You Have a Dangerous Amount of Fat If You Answer Yes to All 6 Questions
In a Nutshell
Visceral fat is detectable without scans or bloodwork through six self-tests: a belly that protrudes upward when lying down, sagging skin after initial loss, inability to draw in the abdomen on all fours, unexplained afternoon fatigue, constant cravings, and twisted or spider veins. These signs indicate internal fat that drives inflammation, insulin spikes, mitochondrial damage, and visible aging even when external weight looks normal (TOFI). Reversing it requires eliminating processed carbs to break the insulin–craving cycle, allowing visceral fat to burn off faster than scale weight suggests.
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Your doctor said your blood work looks fine. So why are you still tired by two in the afternoon? Maybe you're not sleeping. You're still carrying extra weight. Or your face is inflamed and getting less attractive. Dr. Sha Omera spent 7 years skinning over 6,000 people on MRI for the National Science Foundation. The doctor will ask six questions that show you the fat your doctor never looks for. No scale and no blood work needed. You can answer all six right where you're sitting. By the last one, you'll know whether it's real possibility for you.
Lie down and look. Does your belly when you lay on your back stick straight up like Mount Fuji or does it fall flat to the sides? If your abdomen is standing straight up, you've got visceral fat in there. If it falls completely to the side, you probably have an abundance of external subcutaneous fat, but you probably have a combination of both and that becomes a little bit more problematic. The worst condition is a belly that sticks up where you look like you got a dad bod laying down on your back. If it's not completely flat, you can be assured when it's sticking up that you've got an excess amount of visceral fat.
You can measure this. Grab a ruler, put it next to your abdomen on the side, and measure how much it's sticking up. You can track it by that ruler, how far it starts to drop.
Take a look at whether your abdomen is sagging. You want it flat, which is what a very healthy human being has. Typically, you'll see this like in a 14-year-old, a very flat abdomen. It doesn't sag down. Somebody that's had the influence of visceral fat gets rid of their visceral fat, so it's not pushing up, but they haven't recovered yet from the influence. Their abdomen will sag down, like in this photograph. That sagging down means you got the influence of visceral fat and you haven't yet recovered from it. This is still disease because it amounts to sarcopenia, loss of tone of your abdomen. People go through this particular stage as they get rid of visceral fat, but you need to be aware of it.
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