Skinny fat seems an oxymoron, but it can coexist in the same person, and it disproportionally affects people who are inactive and aren’t health conscious. These people often can “pull off” the look of being slim, but upon closer inspection, they are carrying more body fat than their leaner counterparts who are more physically active. What does it mean to be skinny fat, and how does it affect your health and well-being?
What is Skinny Fat?
Skinny fat means you are a normal body weight or underweight, but your body fat percentage is in the range of someone who is overweight or obese. When you step on the bathroom scale, you have a normal or low weight, but too much body fat. A skinny fat person usually has too little muscle on their frame. If you glanced at one, you might assume they’re healthy because they’re not visibly overweight, but that’s not always the case.
Health care providers sometimes refer to skinny fat men and women as metabolically obese normal weight. That’s because they can have similar metabolic abnormalities that you see in obese people, including elevated blood sugar, high blood pressure, elevated triglycerides, and increased markers of inflammation.
You can have a BMI in the healthy range and still have an unhealthy level of body fat. Body mass index (BMI) doesn’t consider whether fat is distributed under the skin or around internal organs. BMI is not as accurate as a health metric for athletic people, since they have a higher BMI due to the extra muscle they carry, yet they’re still healthy. In addition, BMI is less accurate for older or sedentary people, since muscle mass is reduced in older people and sedentary people.
Why Being Skinny Fat is Unhealthy
Skinny fat people are at risk of similar health problems as obese people because they often carry too much visceral fat. Body fat can be divided into two categories: subcutaneous fat and visceral fat. Subcutaneous fat is the form of fat that insulates you from cold. It’s the kind of fat you can easily pinch between your fingers.
Visceral fat is deeper belly fat that isn’t pinchable and is often hidden. It builds up in your pelvic cavity and encases your liver. A telltale sign you have too much of it is your waist size is too large. If you’re a male and your waist size is greater than 40 inches or a female with a waist size greater than 35 inches, you have too much visceral fat.
Health-wise, visceral fat poses the greatest risk. Visceral fat cells produce inflammatory chemicals called cytokines that damage tissues and blood vessels. Inflammatory cytokines are damaging to tissues and blood vessels. The increased inflammatory state that visceral fat causes may explain why people with too much visceral fat are at increased risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and certain types of cancer.
Unfortunately, there’s more emphasis on checking body weights and BMI than measuring waist size, a practice that could better identify skinny fat people at substantial risk of health problems. Some obesity experts believe measuring waist size is more important than measuring BMI because it is a better indicator of visceral fat.
Reversing Skinny Fat and Becoming Healthier
Here’s the good news. Skinny fat is something you can change, but it’s not as simple as eating less to lose weight. If you lose muscle along with that weight, you can worsen the problem. Skinny fat is defined by the ratio of body fat to muscle mass. The higher the ratio, the more skinny fat a person has. If you lose weight through calorie restriction, you shed both body fat and muscle, but if you maintain or build muscle while losing fat, you’ll reverse skinny fat and become fitter and healthier too.
How can you lose more body fat than muscle? Change the composition of your diet so you’re consuming whole, unprocessed foods, and increase the amount of protein in your diet to preserve muscle mass. Cut out the sugar and sweetened beverages too. But the equation wouldn’t be complete without adding another critical lifestyle change, exercise.
The best way to lose body fat without shedding muscle is to strength train. Working your muscles against resistance increases the size of your muscles while building strength. Strength training also reduces body fat when you combine it with a healthy diet.
Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham found that aerobic or resistance exercise for only 80 minutes per week reduced gains in visceral fat a year after participants lost weight. Weight regain is common in people who lose more than 10% of their body weight. Eight out of ten people regain the weight they lost or more within a year or two of losing it. Strength training and aerobic exercise help you avoid that fate.
The Bottom Line
Skinny fat is a widespread problem that affects all ages, but the effects become more severe with aging. Young people who are skinny fat, unless they change course, will end up frail when they get older. Muscle loss continues and accelerates after middle age. Later in life, skinny fat becomes a condition called sarcopenia, age-related loss of muscle, and accumulation of body fat. It’s one of the reasons older adults fall and break a hip and become unable to do the physical activities they enjoy. That’s why it’s so important to tackle the problem of skinny fat. It’s not just an aesthetic issue; it’s a health issue now and in the future.
References:
- “Taking Aim at Belly Fat – Harvard Health Publishing ….” 12 Apr. 2021, health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/taking-aim-at-belly-fat.
- “Visceral Fat: Why It’s Dangerous and How to Lose It.” webmd.com/diet/what-is-visceral-fat.
- “Research Sheds Light on Why People Who Lose Weight Gain It ….” webmd.com/diet/news/20161014/how-your-appetite-can-sabotage-weight-loss.
- Westcott WL. Resistance training is medicine: effects of strength training on health. Curr Sports Med Rep. 2012 Jul-Aug;11(4):209-16. doi: 10.1249/JSR.0b013e31825dabb8. PMID: 22777332.
- com. “Exercise Keeps Dangerous Visceral Fat Away a Year After Weight Loss, Study Finds”
- “The Skinny on Visceral Fat – Hopkins Medicine.” https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/gim/faculty-resources/core_resources/Patient%20Handouts/Handouts_May_2012/The%20Skinny%20on%20Visceral%20Fat.pdf.
- “The Dangers of Visceral Fat – Endocrine News.” https://endocrinenews.endocrine.org/the-dangers-of-visceral-fat/.
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