Authors: Steve Boutcher
20 x 3
Published by Nero,
an imprint of Schwartz Media Pty Ltd
37–39 Langridge Street
Collingwood VIC 3066 Australia
email: [email protected]
http://www.nerobooks.com.au
Copyright © Dr Steve Boutcher 2013
Steve Boutcher asserts his right to be known as the author of this work
The information contained in this book is provided for general purposes only. It is not intended as and should not be relied upon as medical advice. The publisher and author are not responsible for any specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. If you have underlying health problems, or have any doubts about the advice contained in this book, you could contact a qualified medical, dietary, or other appropriate professional.
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior consent of the publishers.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry (pbk)
Boutcher, Dr Steve, author.
20 x 3 : eliminate your belly fat in an hour a week / Stephen Boutcher.
ISBN for eBook edition: 9781922231321
ISBN for print edition: 9781863956376 (paperback)
Reducing exercises.
Reducing diets.
613.712
INTRODUCTION
The human body is programmed to store fat for a number of reasons but the places it stores fat have different effects on our health. Fat under the skin on our legs and arms is considered a healthy fat and helps to prevent diseases such as type 2 diabetes. In contrast, visceral or belly fat clusters around our internal organs and has been found to contribute to the development of diabetes and cardiovascular and inflammatory diseases. This is because the fat in the belly is released to the liver, which affects the way your body reacts to insulin and eventually leads to decreased insulin sensitivity, potentially causing type 2 diabetes and leading to other serious diseases.
Factors such as age, gender, genes and lifestyle all influence the amount of fat that is deposited around the organs in your belly; for example, postmenopausal women typically have greater belly fat stores than younger women. Similarly, older men tend to have more belly fat than young men. It has also been discovered that people of Asian descent who experience increases in belly fat have a greater incidence of cardiovascular problems than non-Asians. People who are under stress and those who sleep poorly also tend to have more belly fat. And, of course, those individuals who consume a lot of junk food and excessive alcohol and do little exercise typically possess greater belly fat stores.
Our research has found that an interval sprinting program, combined with a healthy Mediterranean eating plan, is the most effective way to reduce dangerous belly fat. The program we have developed has been scien-tifically shown to improve overall health in much less time than conventional exercise programs like jogging and weight training. Our interval sprinting program recommends exercising for 20 minutes a session, 3 times per week – a total of about 1 hour of exercise a week. By exercising for only 1 hour a week, you can reduce your belly and body fat, as well as increase the muscle mass in your legs and abdomen, which is important for prevention of type 2 diabetes. Interval sprinting has also been proven to significantly reduce insulin resistance – the key for long-term health – and improve cardiovascular health within just 6 weeks.
Combining the interval sprinting program with a healthy Mediterranean eating plan and consumption of foods proven to have a beneficial effect on health, like green tea, can extend the health benefits of interval sprinting. Of course, if you begin an interval sprinting program but continue to eat in an unhealthy manner, then the positive effects of the exercise will be prevented or reduced.
Eating healthy foods and participating in a well-structured interval sprinting program can significantly reduce your belly fat and improve your health. This book will show you how.
How to use this book
This book contains:
- The interval sprinting program to help you lose belly fat, increase aerobic fitness and muscle mass, and reduce insulin resistance;
- Information about healthy eating and what nutrients to ingest before and after sprinting exercise for the best results; and
- A guide to reducing the effect of daily stressors and enhancing sleep quality to prevent an increase in belly fat.
By following the advice and methods in this book, you can significantly reduce your belly fat and improve your health. Chapter 1 explains why belly fat is so dangerous to ongoing good health, how it accumulates and how to determine whether you are carrying a dangerous amount of belly fat. Chapter 2 explains how interval sprinting can help reduce belly fat and increase overall health, and the types of exercises suited to interval sprinting and the program itself are covered in Chapter 3. Chapters 4 and 5 show you how to apply the exercise, healthy eating and stress-management program to your life. Finally, Chapter 6 offers a sample plan for you to follow to lose belly fat and improve your health.
UNDERSTANDING BELLY FAT
Australians are getting fatter and more obese – we now rank in the top 5 fattest nations on earth and have the second highest rate of childhood obesity.
1
During the last 100 years, overweight and obesity rates of Australian children have escalated: in the early 1900s, the overweight and obesity rate in Australian children was around 6% but today it is about 30%, and this rise is predicted to continue. This pattern is common in the majority of developed countries, such as the USA and Europe. In the USA, over a third of adults (36%) are currently obese, while in the United Kingdom the number of obese adults increased from 16% to 24% in women and from 13% to 22% in men between 1993 and 2009. There is also potential for a dramatic increase in obesity rates in developing areas such as India, the Middle East and Asia, as overweight and obesity rates in those regions have escalated during the last twenty years.
2
An increase in dangerous belly fat is also happening, as demonstrated by the increase in average waist circumferences around the world. Having a waist circumference less than 80cm for women and 94cm for men is recommended for health reasons, but in the USA the average waist circumference went from 89cm in 1962 to 99cm in 2000 in men, and from 77cm to 94cm in women.
3
Another study in the USA monitored over 100,000 middle-aged men and women over 9 years. Results showed that, compared to people with a normal waist size, people with large waists – greater than 120cm for men and 110cm for women – had about twice the early death rate.
4
In the UK, a 2011 study found that the average waist circumference of young girls, 71cm, was 13cm bigger than girls of the same age measured 30 years previously.
5
As world levels of belly fat increase, so does the incidence of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, so it’s important we understand why we are putting on belly fat and how we can stop this trend.
What is fat?
We have a layer of fat under the skin called subcutaneous fat. This fat makes up about 80–90% of our total body fat and is typically located on the back of the arms, below the shoulder blades, around the belly and on the upper legs and hips. The remaining 10–20% of our body fat is termed belly fat, also known as visceral fat, and is located beneath the stomach muscles and around internal organs such as the liver, spleen, intestines and kidneys. In some people, belly fat can also accumulate in organs such as the liver. Interestingly, people who have more fat on their upper thighs have less incidence of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
6
Subcutaneous fat serves a number of purposes, such as keeping us warm and acting as a storage site for hormones and energy. Also called adipose tissue, it used to be thought of mainly as a ready source of energy in times of famine, but fat is now viewed as an endocrine organ that stores and excretes a number of hormones and chemicals that can have both positive and negative effects on health. Fat mass secretes over 30 chemical messengers; some messengers, such as the hormone leptin, tell the brain that we have had enough to eat, whereas other chemicals, such as tumour necrosis factor, a cytokine, induce inflammation to help to combat pathogens.
Too much inflammation, however, results in cardiovascular disease and insulin resistance. High levels of these inflammatory chemicals can result in a reduction in cellular insulin sensitivity and eventually insulin resistance, which occurs when the muscle and liver cells become unresponsive to insulin in the blood. Insulin comes from the pancreas and carries the sugar in the blood to the cells of the body, and high levels of insulin and glucose in the blood increase the risk of type 2 diabetes. People with type 2 diabetes typically have excessive belly fat, high blood pressure and elevated blood triglyceride levels. Fat cells also secrete a chemical called adiponectin, which has anti-diabetic properties.
We all possess billions of fat cells but it has been shown that an absolute fat cell number is established during the teenage years, and this remains constant during adulthood. One study that assessed genomic DNA was able to retrospectively measure fat cell number in humans.
7
Both obese and lean children established their peak fat cell number during adolescence, with little change occurring during adulthood. Importantly, those who became obese during adolescence possessed billions more fat cells than their leaner counterparts. As the fat cell lasts about 8 to 10 years, any extra fat cells children develop increase their fat storage capacity, which leads to obesity development, and overweight teenagers will therefore have those billions of extra fat cells for the rest of their lives.
Visceral or belly fat is different from subcutaneous fat and is much more dangerous, as it contributes to type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular and inflammatory disease.
8
As can be seen in Figure 1, belly fat lies underneath the tummy muscles. As belly fat is firmer than subcutaneous fat, it pushes the abdominal muscles outward. These fat cells reside deep in the abdomen and consequently do not release their fatty acids into the circulation but deliver them straight to the liver. Too many fatty acids released to the liver make the liver produce other forms of fat, called triglyceride and cholesterol, which are then secreted into the circulation. High levels of triglycerides and cholesterol in our blood are bad for health.
Belly fat cells also have a greater blood supply than subcutaneous fat cells, and thus can release fatty acids and hormones far more quickly. The good news is that, compared to subcutaneous fat cells, belly fat cells are far more responsive to circulating catecholamines. These are the major hormones for fat release and fat burning and can be significantly elevated by interval sprinting exercise, as discussed in Chapter 3. This means belly fat is easier to lose than subcutaneous fat.
How belly fat accumulates
Belly fat accumulation is influenced by a number of factors, such as possessing high levels of fat-storing hormones and low levels of fat-burning hormones, being sedentary and having certain genes. Eating too much processed food is also related to belly fat accumulation and is covered in more detail in Chapter 4. Other factors affecting belly fat accumulation include age, ethnicity and lifestyle.
Figure 1. Abdominal stores of subcutaneous and belly fat (visceral fat).
Fat-storing hormones
Cortisol, a hormone that is secreted into the blood by the adrenal glands, is typically elevated when people experience stress. When blood cortisol levels increase, the amount of sugar in the blood also increases, which results in a corresponding rise in insulin. Having elevated levels of cortisol and insulin in the blood encourages fat storage and impedes fat burning. This means high levels of stress increase the levels of cortisol and insulin in your blood, leading to reduced fat release and increased belly fat stores. Cortisol may also contribute to leptin resistance, which means people eat more, as leptin is a satiety hormone that fat cells release to tell the brain we have had enough to eat.
Fat-burning hormones
In humans, catecholamines are the major hormones that mobilise fat from fat cells and induce fat burning in muscles and the liver. The catecholamines are epinephrine (or adrenalin) and norepinpehrine (or noradrenalin) and are secreted into the blood by the adrenal glands. Norepinephrine is also released at nerve endings. Blood catecholamine levels gradually increase through the night and typically peak around 11am. Catecholamine-induced fat mobilisation occurs much more in belly fat compared to subcutaneous fat.
Unfortunately, this catecholamine-induced release of fat is suppressed in obese individuals. This suppression occurs at a young age as it is present in obese teenagers and in obese children, whose mobilisation of triglyceride stores by epinephrine was decreased by 30% during rest. This inability to mobilise lipids increases the amount of fat depots in our bodies and can lead to abdominal obesity. Its cause is undetermined but appears to be influenced by defective fat cell receptors.
Another fat-burning hormone is growth hormone, which is produced by the pituitary gland. Insulin slows down growth hormone release, so people with high levels of insulin in their blood typically have lower levels of growth hormone. Having problems with the thyroid gland can also result in increased belly fat accumulation. The thyroid is an endocrine gland located at the base of the neck and releases a hormone called T3 (thyroid hormone), which elevates metabolic rate and, together with catecholamines and growth hormone, increases fat release from cells. Hypothyroidism occurs when the thyroid gland produces too little T3 or the thyroid receptors in cells become insensitive. Low thyroid levels can contribute to elevated fat deposition and can cause an increase in belly fat stores and are often accompanied by elevated low-grade inflammation, as hypothyroid individuals have been shown to possess increased levels of C-reactive protein, an inflammatory chemical, in their blood.
Genetic influences
Over the last 3 decades, researchers have discovered genetic markers that contribute to increased body weight and waist circumference, however no single gene has been found to cause obesity. Specific genes related to obesity have been identified; among them are a number of single gene mutations that contribute to the development of obesity in teenagers and young adults. This means we now know that genes affect belly fat development when influenced by factors such as physical inactivity, nutrient intake and metabolic status.
Lifestyle factors that influence belly fat accumulation
There are many lifestyle factors that impact on belly fat, but perhaps the most important (after eating and exercise) are age, drinking alcohol, ethnicity, smoking, stress and sleep. Exposure to daily stressors and reduced quality of sleep have both been associated with belly fat accumulation. Chapter 5 covers how poor sleep and uncontrolled daily stress can lead to belly fat development, together with a description of stress-management and sleep-enhancing techniques.
Physical inactivity
People who do not do recreational exercise and have little physical activity in their jobs are prone to belly fat accumulation, especially if they consume a lot of processed food. This belly fat accumulation risks developing cardiovascular disease, as well as type 2 diabetes. Exercising burns up energy and gradually makes the body metabolise more fat than carbohydrate. It is also likely that fat burning continues during the period after exercise. See Chapter 2 for a discussion of how different forms of exercise have differing effects on body fat and muscle mass.
Genes play a role in aerobic fitness levels, and estimates of their contribution to such fitness vary between 10% and 40%: if you have parents who were good at activities such as cross-country running, it is likely that you will carry genes that will make you good at performing aerobic running exercise. However, all kinds of fitness are mainly influenced by exercising, and to keep fit you need to perform physical activity.
Exercise physiologists assess people’s aerobic fitness by exercising them to exhaustion on a bike or treadmill and measuring their maximum oxygen uptake, which reflects aerobic fitness. Assessing maximum oxygen uptake, however, requires expertise and expensive equipment. An easier way of assessing aerobic fitness is to see how far you can walk or run on level ground in 12 minutes. This test is called the Cooper 12-minute walk/run fitness test and is described in Appendix A.
9
Below is a questionnaire assessment that does not involve exercising. If you score 9 points or less on the questionnaire, or walk or run less than 1 kilometre on the walk/run fitness test, it is likely that you are really unfit and need to begin a fitness program.
Age
Older people tend to have more belly fat than young people. The main reason for the increase in belly fat in older people seems to be a decrease in the body’s metabolism: after the age of 30, most people’s metabolism will decrease about 1% every 2 years. Why metabolism slows down as we age is unclear, but it probably involves a decrease in muscle mass and a change in hormone levels. While the amount of subcutaneous fat generally declines with ageing, so does muscle mass, and since skeletal muscles, together with the liver, are the major fat burning engines of the body, older people burn lower levels of fat overall.