The ONLY 5 Ways to Lose the Most Dangerous Fat After Menopause

00:00All 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 wanted 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.

00:33Like 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 Nikkie Stott. And here we talk about mindset, methodologies, and tactics that will help you lose body fat, build muscle, be strong, and feel insanely confident.

01:04Can you guys believe it? We are episode, this is episode 401. That's crazy. We have 400 plus episodes, you guys. First, 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 where I was taking my dog to the vet and the woman behind the counter was like, oh my goodness, you're Nikki Stott.

01:39I listened to The WarriorBabe Show. Obviously, you guys know that. That was the name of the podcast prior to The WarriorBabe Show. And she was like, I lost 70 pounds by just listening to your podcast. And I was like, that's incredible. So like, if you guys are just tuning in or you're new to the show, there's so much valuable takeaway. If you guys go back in the last episodes, there's so much valuable information in the 400 episodes. If you guys are not new to the show, and you guys have been tuning in for all 400 episodes, first of all, thank you guys for being such diehard fans and listening to the episode whenever a new one drops.

02:14I appreciate that so much. And I will continue to just lean in and give you guys so much value. So today, we're gonna talk about fat, but I'm not talking about the macronutrient fat. I'm specifically talking about fat that is on you and fat that you probably are most worried about. Because all fat, to preface this entire episode today, 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?

02:47But 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 gonna talk about both fats. Today, I'm gonna break down the difference between the two types of fats. Why one of them is pretty serious to your health. And most of them don't even know that they're carrying it. And what that does. And also, most importantly, like how to just reduce it. And then the other one that is obvious, right? Like that we know, we're gonna dive into that. But I'm gonna start off this with two specific definitions to like what they are.

03:23Because I think once you guys understand these two and what they actually are, then everything is going to click for you. So 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 you can touch. It's the softness that's on your thighs, in your arms, your hips, your lower belly. Like the fat that shows up in the mirror. And this is the fat that most women spend most of their time trying to reduce.

03:53So it's measured by the way that most of us think about like body fats. It's visually, but I feel it's like you see in the before and after photos. Like this is, it affects how you look. But this one isn't, 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.

04:23And 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 like your liver, your pancreas, your intestines, your heart. It's not the fat that you can pinch that's on your stomach. It's much deeper than that. It sits behind your abdominal muscles, like around the organs themselves. And you cannot see this fat. You cannot feel it. Like a woman can look relatively lean on the outside, but carry a large amount of this visceral fat on the inside.

05:03And vice versa. Like a woman can carry visible subcutaneous fat on her thighs and her hips, but with very little visceral fat, right, around her abdominal cavity. Which that person that's carrying it that way has a lower health risk profile than the one that is carrying a decent amount. Like a visceral fat. What I mean by that is like if your belly fat that feels hard, the stomach that is extended and firm rather than soft and pinchable.

05:34Like that is almost always visceral fat. But I'm trying to put it in ways that you guys maybe could just like test on yourself right now. But also just I don't want to like alarm you and send you guys into like a spiral. This is more of an education and teaching conversation right now. But this is also like the conversations that maybe your doctor isn't really talking about or like having you understand this about your body. So that's what I want to that's mainly where I'm coming from teaching you guys this. So the firm rather hard feeling that's visceral fat the soft pinchable belly fat that's subcutaneous.

06:10And 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 it's not passive storage. It's metabolically active and it can cause harm long term. And it is directly linked to health conditions too that can lead to death long term. So I'm going to get to that in a second. But what I want you guys to understand why visceral fat like why this matters and why it's different from subcutaneous fat.

06:47Why your doctor should be having these conversations and talking about this at every point appointment with you. Is that visceral fat is not just like it's not just sitting there. It's actively secreting hormones and is it has inflammatory chemicals that are directly getting into your bloodstream. And specifically they're getting into this portal vein that feeds your liver. So it is essential that you guys understand this because or bring light or awareness to this topic. Because getting and I'm going to talk about how you get that visceral fat in a little bit.

07:20But I just want you guys like what so what that does and what those signals do what I just said is that can drive chronic inflammation. What I mean by that is if you have a significantly higher subcutaneous significantly higher visceral fat. Then there are there's more inflammatory proteins floating around. And that is one of the underlying causes of cardiovascular disease type 2 diabetes certain cancers Alzheimer's disease accelerated aging.

07:54So the more visceral fat that you carry the higher your baseline inflammatory load is regardless of how you look on the outside. So this is what it can drive that it can drive causes an insulin resistance. Which a lot of I mean a lot of women like 90 80 90 percent of women struggle with insulin resistance. And that's basically how your body it directly impacts your liver's ability to regulate blood sugar.

08:26So it drives type 2 diabetes. It drives more fat storage. It's it's it's it causes you have it being more difficult at losing the fat. And it just makes it it makes it hard in the long term to better your metabolic health with this sitting there. And then as I mentioned a second ago it also increases cardiovascular health. I'm sorry cardiovascular risk risk. So these things are like I'm putting this on your radar because this is why belly fat like this conversation.

08:59It's not just about you know the aesthetics of you wanting to be leaner and you wanting to be more toned. It's also overall in the health arena. Like if you have a firm distended stomach that's that started to show up that's not like a cosmetic issue. That's not something that you can just get rid of with like 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 also too as I'm talking out loud to this point it also disrupts your hormones.

09:34What 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. And I'll get to that in a second too. But it interferes with the leptin signaling the hormone that tells your brain that hey I'm full. And it's contributing to you just having and being consistently hungry and having cravings that feel completely out of your control. So it's also doing that right. It's like also like if I wish I understood women understood which that's why this podcast is this podcast understood these things more than we wouldn't feel we would be able to target the ways that would be able to solutionally solve it long term rather than looking for the quick fixes that are out there.

10:23That's just my opinion as I'm sharing this episode and talking out loud to you guys. But what I want you to understand how this like happens because it doesn't I mean clearly you're like well I didn't have this in my 20s in my 30s like you know kind of just starts creeping up in your later 30s and your 40s and your 50s. And this visceral fat accumulation tends to happen in perimenopause and it's not random. It has a direct physiological explanation. As I just mentioned like estrogen is protective against visceral fat accumulation.

10:59When your estrogen levels are adequate which is in your you know younger years before your 30s your body preferably knows how to store fat subcutaneously like it under the skin at the hips at the thighs around the or away from the organs. This is one of the reasons that perimenopause. This is one of the reasons that perimenopausal women have a lower risk profile than women going into their later years of life because this estrogen is direct directing fat away from the from the dangerous locations like your organs.

11:32When your estrogen which we know starts to decline in your later perimenopause in your through menopause and after those years like it starts to disappear. Fat storage patterns then shift. So the fat that used to go to your hips into your thighs starts to go to your abdomen starts to go to around your organs instead. This is not because you changed what you were eating. This is just a direct hormonal shift in where your body decided to put fat. Okay so just to sum up what I just said in your early 20s and 30s you have estrogen flowing.

12:09It does a great job at repairing your muscle fibers. It does a great job at storing the fat where it needs to be stored. As your estrogen starts to decline going into your later years of getting into later years of perimenopause and menopause and beyond estrogen starts to decline and sometimes it can just completely it can disappear. So the visceral fat starts to appear and it comes from that hormonal shift that is redirecting fat storage. Then you're adding in say for example okay I'm not gonna bring up the cortisol because you talk about cortisol all the freaking time.

12:45But say you bring in sleep deprivation which is like another significant driver to this. I don't think this gets enough to I think the people online should be talking more about sleep deprivation than they should be talking about cortisol. Because like I've said recently on social media I'm like we all need to stop and shut up about cortisol. It is not a direct reflection of you gaining weight. Does it deserve like a serious conversation around it? Yes. But there's so many other factors that link to it. Hence this conversation that I'm having with you right now.

13:16But sleep like if you have poor sleep then that's going to impair insulin sensitivity. It's going to increase your inflammatory load. All of which accelerates for so 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. Hey while you're listening if you're getting value from this episode.

13:48Take a moment to tap that review button or share this podcast with a friend. It's a small gesture that goes a long way in helping more women find their way to feeling stronger and more confident in their skin. I appreciate you so much for taking the time to support this show. Before I get into talking about some of the obvious ways that you can reduce risk to all fat. I just want to also give you guys tools and resources to know actually how much you have of it. Because most women don't even know that.

14:20So the simplest way that you can do it. Because there's actually 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. But it does not distinguish between visceral and subcutaneous. Obviously if you just do a waist circumference. But it is accessible and it is directionally useful. So if you measure your natural waist. Right at your level of your belly button.

14:53First thing in the morning. And if it's above that 35 inches. Then as researchers have said. That could be meaning that you have visceral fat. Elevated visceral fat. So measuring your waist circumference is one way that I would say. Right it's the one way that you don't have to go get a DEXA scan. Which is another one. Or a CT or an MRI. Which are other ways of knowing. You know those things. This is the most practical takeaway to do that. There's also one that is the waist to hip ratio. Which is slightly more informative in my opinion.

15:24So if you divide your waist measurement by your hip measurement. If you have a ratio above 0.85 in women. That's usually associated with visceral. Elevated visceral fat and increased metabolic risk. Now these are ways. And I also think about. These are ways of which 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 my cues here? Or forget my cues. And measure later on in the afternoon. Or in the evening time.

15:54Right? So like these have human error involved. The most accurate way. Which is in a non-invasive way to measure it. And it's available for most women. Is a DEXA scan. It not only measures your total body fat percentage. But it can specifically quantify visceral fat mass. So if you have access to get a DEXA scan. Whether that be through your doctor or medical provider. Maybe even. I know there's a lot of people that can just go to like a body composition clinic. Or you just go and be like.

16:26Hey can I get a DEXA scan? Like that. That's going to be your non-invasive most accurate way of measuring. Getting a baseline measurement to generally have that data point. And that valuable data moving forward. Then you can get. Like we can go way further and beyond. Which is doing a CT or an MRI. A CAT scan or an MRI. Like those are going to be your gold standard for measurement. But they're not typically used for this purpose outside of like. You know. Ladies.

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17:32To see real results. And results that last. Look. Don't wait anymore. Take charge of your health. And join our community of strong empowered women. Visit WarriorBabe.com forward slash apply today. To start your transformation. That's WarriorBabe.com forward slash apply. Alright. Let's get back to the show. What's your life? Usually go get a CT or an MRI. If you need. If you have an emergency procedure. You have other things that need to be tested or seen.

18:05Right. It's not like. Hey. Can I go get my visceral fat measured? That's it. And plus like the cost of it. And then there's also radiation exposure too. So it's like. The most non-invasive accurate way is a DEXA scan. The ways that you can humanly do it is waist to hip ratio. Or just a waist circumference. So that's the way that I would recommend it. Now. Moving on to like tactical ways. That you guys. Can actually. Reduce visceral fat.

18:36Because. Right. It's one thing to understand it. What I just talked about with you guys. But it's only useful if you know what to actually do about it. And so. I want to just. 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. Like 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.

19:06Reduce overall body fat. Eventually. But. It is not the most efficient. Or most effective approach. For this specific type of fat. So. I'm going to sound like a broken record here. Because. I've said this. And every. Like. If you guys can see the dots connecting. Okay. And the processes and systems that I give you. And strategies that I give you in these episodes. They all link back to the fundamentals. They all link back to the basics. What actually works for this. And this is. The one of the most powerful interventions.

19:38Is strength training. Like. Specifically. You doing progressive overload strength training. With compound movements. That has been shown. In multiple studies. To reduce visceral fat. Independently of changes in the body. In your body weight. Even when the scale does not move. You doing consistent strength training. Reduces visceral fat mass. Like. The mechanism is. It's primarily through. Improved insulin sensitivity. And. The hormonal environment. That muscle tissue creates.

20:10So meaning. More muscle. Means. That you have better glucose disposal. You are. Lowering. Your circulating insulin. And. Have a less. Like a less. Hospitable environment. For visceral fat. Accumulation. The studies have consistently shown. How meaningful. This is. To reduce visceral fat. Even without you doing. Any type of caloric restriction.

20:41This can dramatically. Impact you. With. In 12 weeks. Or beyond. And you don't have to lose weight. To lose visceral fat. You have. What you have to do. Is you have to build muscle. So like. Strength training. Is the most powerful intervention. For this. Then. Protein intake. Is directly. Protective of this as well. Being on a high protein diet. Not only does that help. In almost any area. Of you achieving your goal. That you want. But this is also. Associated.

21:12Associated. With lowering. That visceral fat accumulation. More. And more. And is more effective. When you are focusing on. Maybe you are going into a cut. But if you focus on having. A high protein diet. While being in a caloric deficit. This is also going to just attack. That visceral fat. Like. The mechanism. Still the same here. It improves insulin sensitivity. And then. It also has. The muscle preserving effect. Which means.

21:42It maintains. The metabolic environment. That fights visceral fat accumulation. Because you are hitting. Your protein target. It is holding on to muscle mass. Which is really important. And for this arena of things. And it's. Reducing. That fat. Which is the goal. And then. Another practical thing to do. And is. Obviously getting better. At your sleep. The relationship. Between sleep deprivation. And visceral fat. Is a direct. And well documented. Out there. If you are getting. 79 hours of quality sleep.

22:14Like actual sleep. Not just you being in bed. That is one of the most. Second to one of the most. Powerful. Fat interventions. Available to you. Visceral fat interventions. Available to you. If your sleep is poor. Then fixing it. Needs to be your top priority. And then other things. Like managing your stress. That's also going to actively. Help to reduce that. Alcohol. Is significantly. Going to help you reduce that. Like alcohol. Significantly. Worsens visceral fat. It's one of the most. Direct drivers.

22:45Of visceral fat accumulation. Accumulation. So. If you are able to. Focus on. If you know you have this. This would be something. That I would pay attention to. Because. Visceral fat accumulation. Is also literally called. Alcoholic. Fatty liver disease. So. If you see a lot of women. That have small arms. Maybe you've seen this. Especially if you're a healthcare provider. Or you know this. Because it runs in your family. I'm like. You probably won't see this at the gym.

23:15You guys are active. And working out. But. If you see a very extended stomach. And it's hard. It's a very good example. Of that being visceral fat. And it's kind of what I talked about earlier. Okay. So. Reducing visceral fat. If that's a serious goal for you. Then. Alcohol then. Needs to be an honest. Examination here. So. Those are just ways. That can. That can. That can help. Reduce it. Okay. So. Again. Reducing alcohol. Managing your stress. Sleep is a non-negotiable.

23:46Your protein intake is directly protective of this. Which is helping you eliminate it. While keeping your. And preserving the muscle that you are building. Or have already. And then doing strength training. Is the most powerful intervention to this. So. Like. That's what I mean. Like. You don't have to. Do. Medical grade ways of losing fat. Or liposuction. Or. Like. Medical. Means. Or quick fixes. Or whatever. In order to. Like. To get rid of this. It's just. Making a decision.

24:17Intentionally. To commit to a healthier lifestyle. Which is just by. Starting. To get into the gym. And working out. Like. We don't even need to focus on. You don't need to focus on. A diet. Or. Tanky steps. Or. Or. Or. It's just. Getting in the gym. Moving your body. And. Working out. And doing strength training. Okay. You guys. So. There's anything that I want you to take away from today. The fat that you can see. Is not the fat that matters the most. The fat around your organs. Which is visceral fat. Is the one that is driving.

24:48Inflammation. It's driving insulin resistance. It's driving cardiovascular risk. It's driving. That hormonal disruption. And it increases. While you are in the later years of perimenopause. Menopause. And beyond. And the most effective thing that you can do to reduce. Is strength training. Getting your protein in. Stress management. The things that I just named. And then ways that you can measure it. And see how much you have of it. Is measuring your ways to start. Knowing your numbers. If you want to do. The DEXA scan. Do that. But just take this seriously.

25:18Not because. Of how you look. Or how you. Or how it looks. Like 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 guys want to go deeper. With me on this. Like how to build. A workout strategy. Or understand how much nutrition you need. That addresses this. You know. Overarching. Long-term health strategy.

25:49Then come join me. I do a free Warrior Bay weekly training. Every week. I go live. And I work through these types of topics with you. Maybe not directly to visceral fat. But the broad understanding of how you can understand your body. And how you can make it work with you. Instead of against it. And that training is completely free. So that link is in the show notes below. Go check it out. Register for it. And I hope to see you guys in that training. But until then.

26:19I will see you guys in the next episode. Bye. Hey. Really quick. Before you go. I have one small favor to ask. If this episode brought you value. Or sparked something in you. Take just a moment to hit that review button. Your rating and review. Make all of the difference. Helping more women discover the tools. They need to transform the fitness. And their confidence. It takes less than a minute. But it can change the path of someone else's journey. Thank you so much for leaving that review. I appreciate you so much.

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.