Is there really an abdominal fat diabetes connection? 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 abdominal fat are more prone to diabetes because they are simply born in such a way that they tend toward that belly fat. Or 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? But one thing is certain. Losing abdominal 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 abdominal fat. Type II diabetes, by comparison, is a disease that 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 yourself. If you have a lot of abdominal fat, diabetes is a definite danger for you. Losing 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 abdominal 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 get plenty of exercise. The abdominal fat diabetes connection means these healthy choices can help you avoid this chronic and potentially debilitating disease.