I hear a lot from teens that they want to improve their belly fat. Is this possible? Yes it is!! It is actually a great thing to do, not only so that teens can look more beautiful but also because less belly fat helps decrease the inflammation in the body.
In this episode, I talk about research that was done to investigate the above. Listen to learn more.
Title of the manuscript: Visceral fat decreased by long-term interdisciplinary lifestyle therapy correlated positively with interleukin-6 and tumor necrosis factor–α and negatively with adiponectin levels in obese adolescents. By Fábio Santos Liraa et al Metabolism Clinical and Experimental 60 (2011) 359–365
Dr Gourgari is a pediatric endocrinologist, certified in obesity medicine expert and weight loss coach for teens with more than 15 years of experience. She helps teens build healthy habits that last, so they can feel happier, be more confident and love their body again .
I hear a lot from teens that they want to improve their belly fat. Is this possible? Yes it is!! It is actually a great thing to do, not only so that teens can look more beautiful but also because less belly fat helps decrease the inflammation in the body.
In this episode, I talk about research that was done to investigate the above. Listen to learn more.
Title of the manuscript: Visceral fat decreased by long-term interdisciplinary lifestyle therapy correlated positively with interleukin-6 and tumor necrosis factor–α and negatively with adiponectin levels in obese adolescents. By Fábio Santos Liraa et al Metabolism Clinical and Experimental 60 (2011) 359–365
Dr Gourgari is a pediatric endocrinologist, certified in obesity medicine expert and weight loss coach for teens with more than 15 years of experience. She helps teens build healthy habits that last, so they can feel happier, be more confident and love their body again .
This is the Lifestyle and Weight Loss for Teens podcast. If you're a mom and want to help your child who is struggling to lose weight, you are in the right place. If you are looking for healthy lifestyle tips, dr Gorgery is here to help you understand the science around safe weight loss in teens and children, because what works for adult weight loss is not always the best for children. This podcast is for educational purposes only. Dr Gorgory does not provide medical, psychological or nutrition therapy advice. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat any health problems without consulting your own medical practitioner and now your host, dr Jenny Gorgory.
Speaker 2:
Hello, hello, welcome to another episode of the Lifestyle and Weight Loss for Teens podcast. This is Dr Jenny Gorgory and today I will be talking about belly fat in teenagers and what can we do to decrease the belly fat and why do we care about it to begin with? So I'm going to present one scientific manuscript which was published a few years ago, in 2011. The actual title of the manuscript is Visceral Fat Decreased by Long-Term Interdisciplinary Lifestyle Therapy, correlated Positive with Interleukin-6 and Tumor Necrosis Factor A and Negatively with Adiponectin Levels in Obese Adolescents. It was published in the Journal of Metabolism, clinical and Experimental in 2011. It's a long title, but don't worry if you don't understand everything in the title. I just wanted to give a reference for anybody who wants to actually go and read this study.
Speaker 2:
The reason I decided to bring this study on is because I see a lot of teenagers and a lot of families trying to look for quick fixes to bring the belly fat down, and the main driver that people want to do that is I understand one reason is cosmetic they don't want their belly and they want the belly disappear, the belly and they want the belly disappear. But as doctors and as providers and as people who care for our health. The reason the belly fat is not good for the health is because it creates a lot of inflammation and it creates also worse insulin resistance. So what insulin resistance does? It makes you predisposed to get diabetes in the belly. So there are certain conditions and certain hormones that favor this deposition of fat in the belly, that make you have more belly fat. And there is a way that we can actually measure it. We can do CT scans, we can do CT scans, we can do ultrasounds, we can do MRIs.
Speaker 2:
So in this particular study, the researchers, what they did is they used ultrasound to measure the amount of belly fat in teenagers that were between the ages of 15 and 19 years of age. Then they put them into a year-long program Again, I repeat, a year-long program. So this was not an overnight fix right. It was a year-long program where the teenagers had both exercise. They had exercise for three times weekly for about an hour or so. They had exercise for three times weekly for about an hour or so, and then they also have them meet with a dietician and try to make healthier choices. And they were a total of 54 teenagers that participated in this year-long. It was done in Sao Paulo Medical School and the average body mass index of the teenagers that participated was 37. So if you don't know what body mass index, you can go and listen to episode one of this podcast. But basically they were all teenagers that had a significant problem with their weight. Most of them were already in puberty and, as I mentioned, they did an ultrasound to measure how much belly fat they had. They also did blood tests to check for markers of inflammation in their body, and we know that inflammation is really bad for our health. It can create all sorts of problems and so they did measure inflammation markers both at the beginning and at the end of this program.
Speaker 2:
So every week as part of this program, the teenagers would have lessons around the weight loss diets, the miracle diets, the fat-free food, the low-calorie food. They learned how to read food labels. They realized more what constitutes fast food, what is nutritional composition of the food, what there were some healthier choices they could make instead, like, for example, healthy sandwiches, healthy shakes and all those things. They were taught also how to make healthier decisions on their food choices, and all patients had received nutritional advice at the beginning of the program and they also asked them to keep a calendar and a diary of what they were eating to sort of get a sense of how much they were eating. They also asked them to participate, as I mentioned, in a 60-minute exercise, an intense kind of program. Minutes exercise, an intense kind of program. It was set at to 70% of oxygen uptake tests, which means they were like doing three times intense activity. They also met with a psychologist. So the psychologist also evaluated the teenagers for body image issues, their anxiety, their self-esteem, and they help them process their feelings, how they process their feelings in a healthier way. So they don't have a lot of emotional eating.
Speaker 2:
And at the end of the program what the researchers found was that this one year long program was very effective in reducing the body weight. Their BMI was reduced by 9.3% and the percent fat also decreased by 24% the whole body fat. So before they start the program their average percentage fat ranged between 32% and 58% and after the program the total body fat was between 10% and 55%. And the other thing when they look at the belly fat, we call it visceral fat in scientific terms there was a total decrease of 50%, 49% to be exact, which is a huge decrease in belly fat. They also found a significant reduction of inflammation. That was in the range of 8% in one of the factors and 29% in the other factors.
Speaker 2:
So this was a very significant study that showed that after a year-long program, it is possible to decrease the belly fat by 50% by following those simple steps guidelines for exercise and healthier nutrition. And, of course, this was an organized program, which talks about the importance also of being part of a supervised program in a team that can monitor the progress. There is accountability, there is scientific guidance and that helps teenagers get the results that they want. But it is possible to decrease the belly fat by almost 50% in teenagers. It is possible to reverse that. However, I would point out that this can take time and that it doesn't have to be right away, and I would encourage you to not look for magic diets or magic things that can just make the belly fat disappear in one month, because those are all short-lived solutions. They don't last long and it is important to build the habits that will get you where you want to get and also will be able to maintain those results, because once you establish the habits, then nobody can take those away from you.
Speaker 2:
And finally, since we're talking about belly fat, I want to mention that liposuction, which has been tried by some people. It can decrease the fat from the belly, but only in the superficial belly. It doesn't decrease the belly in, the fat inside the belly that is responsible for the inflammation. It can only decrease the fat that is below the skin. So those are two different type of fats the subcutaneous fat and the visceral fat, as we call it. So.
Speaker 2:
Visceral fat, the fat that is actually associated with inflammation, the fat that is associated with complications in terms of cardiovascular health. That fat can be decreased by healthy lifestyle, weight loss, but not easy, quick fix, even if that is liposuction, which is a very aggressive method. So keep that in mind and I hope this was helpful. If you want to learn more about the Lifestyle and Weight Loss for Teens program that I have created to help teenagers build healthy habits, feel free to reach out to me. Info at lifestyleforteenscom. If you have any other questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to me, and I'm always looking for topics that I can talk more. So if you have any ideas, any struggles or anything you would like me to talk more about, feel free to reach out to me and share this episode with a friend or somebody who needs to hear. If you know somebody, that's all I had. Take care, I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1:
If you enjoyed listening to this podcast. I invite you to come check out the Lyft program. It's Dr Gorgeri's 12-week coaching program for teens and their moms, where we take all this information, we apply it to your daily life and we work together so your teenager learns how to create a healthy lifestyle so they can feel happier, more confident, less stressed and love their body again. Visit the website at lifestyleforteenscom and click on the work with me and free resources to learn more about this program and get free help to start this journey right away. Thanks for tuning in and we'll catch you in the next episode of Lifestyle and Weight Loss for Teens.