Visceral Fat vs. Subcutaneous Fat — What's the Difference?

This clip is from “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) episode #17, originally released on November 9, 2020.

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The different types of body fat [9:00]

“Not all fat is created equal.”

Subcutaneous fat = fat between the skin and the fascia

The inability to see the six-pack of abs is really an issue of either too small rectus abdominis muscle group and/or too much subcutaneous fat surrounding the rectus abdominis muscles

Visceral fat = fat beneath the fascia near the vital organs

Fascia is the corset that is holding you together—it’s beneath your muscles and inside the fascia is where your organs exist

Figure 3. Image showing abdominal wall fascia. Image credit: earthslab.com

Visceral fat is found around the liver, the kidneys, the spleen, and the gut.
Visceral fat is incredibly associated with metabolic disease
In an ideal world, rather than tracking our BF%, we would instead track what % of our fat was visceral fat
Although there are no standard reference ranges for visceral fat, in healthy individuals, values are generally less than 1 kg for younger individuals and between 1-2 kg for older individuals. (source, source, source) However, these cohort study approximations.

Figure 4. Subcutaneous fat vs. visceral fat. Image credit: makeyourbodywork.com

Using MRI

Visceral fat is incredibly associated with metabolic disease: Contribution of adipose tissue to health span and longevity (Huffman and Barzilai, 2010) [10:00]