So am here working in Dubai ( and hating it - though that is a subject for another thread)
While sat outside the building having a smoke break I see a guy who is reasonably proportional (arms, legs height) apart from the fact this dude looks like 7 months pregnant! I guessed him to be about in his 40’s
Now straight up, he hasn’t a chubby face, no fat ass, no love handles but he has this huge belly!
A classic beer gut!
So that being so, where is all this fat secreted? He is not “flabby” just owns a solid beer belly.
Maybe his liver is enlarged, maybe its something else. Where is excess fat stored in beer bellies? Would liposuction help? Seems not to me, as I say he is not flabby, just driving a huge expanded gut
If he’s not flabby at all, then it’s probably ascites. It’s not fat, it’s fluid that accumulates in the abdomen when you have really bad liver disease.
That’s not to say skinny guys can’t have beer bellies, of course they can. But they don’t get to “7 month pregnant” sizes without you putting a little flab on your arms and legs first.
A beer belly is abdominal, or visceral fat, instead of subcutaneous fat. That’s why it’s so firm - it’s actually around the organs in the abdomen, underneath the muscle layer. Subcutaneous fat is on top of the muscle, under the skin, so it’s squishy fat. Men are more prone to visceral fat than women, for reasons we don’t really understand but probably have to do with hormones, and some men are more prone to it than others.
I don’t believe anyone has come up with a liposuction treatment for visceral fat, no. The problem is that it’s really deep and wrapped around organs. If we cut open your belly, we’d go through skin, then subcutaneous fat, then muscle and then a really tough membrane called the peritoneal sac. Inside that sack are where your abdominal organs are. The thing is, our bodies really, really don’t like it when we cut in there. It’s a sterile area, and anytime you open it up, risks of bad infections are pretty high. So we don’t cut it open unless we really have no choice. And then we’d have to get the fat out of there without jostling around the organs too much, or they’re likely to get damaged. Again, not easy.
Liposuction can get rid of subcutaneous fat, because it’s not so deep. You just cut through the skin, stick a vacuum tube in and suck out the fat. Now you have to know how to do it well, without getting uneven lumps and tearing blood vessels open, so don’t go dragging out the Hoover! But it’s relatively simple and safe, as surgeries go.
The only way to lose visceral fat is through weight loss, whether it be by diet and exercise or surgery to reduce the size of your stomach.
Ascites, on the other hand, isn’t fat at all, but liquid. It can be “tapped” by putting a large needle in and draining off the fluid, but it will usually come back, because the liver damage that’s creating the fluid imbalance isn’t treated by draining the fluid. The only way to stop ascites for good is for the liver to heal or to get a new liver.