Omentum, ya know what that is?
Belly blubber.
Why should you know what the Omentum is? Well for one, having a large, unhealthy omentum can shave up to 15 years off your life.
A healthy omentum appears lacy and almost see through, like the one oprah is holding. The one Dr. Oz is holding is from a deceased man who was only about 30 pounds overweight!
The omentum is split into 2 segments. The greater omentum is a mass that sits in front of the stomach and the lesser omentum covers the liver. They both store fat. When the greater omentum is large, the stomach appears distended and hard, which many call “a beer belly.” That hard, intense look is the omentum, pushing up against your stomach, all coiled up. This is not the type of fat you can pinch, it is a hard fat. Hard fat=scary fat! It is scary because the bigger the omentum fat, the higher the risk of inflammation in the body that leads to diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and hardening of the arteries. Big omentum = big risk of disease.
The omentum also stores hormones like cortisol (which is called the stress hormone). High stress can stimulate growth of the omentum. Take care of your stress! People with high levels of stress find that it is very difficult to reduce the size of this hardened belly fat. Stress and belly fat are connected.
I love this video from Dr. Oz, it is an animated video of what happens to food when you eat it and how it stores as belly fat. It is a GREAT animation, brings it all to life for me and helps it all make sense. If you don’t want to watch all 5 minutes, move the timemarker under the video to about 2:15, that is where the animation begins.
So, is your omentum too large? There is a very simple way to discover if you have a healthy belly. It is called the hip to waist ratio. Here is a brief video of how to measure your waist (*correctly) and figure out your hip to waist ratio, and what it should be.
For more of what this post is about, click here.
