Belly fat is worse than bacon — here’s ‘Harvard’ solution

The fat on your belly may be much more likely to kill you than bacon, sausage, or the “red meat” the mainstream is so concerned about.

According to research at Columbia University, if you are between the ages of 40 and 85, there’s an 18 percent chance belly fat will be responsible for your death.

“Obesity has dramatically worse health consequences than some recent reports have led us to believe,” says researcher Ryan Masters, Ph.D., who conducted the research as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. “We expect that obesity will be responsible for an increasing share of deaths in the United States and perhaps even lead to declines in U.S. life expectancy.”

For older Americans, Dr. Masters says that obesity is already exacting an ever increasing toll. For example, for white men who died between the ages of 65 and 70 in the years 1986 to 2006, what is called grade one obesity (body mass index of 30 to less than 35) caused about 3.5 percent of deaths for those born between 1915 and 1919. For men born 10 years later, it accounted for about 5 percent of deaths. Another 10 years later, it killed off more than 7 percent.

You may have heard that you can’t spot reduce the fat in any specific area of the body. Or that you should use the big muscles of the body help you lose more fat overall than little muscles like abdominal muscles.

But Harvard University researchers say that building strength in your muscles in general – any kind of daily strength training – helps you release more fat-burning hormones to reduce belly fat.

They took a look, over a 12 year period, at the fitness habits of more than 10,000 people aged 40 and over. They found that if you lift weights for at least 20 minutes a day you’ll have half as much belly fat than if you do only aerobic exercise.

The study also says if you stick with it, you’ll reduce your risk for diabetes by 60% over your lifetime.