The book Growing Better Not Bigger by Dr. Sean O’Mara caught my attention given my interests in this blog. He is a doctor who at 40 was sedentary and not very healthy. Discover the importance of visceral fat, which is the fat that accumulates around our organs, as opposed to subcutaneous fat (“under the skin”). Aesthetically, we usually worry about the subcutaneous tissue, as in trying to lose “love handles” or a “beer belly,” but it’s the viscera that has the worst health consequences. Dr. O’Mara found that this is often seen on MRI scans, but is not often noted by doctors because the scan is usually taken to diagnose something else. In his case it was for back issues. After discovering he had excess visceral fat and learning about its importance, he modified his lifestyle, including being active and cleaning up his diet. This led to a great reduction in visceral fat and became healthier. Dr. O’Mara was so thrilled with the results that he modified his own practice to focus on it and has since helped many clients become healthier. He goes over a list of 10 lifestyle changes, with exercise and diet featuring prominently. For exercise he feels that short intense sessions are more effective than long cardio sessions. For his own diet he cut out most overly processed foods and followed a low-carb version of the Paleo diet. Since this worked so well for him, it’s what he recommends (or something similar). I will go into more detail if this particular diet is necessary, but whatever it is, I recommend Dr. O’Mara, for both inspiration and 10 helpful lifestyle tips.
I wanted to know more about exercise and diet recommendations. Especially for me, short intense exercise like HIIT is not recommended because of my leaky heart valve. So I wanted to know which alternatives target visceral fat well. Diet wise I wondered if low carb was really a factor or if just cutting out processed foods would do the trick. This was a good candidate for deep research into Gemini AI, so I asked the question “what’s the latest on diet and exercise to reduce visceral fatThe resulting conversation is hereand the generated report is here. The report begins by confirming the negative health effects of visceral fat. It goes on to show that the recommendations of Dr. O’Mara are correct, although there are some alternative diets.
For exercise he created this chart for effectiveness in reducing visceral fat based on evidence in the literature:
Sucra means “Area under the cumulative ranking curve”, the higher this number the better, it indicates the effectiveness of various treatments. I have reviewed the exercise with my limitations below. It turns out that the higher intensity 10×1 intervals I’m allowed to do on my bike are enough to tick the “high intensity” box, so they should be effective. Regarding nutrition there is this chart:
VAT stands for visceral adipose tissue, as in visceral fat. So the kind of diet that Dr. O’Mara recommends gets good ratings. I was concerned that the Plant-Based Diet was too vague without specifying “whole food,” so I asked:
I have a follow-up question about the “Comparative Effectiveness of Dietary Patterns on Visceral Fat” section. I think the plant based diet (ppbd) effect can be misleading. A plant-based diet can include highly processed foods and foods loaded with sugar or refined carbohydrates. Plant-based whole foods (wfpb) are better because they eliminate these low-quality foods. There are research results for VAT reduction specifically for wfpb.
The answer is at the bottom of the conversation here. The answer is that plant-based whole foods also work well, although I haven’t had a general comparison to see its relative effectiveness against low-carb. I must point out that you should never directly trust the results of these conversations. I hunted down the references to confirm the important points, which I suggest you do.
To be sure I read a second book on the subject:
This author also recommended short bursts of vigorous exercise, and in terms of diet he mainly emphasized getting rid of highly processed foods.
My take is that exercise is important, especially at higher intensities. When it comes to diet, everyone seems to agree on cutting out processed foods. If you want to pursue it more aggressively, you could take the further step of a more restricted diet such as low carb or wfpb.
I was curious how the medical understanding of visceral fat has evolved over time, so I did another Gemini query “History of medical understanding of the role of visceral fat,” which led to this conversation. It seems that our understanding has improved a lot from the 1990s to today. One of the confusions that has been cleared up is that some people are overweight and metabolically unhealthy, and some people have a lower BMI but are not healthy. This would make sense if the former had more subcutaneous fat and less visceral fat. Here is a summary diagram:
Read the conversation if you’re interested in more details. The finding about drainage to the liver is important and exciting.
Gemini asked me this next question “Would you like me to find a specific “master athlete” cycling protocol that balances steady state and intervals for optimal metabolic health?“and I said”Yes. However, I have moderate aortic paravalvular leakage, so it should be safe for that too“. The result is in the same conversation, and pretty much confirmed what I’m already doing. My 10×1 intervals should be effective, as well as longer less intense rides in “zone 2”.
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I am a Mechanical Engineer born in 1953, Ph. D, Stanford, 1980. I have been in the CAE engineering field for decades. I also have a lifelong interest in outdoor activities and fitness. I have had both hips replaced and a heart valve replaced due to a genetic condition. This blog chronicles my adventures in staying active despite these bumps in the road. View all posts by BionicOldGuy
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