Not about weight but waist

Christmas just passed. New Year is ticking near. And about 2 weeks later, the Chinese are celebrating Chinese New Year. What all these means? Public Holiday? Oh... these means much more than holidays, it means time to celebrate!! And to most Malaysian, celebration is just another perfect excuse to feast.

Christmas dinner, Countdown party, Chinese New Year Dinner, New Year Gathering with old friends. Are you having all these parties and "makan" occassions lining up too? Enjoy your parties and food just watch out for your waist line. Why waist line and not weight control? Read on, I'm going to share something you might never heard of.

Dr. Mehmet Oz explained that watching your waist line is more important than watching your weight in one of the Oprah show. And he introduced a new vocabulary to us the Omentum. I know momentum but not omentum. I learned that it is actually an organ. The omentum is split into two segments - the greater and lesser omentum. The greater omentum attached to the bottom edge of the stomach, and hangs down in front of the intestines. Its other edge is attached to the transverse colon. The lesser omentum attached to the top edge of the stomach, and extends to the undersurface of the liver. And omentum store fats easily. It can become gigantic as a person gain weight. In this talk show, he show a normal person omentum and a overly fat person omentum and the size differ greatly.

I do a search on Internet and found the book he wrote on fats and omentum. Below I quoted 2 paragraphs of the excerpt of his book- You on Diet.

"See, fat is like real estate: it's all about location, location, location. We all have three kinds of fat: fat in our bloodstream (called triglycerides), subcutaneous fat (which lies just underneath the skin's surface), and that omentum fat. (The fourth fat, of course, is the fat in food.)
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What's most interesting--and encouraging--is that as soon as you make physiological changes to your omentum, your body starts seeing effects. That is, once your body senses it's losing that fat, then your body's blood-related numbers (cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar) start traveling in the healthy direction within days, before you even notice any kind of physical sign of weight loss (especially when you consider that the size of your omentum is impossible to measure without a CT scan)."

He mentioned that a it is not so much about the weight but the omentum fat. Subcutaneous fat is not as harmful as omentum fat. Omentum fat is supplying a feeding tube to the rest of your vital internal organs. Thus, it changes the levels of substances in your blood that are being supplied to your vital organs.

When I did a simple search of omentum online I found this interesting fact about omentum fat. It mentioned that omentum and omentum fat are currently cannot be safely suctioned without severe life threatening bowel problems. So don't think that liposuction can solve the health problems bring by over-weight. It also means that the cold wrap / hot wrap/ massage slim down method is not a way out as well. So watch your waist line not your weight.

He give a rough guide on healthy waist line, waist size less than 40 inches for males, and less than 35 inches for women. Keep a healty lifestyle, keep your omentum and omentum fat at healty level. Be beautiful and healthy.