. all signs of wear and tear.

So reducing belly fat could be the best way to stay healthy?

Riedl: It is the key to health, like a fountain of health or fountain of youth.

And here’s the good news that belly fat is said to melt away faster than deposits on your hips, legs and arms. Why is that?

Riedl: Belly fat is sort of an overflow. If the body’s fat absorption is overloaded, fat accumulates there immediately. The reverse also applies when you lose weight. The subcutaneous fatty tissue of the body is spared because we need it for isolation and buffering. First, the abdominal fat, i.e. the liver, breaks down.

What is the main cause of belly fat?

Riedl: The malnutrition. A lot of people think I just have to eat less fat. With this opinion, however, we run into the old lies of the American food industry, which warned about fat but not about sugar, in order to sell sweetened and carbohydrate-rich products that are particularly easy to process better.

Die So the #1 cause of belly fat is sugar?

Riedl: There is a ranking of the bad things about nutrition. Fructose, i.e. fruit sugar, is in first place. In the food industry, it is considered harmless and is also classified as such by the authorities. There is no limit to the addition. Fructose is cheaper than household sugar and sweetens significantly more – household sugar has 100 percent sweetening strength, fructose 120 percent. That is why fructose is added to many foods as a flavor enhancer and then leads to addictive behavior.

Which foods contain a particularly high amount of fructose?

Riedl: At least every second finished product, and the trend is rising, supplies fructose, often in huge quantities! In system gastronomy this is even more. For example, at McDonalds, only coffee and the Chicken McNuggets contain no fructose. If you add ketchup or barbecue sauce, you already have fructose again. Unlike table sugar, fructose cannot be used by the cells, but ends up in the liver, is converted into fat, clogs the liver and accumulates around the middle of the body.

But fructose sounds so healthy… it’s made from fruit.

Riedl: Fructose in its natural form is packaged in fruit and consumed with the fruit. There is fiber in it and it takes the body a long time to break it down. In addition, we do not eat endless fruit and therefore also fructose – quite the opposite of foods with large amounts of added fructose. For comparison: If you ate an apple, you consumed less fructose than if you ate a finished product – a hamburger with cola or a glass of supposedly healthy fruit juice.

Also, where does belly fat come from?

Riedl: Household sugar is the number 2 cause of belly fat. After that come highly refined carbohydrates, finely ground flours, basically anything highly processed like convenience foods. Because the more processed products are, the faster they are digested, converted into sugar and the faster blood sugar rises.

Lemonades and juices are also particularly risky. Incidentally, grape and apple juice also contain as much sugar as lemonade, so mix it with water in a ratio of 1:3.

What helps most effectively against belly fat – accordingly avoid these factors, i.e. eliminate fructose and sugar from the diet in general?

Riedl: Correct. Low-sugar diet, especially low-fructose, which ideally also contains little refined flour. And a real opponent of belly fat is simply vegetables. It should be 500 grams per day, plus nuts, because they provide valuable protein and healthy fats.

So fat versus belly fat?

Riedl: Yes, in addition to nuts, of course, also healthy oils such as olive, rapeseed, nut and fish oils, i.e. eat fish. These oils provide omega-3 fatty acids, which are built structurally into cell walls and are important for metabolism. In addition, omega-3 fatty acids delay the rise in blood sugar and reduce the risk of fatty liver. This can actually reduce belly fat, as some studies show.

For example, the subjects who ate nuts and consumed a liter of olive oil per week were significantly thinner, had less abdominal fat, lower levels of inflammation in the blood, fewer heart attacks and a lower risk of cancer than others. Omega-3 fatty acids therefore have a multimodal effect.

Is it best to get omega-3 fatty acids from foods like nuts, vegetable oils and fish?

Riedl: Omega-3 fatty acids are absorbed much better in a high-fat meal than in a low-fat one. Most Germans are deficient in omega-3 fatty acids. In individual cases, taking fish or algae oil capsules can also make sense here.

What about meat – vegetarian is probably better overall against belly fat?

Riedl: Meat provides an unhealthy ratio of unsaturated to saturated fats. High meat consumption leads to obesity, belly fat and type 2 diabetes. Those who consume more vegetable protein, for example from legumes and nuts, do not have this risk.

In the fight against belly fat, you also rely on low carb. However, this is somewhat controversial.

Riedl: We should avoid carbohydrates from finely ground flours and highly processed foods. However, if they are complex carbohydrates, i.e. packed in fiber, ballast, as in some vegetables, they are cheap. Because they are broken down and digested only slowly.

Also Low Carb oder Low Fat?

Riedl: The discussion about low carb and low fat is actually the wrong discussion. Studies show that it doesn’t matter whether you eat low-carb or low-fat when it comes to weight. Because studies show that those who ate the least sugar, few refined flours, few highly processed foods and lots of vegetables lost the most weight – i.e. plant-based. And if there are a lot of carbohydrates in the vegetables, it doesn’t matter.

The right diet helps against belly fat. And how often, or better yet, how seldom should we eat to lose belly fat?

Riedl: Eating structure is also important. We see that the eating structure has been lost in the population. People start with a small breakfast because they don’t want to gain weight, but after two or three hours they’re hungry again. Then snacking arises for many, others simply leave it to chance when and how often they eat.

What’s wrong with small, frequent meals?

Riedl: When we snack constantly, insulin levels are constantly elevated. Insulin is the fat builder in the body, so we are in constant fat building mode. Better: Summarize this snacking to three, better still two meals per day. If you want and for whom this is possible, you can also do intermittent fasting.

Diet is one thing, what about exercise against belly fat?

Riedl: In this context, movement is the little brother. You can completely eliminate the benefits of exercise with the wrong diet.

So the calculation “I treat myself to red and white currywurst with fries because I trained in the studio today” doesn’t add up?

Riedl: Yes, that’s just not true. Consider how many calories and unfavorable fats you’re taking in, it would take several hours of exercise to compensate. Apart from that: A healthy mixture of endurance sports twice a week and strength training once a week is ideal.

A change in diet, but also maintaining regular exercise over the long term, is difficult. How can you do that, what tricks do you have for it, for example against cravings?

Riedl: Planning meals is one thing. But if you get hungry, you should think about where the hunger comes from. Is it just habit because I always snack around this time? Then it’s a habit that can be easily changed – for example, instead of sweets at 3 p.m., delicious coffee or tea. Or you can eat a few almonds or walnuts when you are craving, brush your teeth, bite into a lemon, that immediately blocks cravings.

Bitter substances are also a good tip. Not only do they have a digestive effect, but bitter substances are messenger substances that signal to our body that it is full. This is also the reason why bitter vegetables fill us up so well – radiccio, for example, but also green leafy vegetables.

What is your practical experience, how do you get people excited about it?

Riedl: Anyone who has understood what they are doing to themselves, how harmful the wrong diet is, can keep going. After all, we are talking about 15 years of life or not, 10 to 15 years of illness or health, so a total of 30 years!

Improper diet is the cause of 90 percent of premature deaths. The best way to keep up with the change in diet is to take small steps – first analyze what is going wrong with my diet and then change it slowly one by one, never radically.

So if you love gummy bears, but also cola and white bread every day, reduce the gummy bears first?

Riedl: Exactly! If you change everything at once, you damage your quality of life. Our suggestion is 20:80, i.e. improve 20 percent of the diet first.