What is Your Beer Belly?
Move over six-pack abs!
Just as the ladies battle with their love handles, men have a protruding gut, aka beer belly, though some seem to be proud of their “pregnant” status.
Is guy’s protruding belly really caused by beer, as it is commonly called? Well, apparently beer is just one of the factors and it is not just a walking “keg of beer” that men are carrying around.
Calories are the attributing factor that is turning your trim waistline into a belly that protrudes over your pants. It can be from alcohol, sugar or over consumption of food, though alcohol does seem to have a particular association with fat in the midsection. When alcohol is consumed, the liver concentrate on burning the alcohol instead of fats, hence fats gets accumulated in the tummy.
It gets worse, as nobody drinks alcohol alone right? Those junk food or bar snacks that goes so well with an ice cold beer, and your lower metabolism rate as one gets older are not helping at all and are rejoicing that you are helping them find permanent citizenship in your abdomen.
Do you know, there are also 2 different type of beer belly? Lets take a look at the different belly type, though not as interesting or vocabulary-rich as the different breast shape that guys like to discuss during the guys talk, while they cultivate their belly at the local kopi shop or uptown bar.
The 1st type is where it is difficult to pinch the tummy that is the HARD TYPE, akin to a woman who has undergone a breast augmentation procedure. Nope, it is not that the men have master a way to combine their six-pack rock hard abs into 1, but rather, it is caused by a high accumulation of visceral fat. This type of fats is packed in so tightly till there is no jiggle room. It accumulates in the abdomen and pushes the abdominal wall outward, hence giving the appearance of a protruding stomach, just like a pregnant woman.
On the other hand, a soft jiggly tummy akin to a woman with voluptuous soft breasts is attributed to subcutaneous fats, is located closer to the skin surface. Such belly can be pinched and good to grab as well.
Both visceral and subcutaneous fat are mainly attributed to genes, and your dietary and lifestyle habits. But there is a critical difference between the 2 different types of fats. While having some subcutaneous fat is still harmless, visceral fats are more dangerous and are linked to a number of health risks such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
For those having a hard belly, freak not, visceral fats is known to yield easily to exercise and diet, while subcutaneous fat on the other hand is more stubborn and more difficult to lose.
So which beer belly are you? Regardless of your belly type, let us start getting our butts of the bar seat, and jio your buddies to start walking the treadmill together while we gossip over the women, with a mug of ice cold beer in hand!