How to Lose Visceral Fat After Menopause

Nikkiey: All fat is not the same. There's the fat that you can see, the fat that you can pinch, the fat that shows up in the mirror, but that is actually not the fat that is most dangerous to your health. Visceral fat. Visceral fat is the fat that is stored inside your abdominal cavity. This visceral fat accumulation tends to happen in perimenopause and menopause, and it's not random. It has a direct physiological explanation.

I want to be direct about something up front. The things that most effectively reduce visceral fat are not the things most women are doing when they try to lose belly fat. The typical approach for women is, let me do more cardio, let me eat less food, let me do lots of core work. That does not specifically target visceral fat.

What's going on, everybody? Hey, you guys. Welcome back to another episode of The WarriorBabe Show with Nikkiey Stott. Here we talk about mindset, methodologies, and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong, and feel insanely confident.

Can you guys believe it? This is episode 401. That's crazy. We have 400-plus episodes, you guys. When I think about that, there is so much value, tips, tricks, strategy, things that you can execute on, action tips, tactical, practical takeaways in 400 episodes. And what's really cool is there was one time when I was taking my dog to the vet and the woman behind the counter was like, oh my goodness, you're Nikkiey Stott. I listened to The WarriorBabe Show. Obviously you guys know that was the name of the podcast prior to The WarriorBabe Show. And she said, I lost 70 pounds just by listening to your podcast. And I was like, that's incredible.

So if you're just tuning in or you're new to the show, there's so much valuable information if you go back through the 400 episodes. If you're not new to the show and you've been tuning in for all 400 episodes, first of all, thank you for being such diehard fans and listening whenever a new one drops. I appreciate that so much, and I will continue to lean in and give you guys so much value.

So today we're going to talk about fat, but I'm not talking about the macronutrient fat. I'm specifically talking about the fat that is on you, the fat that you're probably most worried about. Because, to preface this entire episode, all fat is not the same. There's the fat that you can see, the fat that you can pinch, the fat that shows up in the mirror, right? But that is actually not the fat that is most dangerous to your health. The fat that you cannot see, that is what I want to talk about.

I'm going to talk about both fats. Today I'm going to break down the difference between the two types of fat, why one of them is pretty serious to your health, how most women don't even know that they're carrying it, what that does, and most importantly, how to reduce it. And then the other one, the obvious one that we know, we're going to dive into that too. But I'm going to start off with two specific definitions of what they are, because I think once you understand these two and what they actually are, everything is going to click for you.

The first one is subcutaneous fat. That's the fat that sits directly under your skin. It's the fat that you can see and touch. It's the softness on your thighs, your arms, your hips, your lower belly, the fat that shows up in the mirror. And this is the fat that most women spend most of their time trying to reduce. It's measured the way most of us think about body fat: visually, like what you see in before and after photos. It affects how you look. But this one, even in large amounts, is not acutely dangerous. It's just storage. It's your body holding energy reserves under the surface of the skin, essentially. So that's subcutaneous fat.

Then there's visceral fat, and that is completely different. Visceral fat is the fat that is stored inside your abdominal cavity, and it's wrapped around your internal organs. So think your liver, your pancreas, your intestines, your heart. It's not the fat that you can pinch on your stomach. It's much deeper than that. It sits behind your abdominal muscles, around the organs themselves. And you cannot see this fat. You cannot feel it. A woman can look relatively lean on the outside but carry a large amount of visceral fat on the inside.

And vice versa. A woman can carry visible subcutaneous fat on her thighs and her hips but have very little visceral fat around her abdominal cavity. The person carrying it that way has a lower health risk profile than the one carrying a decent amount of visceral fat. What I mean by that is, if you have belly fat that feels hard, a stomach that is distended and firm rather than soft and pinchable, that is almost always visceral fat.

I'm trying to put it in ways that you could maybe test on yourself right now. But I also don't want to alarm you and send you into a spiral. This is more of an education and teaching conversation. It's also the conversation that maybe your doctor isn't really having with you, helping you understand this about your body. So that's mainly where I'm coming from in teaching you this. The firm, hard-feeling belly fat, that's visceral fat. The soft, pinchable belly fat, that's subcutaneous. They look similar from the outside, but they are completely different things on the inside.

And that distinction matters big time, because visceral fat is not passive storage. It's metabolically active and it can cause harm long term. It is directly linked to health conditions that can lead to death long term. I'm going to get to that in a second. But I want you to understand why visceral fat matters and why it's different from subcutaneous fat, and why your doctor should be having these conversations with you at every appointment.

Visceral fat is not just sitting there. It's actively secreting hormones and inflammatory chemicals that get directly into your bloodstream, specifically into the portal vein that feeds your liver. So it is essential that you understand this, or that we bring light and awareness to this topic. I'm going to talk about how you get visceral fat in a little bit.

But what those signals do is drive chronic inflammation. What I mean by that is, if you have significantly higher visceral fat, there are more inflammatory proteins floating around. And that is one of the underlying causes of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, certain cancers, Alzheimer's disease, and accelerated aging. So the more visceral fat you carry, the higher your baseline inflammatory load is, regardless of how you look on the outside.

It can also drive insulin resistance. A lot of women, like 80 to 90 percent of women, struggle with insulin resistance. Visceral fat directly impacts your liver's ability to regulate blood sugar. So it drives type 2 diabetes. It drives more fat storage. It makes losing fat more difficult. And it makes it hard in the long term to improve your metabolic health with this sitting there. And as I mentioned a second ago, it also increases cardiovascular risk.

I'm putting this on your radar because this belly fat conversation is not just about the aesthetics of wanting to be leaner and more toned. It's also about your overall health. If a firm, distended stomach has started to show up, that's not a cosmetic issue. That's not something you can just get rid of with liposuction, or do what a lot of women tend to do before they take it seriously by diving into nutrition and working out. It is a metabolic and cardiovascular health issue, and it deserves to be taken seriously.

And as I'm talking this out, it also disrupts your hormones. What I mean by that is it can impair cortisol regulation, because when visceral fat converts androgens to estrogen, that's going to cause an imbalance. I'll get to that in a second too. It interferes with leptin signaling, the hormone that tells your brain, hey, I'm full. And it contributes to you being consistently hungry and having cravings that feel completely out of your control. So it's also doing that.

I wish women understood these things more, which is why this podcast exists. If we understood them, we would be able to target the things that solve it long term rather than looking for the quick fixes out there. That's just my opinion as I'm sharing this episode and talking out loud to you.

But I want you to understand how this happens. Clearly you're thinking, well, I didn't have this in my 20s or my 30s. It kind of starts creeping up in your later 30s, your 40s, and your 50s. This visceral fat accumulation tends to happen in perimenopause, and it's not random. It has a direct physiological explanation.

As I mentioned, estrogen is protective against visceral fat accumulation. When your estrogen levels are adequate, which is in your younger years before your 30s, your body preferentially stores fat subcutaneously, under the skin at the hips and the thighs, away from the organs. This is one of the reasons that premenopausal women have a lower risk profile than women going into their later years of life: estrogen is directing fat away from the dangerous locations, like your organs.

When your estrogen starts to decline in later perimenopause, through menopause, and after those years, and it starts to disappear, fat storage patterns shift. The fat that used to go to your hips and your thighs starts to go to your abdomen and around your organs instead. This is not because you changed what you were eating. This is a direct hormonal shift in where your body decides to put fat.

So just to sum up what I just said: in your early 20s and 30s you have estrogen flowing. It does a great job at repairing your muscle fibers. It does a great job at storing fat where it needs to be stored. As your estrogen declines going into the later years of perimenopause, menopause, and beyond, sometimes it can completely disappear. So visceral fat starts to appear, and it comes from that hormonal shift that is redirecting fat storage.

Then you add in, for example... okay, I'm not going to bring up cortisol, because people talk about cortisol all the freaking time. But say you bring in sleep deprivation, which is another significant driver of this. I don't think this gets enough attention. I think people online should be talking more about sleep deprivation than about cortisol. Like I've said recently on social media, we all need to stop and shut up about cortisol. It is not a direct reflection of you gaining weight. Does it deserve a serious conversation? Yes. But there are so many other factors linked to it, hence this conversation I'm having with you right now.

If you have poor sleep, that's going to impair insulin sensitivity. It's going to increase your inflammatory load, all of which accelerates fat accumulation. The sleep issues that tend to evolve with perimenopause are not just, oh, this sucks, this is uncomfortable, I can't sleep at night. They're directly contributing to the metabolic changes that feel impossible to reverse.

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Before I get into some of the obvious ways you can reduce this fat, I want to give you tools and resources to know how much of it you actually have, because most women don't even know that.

The simplest way you can do it: there's research out there that consistently shows that a waist circumference above 35 inches in women is associated with significantly elevated visceral fat and metabolic risk. Now, this isn't a perfect measure. Obviously, if you just do a waist circumference, it does not distinguish between visceral and subcutaneous fat. But it is accessible and it is directionally useful. So measure your natural waist, right at the level of your belly button, first thing in the morning. If it's above 35 inches, then, as researchers have said, that could mean you have elevated visceral fat.

So measuring your waist circumference is one way. It's the one way where you don't have to go get a DEXA scan, which is another option, or a CT or an MRI, which are other ways of knowing. This is the most practical one.

There's also the waist-to-hip ratio, which is slightly more informative in my opinion. Divide your waist measurement by your hip measurement. A ratio above 0.85 in women is usually associated with elevated visceral fat and increased metabolic risk.

Now, these are ways you can measure, but they also involve human error. Are you measuring in the right spots? Are you doing it first thing in the morning? Are you going to ignore or forget my cues and measure later in the afternoon or the evening? So these have human error involved.

The most accurate non-invasive way to measure it, and one that's available to most women, is a DEXA scan. It not only measures your total body fat percentage, it can specifically quantify visceral fat mass. So if you have access to a DEXA scan, whether through your doctor or medical provider, or, as I know a lot of people do, by going to a body composition clinic and asking, hey, can I get a DEXA scan, that's going to be your most accurate non-invasive way of getting a baseline measurement, so you have that valuable data point moving forward.

Then we can go way further and beyond, which is a CT scan or an MRI. Those are the gold standard for measurement, but they're not typically used for this purpose. You know...

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Usually you'd go get a CT or an MRI if you have an emergency procedure or other things that need to be tested or seen. It's not like, hey, can I go get my visceral fat measured? That's it. Plus there's the cost of it, and there's also radiation exposure. So the most accurate non-invasive way is a DEXA scan, and the ways you can do it yourself are the waist-to-hip ratio or just a waist circumference. That's what I would recommend.

Now, moving on to tactical ways you can actually reduce visceral fat. It's one thing to understand what I just talked about, but it's only useful if you know what to actually do about it. So I want to be direct about something up front. The things that most effectively reduce visceral fat are not the things most women are doing when they try to lose belly fat. The typical approach for women is, let me do more cardio, let me eat less food, let me do lots of core work. That does not specifically target visceral fat. It may reduce overall body fat eventually, but it is not the most efficient or most effective approach for this specific type of fat.

I'm going to sound like a broken record here, because I've said this in every episode. If you can see the dots connecting, the processes and systems and strategies I give you in these episodes all link back to the fundamentals. They all link back to the basics.

What actually works for this, and one of the most powerful interventions, is strength training. Specifically, progressive overload strength training with compound movements. That has been shown in multiple studies to reduce visceral fat independently of changes in your body weight. Even when the scale does not move, consistent strength training reduces visceral fat mass.

The mechanism is primarily improved insulin sensitivity and the hormonal environment that muscle tissue creates. Meaning more muscle means better glucose disposal, lower circulating insulin, and a less hospitable environment for visceral fat accumulation. The studies have consistently shown how meaningful this is for reducing visceral fat, even without any type of caloric restriction. This can dramatically impact you within 12 weeks or beyond. And you don't have to lose weight to lose visceral fat. What you have to do is build muscle. So strength training is the most powerful intervention for this.

Then, protein intake is directly protective as well. A high protein diet doesn't only help in almost every area of achieving the goal you want; it's also associated with lowering visceral fat accumulation. And it's more effective when, say, you're going into a cut. If you focus on a high protein diet while in a caloric deficit, that's going to attack that visceral fat. The mechanism is still the same here: it improves insulin sensitivity, and it also has a muscle-preserving effect, which maintains the metabolic environment that fights visceral fat accumulation. Because you're hitting your protein target, you're holding on to muscle mass, which is really important in this arena, and you're reducing that fat, which is the goal.

Another practical thing to do is obviously getting better at your sleep. The relationship between sleep deprivation and visceral fat is direct and well documented. Getting seven to nine hours of quality sleep, actual sleep, not just being in bed, is second only to strength training as one of the most powerful visceral fat interventions available to you. If your sleep is poor, fixing it needs to be your top priority.

Then other things, like managing your stress, are also going to actively help reduce it. And reducing alcohol is significantly going to help you reduce it. Alcohol significantly worsens visceral fat. It's one of the most direct drivers of visceral fat accumulation. So if you know you have this, it's something I would pay attention to, because visceral fat accumulation is also literally called alcoholic fatty liver disease.

So you may see a lot of women who have small arms. Maybe you've seen this, especially if you're a healthcare provider, or you know it because it runs in your family. You probably won't see this at the gym, because you guys are active and working out. But if you see a very distended stomach and it's hard, that's a very good example of visceral fat. That's kind of what I talked about earlier. So if reducing visceral fat is a serious goal for you, then alcohol needs an honest examination here.

So those are ways that can help reduce it. Again: reducing alcohol, managing your stress, sleep as a non-negotiable, your protein intake, which is directly protective and helps you eliminate it while preserving the muscle you're building or already have, and strength training, which is the most powerful intervention.

That's what I mean. You don't have to use medical-grade ways of losing fat, or liposuction, or medical means, or quick fixes, or whatever, to get rid of this. It's just making an intentional decision to commit to a healthier lifestyle, which starts with getting into the gym and working out. You don't even need to focus on a diet or 10K steps. It's just getting in the gym, moving your body, working out, and doing strength training.

Okay, you guys. If there's anything I want you to take away from today, it's that the fat you can see is not the fat that matters most. The fat around your organs, which is visceral fat, is the one driving inflammation. It's driving insulin resistance. It's driving cardiovascular risk. It's driving that hormonal disruption. And it increases during the later years of perimenopause, menopause, and beyond.

The most effective things you can do to reduce it are strength training, getting your protein in, stress management, and the other things I just named. And the way you can see how much you have is measuring your waist to start, knowing your numbers. If you want to do the DEXA scan, do that. But just take this seriously, not because of how it looks aesthetically, but because of what it's doing inside your body that you cannot see. Because this will impact you in 20 years. It will impact you in 30 years. It could impact you in 10 years. That's why this stuff matters so much.

And if you want to go deeper with me on this, like how to build a workout strategy or understand how much nutrition you need as part of an overarching, long-term health strategy, then come join me. I do a free WarriorBabe weekly training. Every week I go live and work through these types of topics with you. Maybe not visceral fat directly, but the broader understanding of how your body works and how you can make it work with you instead of against it. That training is completely free. The link is in the show notes below. Go check it out, register for it, and I hope to see you in that training. But until then, I will see you guys in the next episode. Bye.

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