Love Handles and Muffin Tops!

“Love Handles and Muffin Tops”       
Kellee Rutley, DC
  “Love handles”, “muffin top“; it is amazing how many cute terms of endearment we assign to our expanding waistlines, also know as abdominal fat.  Perhaps we seek to make  ourselves feel better about what we believe is an inevitable sign of the normal aging process. Don’t get me wrong…I was one of those who referred to my own jelly rolls as my “doublet” (double in French) muffin top, thinking that giving it an exotic European name might make it easier to cope with. Besides, I was not in denial or shy about it and it made my family laugh. I guess it made it easier for us all to cope with something that was obviously painful to me underneath the giggles. After all, my waistline looked pretty much like many of my friends‘…not a huge deal, just a little more there than there was last year, and evan more than the year before. When my nine year old walked up behind me and grabbed my “love handles” and said “It’s cute, Mom” I almost allowed myself to believe it! After all, I, like many of you, am a very active mother and professional, and had been trying to vigorously exercise it away, “cleanse” it away, sweat and cut calories it away and even give in to it, “embrace it” and accept it as my new, middle aged self.  This is an all-too-common story, and now you are going to learn why that belly fat is not harmless at all, but potentially deadly for both women and men, and now you will also have a piece of information needed to do something about finally getting rid of it, once and for all.
Here are the facts about belly fat:  it increases your risk for breast cancer, heart disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, gallbladder problems, hypertension and colorectal cancer. This is the short list, since researches are linking obesity to more and more dangerous health conditions every day. Abdominal fat is more than just unsightly. As a matter of fact, in our office we now refer to it as the “third ovary” rather than the cute little “muffin top”, because we know that this type of fat is often not visible to the eye, but wraps around internal organs and some fat cells will start behaving like active glands, producing hormones that promote insulin resistance and estrogen in menopausal women. Making matters even worse, the more body fat you have, the higher your levels of a natural chemical known as SHBG (sex hormone binding globulin). SHBG binds to the sex hormone testosterone, making less testosterone available to stimulate sexual desire.
If you are anything like me, you will find this information downright scary, and those love handles and muffin tops no longer acceptable.
If you have been, like me,  exercising, eating organic and healthy foods, and doing everything you already know of to lose that body fat and it still isn’t happening for you, you might want to consider resting your pancreas by cutting out complex and simple carbohydrates (sugar, bagels, pasta and rice) and increasing your quality protein intake with organic lean fish, chicken and meat to  maintain muscle mass while you burn fat.  Everyone needs ½ gram protein per pound of body weight just for daily living. Divide your current bodyweight in half, and this is how many grams of protein you need everyday, and more if you are an athlete. As long as your body has blood glucose and stored glycogen to use as fuel, it will never tap into stored body fat as energy. As a matter of fact, your body stores enough glycogen to last an entire marathon, so try avoiding that high carb fruit smoothy after a workout and go for protein instead. .Obesity in America has spiraled out of control, and according to the Center for Disease Control, one third of American adults are hypertensive and 67% are obese. Let’s wage war on the love handles and muffin tops…it is time. By using these simple principles you can begin the battle in your own kitchen, and if you are interested in reading about how our “weight loss team” is losing body fat and inches, you can visit our blog site, Love Handles and Muffin Tops at http://weightlosslaketahoe.blogspot.com/.  Good luck!