How to shrink the dangerous fat linked to heart disease and cancer in 12 weeks | Prof Jimmy Bell

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Welcome to ZOE Science & Nutrition, where world-leading scientists explain how their research can improve your health.
In the loud hum of an MRI scanner, a human body becomes transparent, and everything changes. What matters is no longer your shape or weight, or even what you see in the mirror, but a layered landscape of tissues and organs that shape your health. And somewhere in that unseen landscape lies a kind of fat that most people never think about. It doesn't jiggle. It may not even show. But it wraps itself around vital organs in your belly, quietly shaping metabolism, inflammation and long-term health. This is visceral fat, and it may be one of the most misunderstood biological forces in human health. We have all been taught a simple story. Fat is bad, less is better, and thin equals healthy. But what if that story is incomplete? Why can two people with identical body weights have dramatically different health outcomes? What if someone can look thin on the outside, yet carry significant metabolic risk within? And most shockingly, what if losing weight doesn't automatically mean improving your health? Why does the body choose to store fat in different places? And what can you do to change this?
To help unravel all these questions, I'm joined by Jimmy Bell, Professor of Molecular Imaging and Metabolism at the University of Westminster, pioneer of MRI-based visceral fat research, and a leading expert on the biological importance of body fat. By the end of this conversation, you'll have an entirely new understanding of body fat, how to distinguish harmless from harmful fat, how fat can shake your body's inflammation, why measuring BMI is misleading, and specific ways to reduce visceral fat around your belly through diet, exercise and behavioral changes.
Jimmy, if I managed to have very low levels of body fat, would I be healthier?

**Jimmy Bell** (2:14)
No.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:15)
Could supermodels have more visceral fat than a normal person?

**Jimmy Bell** (2:18)
Yes, they could.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:20)
If I have too much visceral fat in my belly, could it reduce my life expectancy?

**Jimmy Bell** (2:25)
Yes.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:26)
Is cardio exercise the best exercise to reduce visceral fat?

**Jimmy Bell** (2:32)
All exercises help to reduce fat.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:36)
Can fat tissue in my body influence my mental health?

**Jimmy Bell** (2:40)
Yes.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:41)
Can more visceral fat increase the inflammation in my body?

**Jimmy Bell** (2:46)
Yes. No.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:48)
What is the most common myth that you hear about body fat?

**Jimmy Bell** (2:52)
That all fat in your body is bad. You just have to know how to treat it.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:56)
So I spent the first 35 years of my life being told I was thin, and that all changed when we did our first big study at ZOE of 1,000 twins, and I got to be a participant in this study. And as part of the study, I had a full body DEXA scan to measure my body fat and where it was distributed, and I will never forget this experience. So the nurse is doing this scan, and she actually stopped and double checked the results, because there I was, you know, on the table with very little visible fat on my arms, my legs, but it turns out that I had lots of fat wrapped around the organs in my belly, which is called visceral fat, and I was told that I was a toffee, thin on the outside, fat on the inside, and that being a toffee was going to be very bad for my health. And this was pretty scary, and was probably the big aha moment for me personally that caused me to take my own diet seriously.
And it's exciting for me, Jimmy, that you're here today, because you're the scientist who invented this term toffee as a result of your research into the biology of body fat. And it turns out that, you know, most of the things that I understood about fat were just wrong. So maybe we could start with why it matters where in the body you store fat for your health, and indeed, where is fat stored in your body?

**Jimmy Bell** (4:21)
Yeah. I think we should step back a bit and start talking about body fat, which is adipose tissue. And adipose tissue is an organ, so it has many components. And you have to think that those components that make up the organ have very distinct anatomical and metabolic characteristics.
And it's very important where that fat is in relation to your health. So you can unpack adipose tissue into many fat depots. So the most common one is the one which is outside your body, which is mainly subcutaneous adipose tissue.