JJ Virgin breaks down visceral fat, the deep abdominal fat that surrounds organs and drives insulin resistance and disease. Three things cause it: high cortisol from stress, elevated insulin, and chronic inflammation. Fix it with protein-first eating and high-intensity interval training, short 10-30 second all-out bursts that burn visceral fat better than steady cardio.
We got two basic kinds of fat. We got subcutaneous fat, you hear that pinch and itch, and then we have this visceral fat or the VAT fat. And that's really what I'm talking about here. So visceral adipose tissue, VAT fat, is surrounding all those internal organs. It's deep in the abdominal cavity. And so it's like things like the liver, the pancreas, the intestines. And so it's accumulating here. And that is what gives you that apple shape. Now, again, subcutaneous, you know this stuff, you can pinch it, right? Remember the old pinch an inch? And people have more subcutaneous, they might have like more around their thighs, more around their hips. They're more pear-shaped. Bet you haven't heard the apple and the pear in a while. Now, the reason that vat fat is so bad is because of what it does to your overall health. First of all, bad for your metabolism, bad metabolic impact, because visceral adipose tissue is actually more metabolically active and it releases more of these inflammatory cytokines and free fatty acids into the bloodstream. So when this happens, these substances can interfere with insulin signaling, actually promote insulin resistance, and contribute to the development of a whole bunch of bad stuff like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease. So I hope you're thinking, I really don't want the vat fat and I want to get rid of the vat fat. So what are the things that cause vat fat? Well, one of them, I always used to say, okay, if this is bigger, this is my stress belly because elevated cortisol levels, stress, can do a number on vat fat. In fact, studies show that excess cortisol can promote the storage of fat in the abdominal region. Here's what goes on. First of all, cortisol— high stress— stimulates the breakdown of muscle protein, which we never want to have happen. Then you've got these amino acids released, then they're converted to sugar by the liver, then your blood sugar is elevated, which of course triggers an insulin release. Then that insulin release promotes the storage of that sugar as fat here. Now Cortisol is one. Insulin is another driver for vat fat, and insulin resistance can contribute to vat fat in a variety of different ways. First of all, the cells become less responsive to insulin. When that happens, what does the body do? It produces more insulin, and when you have higher insulin levels, that then promotes fat storage, and especially fat in the abdominal area. When your body starts to become resistant to insulin, it makes it way harder to burn off stored fat. Then this means that your body is going to have more fat accumulate. The other one besides cortisol and insulin is inflammation, because chronic inflammation is another driver of that fat. So when you have ongoing inflammation in your body— and here's the challenge: more fat, more inflammation, more inflammation, more fat— but when you have more inflammation, it's harder for your body to do a good balance, strike a good balance between storing fat and breaking it down. This can actually cause more fat cells to grow in your abdominal area. Plus, inflammation makes it hard for your body to use stored fat for energy. Guess what that means? Even more fat accumulating around your waist. Now, when there's too much inflammation and too much belly fat, it can make it even harder for your body to then use insulin properly. So you can see how this whole thing becomes a super vicious cycle with inflammation and insulin resistance keep adding more fat here. So what's happening? We got cortisol, we got insulin and inflammation as these big players. Now, what do you do about it? So first of all, before you do anything about it, you really got to know how big of a problem it is. And there's a couple different ways to look at it. The very, very, very best way you can do it is to go get something called a DEXA body scan. We used to do these only for bone mineral density. Now they have the software so they can see a couple different key see things on your body. They can see your body fat and everything else, your fat-free mass. But more specifically, in your body fat, they can see where the fat is. And you might go, I know where it is. You don't really know till you look. The other key thing you're going to find out here is in your fat-free mass, how much is skeletal muscle? How balanced is that skeletal muscle? Do you have enough of that skeletal muscle? Because remember, if you're losing weight but you're losing skeletal muscle, you're making yourself worse, not better. Now there's another piece to that. If you're losing weight without losing your waist, you're also making yourself worse. So one of the simplest tools that you can use to really help you monitor visceral adipose tissue, it's an easy one, it's a tape measure. And what you want to do is measure your waist and compare it to your height. And you want to make sure, again, if you are trying to lose weight, you want to hold on to your muscle, or better yet, increase it and lose body fat. Okay, super duper important. So once you know where it is, how much you have, Next step is what do you do about it? If your diet's upgraded, it's going to work way better. So I'm going to give you one thing to increase in your diet that's going to help here. Now, spoiler alert, these are going to work best, all these strategies, when you do this with an eat protein first, eat by the clock, eat by the plate approach. And that's something I've been talking about in all of my videos, because if you were sitting over here and you're living on an ultra-processed food diet, slugging down a bunch of sodas, there's really only so much that these interventions can do. They'll still do something, but come on, help yourself out. Eat protein first. Eat by the plate. Eat by the clock. Okay, here we go. Number 1, exercise. Okay, I'm cheating a bit here because I'm going to talk about 4 different things in exercise. I'm giving it the big umbrella. First one, high-intensity interval training. In fact, there are so many studies showing that high-intensity interval training is so key for burning off visceral adipose tissue. So before I explain how it does it, I'm going to first tell you what high-intensity interval training is. So you've probably heard of zone 2 or steady-state training, that kind of in your fat-burning zone where you're just able to carry on a conversation but a little breathy. That's not what this is. What this is, let's say that you're used to going out for a jog steady-state. What you want to do instead for high-intensity interval training is go out Move for about 3 minutes and then go all out for 10 to 30 seconds, up to a minute. But here's the thing, don't pace yourself. Ideally, you want to go as hard as possible to a point where you go, I cannot do another one, like sprinting. I've been sprinting on a self-propelled treadmill. Holy smokes. So I try to burn myself out somewhere 30 seconds or less, and then I walk it off until I get my breath close to back again, and then I do it again and I walk it off. And generally what you'll see is depending on how hard you're going and how fit you are, because the fitter you are, the faster you recover. You might have to do, let's say if you did 30 seconds hard, it might take you a minute to a minute and a half to recover. 2 to 3 times as long. Totally fine. Fitter you are, the faster you'll recover. But the harder you go, the longer it'll take too. So you really want to push on this. And by the way, here's the thing that you got to know. It doesn't get easier because you just keep pushing yourself more. So, you know, I had someone tell me, oh my gosh, now I can do that HIIT cycle 4 minutes hard. I go, you're not doing it hard enough. Because you should really within 30 seconds go, I cannot do another step, and then you walk it off.
