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Body Fat Types: the Good Fat, the Bad Fat and the Wonderful Fat

 

 

I don't think many people are aware of the different types of fat that exist in the human body, and I think it's a shame, because all fat is viewed as harmful, and it's simply not true.

Luckily, the popularized in the 90's look - the skinny/frail looking woman, is not in vogue anymore. Today women understand that having a strong body is essential for health and longevity. 

Yes, having enough muscle is great for you. And also:

  • striving to minimize the harmful type of fat
  • having *some* essential fat
  • and re-building the wonderful type of fat that's lacking in modern humans (men and women), too, will create more health. 

 

So let's have a look at the 3 types of fat:

The Lethal Type of Fat - Visceral Fat

Visceral fat envelops vital organs in the abdominal cavity. It's not the type of fat that you can pinch, because it's behind the wall of the abdominal muscles.

That's the reason why it's not always immediately obvious to the eye. 

But the typical beer belly in men is the quintessential representation of visceral fat. It can happen in women too, of course. And it's especially prominent in perimenopausal women - for reasons I am laying out below.

How visceral fat forms is, when you overload your system with a heavy hydrogen molecule (deuterium).

Your liver, overloaded with deuterium, starts accumulating fat, which can lead to the non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Once the liver cannot handle the load, the extra fat starts spilling into the abdominal cavity, surrounding the neighboring organs: the kidneys, the heart, the gut, etc.

You can tell if someone has visceral fat by how their face looks: if it's puffy at the bottom. That's the sign. You can also run a DEXA scan or an MRI, to detect it.

 

How do you avoid excess deuterium? 

As we age, our environment sensors and energy factories - the mitochondria - get less efficient. And that's why we get more deuterium accumulation and health issues with age. 

Avoiding processed foods, cheap supplements, low quality water, toxins, sweating in the sun and from exercise, fasting and most of all - avoiding eating out of season.

Because the biggest deuterium overload contributor is what you ingest. You need to eat SOL - seasonal, organic, local, wherever you live, in order to match the deuterium load with the solar yield in your location, that will automatically enable your body to handle the level of incoming deuterium.

Visceral fat pumps out inflammatory cytokines into the bloodstream 24/7.

That's why having visceral fat can lead to many health complications, including:

  1. Heart Disease: Visceral fat can increase the risk of heart disease by raising blood pressure, blood sugar, and bad cholesterol levels while lowering good cholesterol levels.
  2. Type 2 Diabetes: Excess visceral fat can make the body less sensitive to insulin, leading to higher blood sugar levels and increasing the risk of type 2 diabetes.
  3. Stroke: The inflammation and increased risk factors caused by visceral fat, such as high blood pressure and cholesterol, can contribute to the development of stroke.
  4. Certain Cancers: Some studies suggest that visceral fat may increase the risk of certain cancers, including breast and colorectal cancer, possibly due to increased inflammation and hormone production.
  5. Sleep Apnea: Visceral fat can contribute to sleep apnea, a condition where breathing repeatedly stops and starts during sleep, by putting pressure on the diaphragm and airways.
  6. Alzheimer's Disease: There is some evidence that visceral fat might increase the risk of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia, possibly through inflammation and vascular damage.
  7. Osteoarthritis: Excess weight from visceral fat can put additional stress on joints, leading to osteoarthritis, especially in the knees and hips.

So, as you can see, you want to get rid of visceral fat, if you have it, ASAP.

The good news is that once you start on the journey to health, visceral fat is the first type of fat to go. That's why one of the first wins you will see is that your face will 'de-puff'.

 

Next, we have:

The Essential Fat - Subcutaneous Fat

Subcutaneous fat is, of course, essential. It's the fat that's right below the skin, it's the pinchable fat.
Here are the guidelines for the body fat percentages for men and women:

For men:
  • Essential fat: 2-5%
  • Athletes: 6-13%
  • Fitness: 14-17%
  • Average: 18-24%
  • Obesity: 25% and above
For women:
  • Essential fat: 10-13%
  • Athletes: 14-20%
  • Fitness: 21-24%
  • Average: 25-31%
  • Obesity: 32% and above

You will notice that women by nature are designed to have more essential fat than men. The explanation is simple, of course - women are tasked with growing another human inside of them!

And subcutaneous fat is a source of energy. There are vitamins stored there (and toxins, by the way). There are stem cells stored there as well.

Your body views subcutaneous fat literally as 'gold'. It saves you from famine. 

The body stores toxins away in the buffer zone of subcutaneous fat. That's why sometimes it's not so easy to get rid of it - there are many variables at play here.

So I hope that any woman reading these lines who's been frustrated with her fat loss journey, finds an appreciation for the subcutaneous fat. It's there to save your life. It doesn't mean you cannot burn off the excess. But I think the appreciation and respect for the body constantly striving to save you may be a good place to start.

As you know, human babies are born after 9 months in the mother's womb, with a lot of subcutaneous fat on them. This is because their brain is underdeveloped, compared to other primates, because their head needs to fit into the birthing canal. So all this fat is there on the baby as a treasure chest of stored ENERGY, to assist in growing of the brain once the baby is out of the womb.

In the previous post I explained about how fat produces more energy than carbohydrates.

And since we're on the topic of babies, this is a perfect segue to talk about the last type of fat...

 

The Wonderful Fat - Brown Fat

All babies are born with lots of brown fat, because nature has prepared them to keep warm via cold thermogenesis.

Brown fat owes its color to the increased mitochondrial density, and so, it's very metabolically active. 

Here's an excerpt from the exceptional blog by Dr. Thomas Seager at morozkoforge.com: "Most people lose brown fat, only to gain white fat. In fact, brown fat is so rare in adult Americans that until new techniques for its detection were developed 10 years ago, medical scientists thought adults didn't have any brown fat at all."

That's why higher levels of brown fat are linked to better metabolic health, healthier body composition, improved bone health, and possibly longer life spans.

Many of our functions work on the principle 'use it, or lose it'. For example, if you spend a few days in bed without getting up, your legs will atrophy and you will have to learn to walk again.

So it's only natural, that if you don't expose your body to the elements as it's designed to be, like cold water, you will lose brown fat. But you can get it back. Regular full body cold water immersion rebuilds brown fat!

In conclusion, in regards to the types of fat and optimal health, you want no visceral fat, you want a healthy level of subcutaneous fat (around 22% for women), and you want to re-build the wonderful, metabolically active brown fat.