Unless someone has been blessed with the perfect genetic makeup, most adults in the civilized world today, especially women, have struggled with some amount of abdominal fat. We hate it. It's unattractive, inconvenient - and it could seriously and negatively affect our health.
Where does this fat come from? Why don't exercises make it disappear? Why is it so hard to get rid of? There are several factors at work.
We know that the fat on our bodies comes from the food we eat. There have been enough weight-loss programs and diet information around for the last few decades that we know that if we eat more calories than we expend, we're going to add fat to our bodies, and that's not good.
Everyone's genetics also play a main role. As soon as we are conceived, we have a genetic program set up for what our hair and eye color will be, our height, the size and shape of our nose, our body type, and how our fat will be distributed. Some people's metabolism is programmed from Day 1 to run at a faster rate throughout their lifetime, and these people will naturally have less fat than other people.
Women face an additional challenge with abdominal fat. In the childbearing years, women have fat distributed in the arms, legs, thighs and hips as well as in the belly. As women pass into menopause and the hormone levels adjust, fat moves from the limbs, hips and thighs into the abdomen. Because of this process, it's possible for women's waistlines to get bigger without any appreciable weight gain.
It's not just the fat you can see in the mirror. Abdominal fat also lives in the muscles of the abdomen, and it crowds the organs in that part of the body. When the organs are crowded, it can cause difficulty in breathing, circulation, and other organ functions. Also, the heart has to work harder to pump blood through these crowded areas of the body. This raises the blood pressure, which in turn speeds up a process of wearing down of the lining of the arteries. When the lining of the arteries is worn down, the body becomes more susceptible to stroke and other health problems.
Abdominal fat affects hormone levels throughout the body. It has also been linked to the development of Type II diabetes, colorectal cancer and breast cancer.
Abdominal fat seems harder to get rid of than fat in other parts of the body because we lose weight all over the body, not just from one place. Much as we'd like to just target the belly, the fat is going to come off from everywhere. When they diet, people who wear the same rings every day will probably notice that as their belly starts to shrink, their rings will begin to get looser too, because the fat comes off everywhere - fingers too.
How much abdominal fat is too much? There are a couple of rules of thumb to go by. First, measure around the belly at the level of the navel. Don't suck in and don't push the belly out. Just stand normally and wrap a tape measure around without pulling tight, and see what the measurement is. One source suggests that your waist should not measure more than half of your height. Another source suggests that, no matter what your height, your waist measurement should not be more than 33 to 35 inches.