Exercising can help develop healthier belly fat

Annoyed that you still have a bit of tummy even though you work out all the time?

Exercise actually is helping you develop healthier belly fat tissue, a new study says.

That means that even if you don't obtain six-pack abs, exercise is good for your long-term health, researchers said.

"Our findings indicate that in addition to being a means to expend calories, exercising regularly for several months to years seems to modify your fat tissue in ways that allows you to store your body fat more healthfully if or when you do experience some weight gain -- as nearly everyone does as we get older," said researcher Jeffrey Horowitz , a professor of movement science at the University of Michigan School of Kinesiology.

For the study, researchers compared two groups of people with obesity. One group of 16 people said they'd exercised at least four times a week for at least two years, while another group of 16 said they'd never regularly exercised.

Samples were taken from belly fat tissue just under the skin, which is considered the healthiest place for the body to store fat.

Fat stored under the skin is less likely to cause health problems compared to fat accumulating around or inside organs, researchers said.

People who regularly exercised had distinct differences in their fat tissue that increased their capacity to store fat under the skin, results show.

These include more blood vessels, increased levels of mitochondria and beneficial proteins, less collagen that interferes with metabolism, and fewer inflammatory cells, researchers said.

"What it means is that if or when people experience weight gain, this excess fat will be stored more 'healthfully' in this area under the skin, rather than in the fat tissue around their organs or an accumulation of fat in organs themselves, like the liver or heart," Horowitz said in a university news release.

Follow-up lab experiments showed that cells drawn from the exercisers developed into tissue that stored fat more effectively, researchers added.

Researchers said further long-term study is needed to track people and see how fat tissue changes as they exercise over time.

The new study was published Tuesday in the journal Nature Metabolism .

More information

The Cleveland Clinic has more on types of body fat .

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