We know about carb addiction hangovers that follow us into this Low Carb Healthy Fats way-of-eating (WOE). One of those is that we bring body weight scales with us. There are plenty of topics about the benefits and dangers of body weight scales, or ‘bathroom scales’, in these forums.
"Take your scales and give them to your most hated enemy." Old keto proverb.
"Shed your scales and let’s get started." Misquoted lyric from Australian rock band aptly named, Hunters and Collectors. Song: Throw Your Arms Around Me… (and see if they reach).
My bias, from experience, is against using body weight scale measurement as a biomarker or (de)motivational tool. I will weigh myself, but only at the doctor’s office for recording on a physical examination record.
Many low-carb coaches and practitioners use Waist to Height ratio as a biomarker measurement. Tummy: Tallness = < 0.5? The measurement around your belly at the level of the navel should be less than your height.
Long term low carbers use ‘clothes fit’, and many non-scale victories (NSVs) are spoken about in these terms.
But how do you tell if you are losing subcutaneous fat, or visceral fat that wraps your abdominal organs and has many health consequences?
Standing and measuring around your belly results in a measurement that is a mix of subcutaneous and visceral fat.
I like the bio-marker measurement that you can do at home without the need for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that will tell you within the first month of starting a low carb eating plan, whether you are improving your health.
To measure and record the bio-marker, you need to lie down.
Let Dr. Sean O’Mara explain (the video is book-marked to take you straight to the key point in the presentation)
Something deeper: The discussion is about reducing visceral fat and how low-carb eating can achieve that. There are other anatomical factors to consider. The mesentery and omentum inside our bellies has fat that occurs in the folded sheets of tissues and broad ligament that holds our ropes of guts in place and supplies a scaffold for blood vessels, nerves, and lymphatic drainage. It makes up a lot of the ‘visceral fat’ (as seen in the MRI images). We can also recall information that the intestine is the largest immune organ in the body. If the gut is inflamed, the omentum swells in response with cells and inflammation fluids. If we eat a cleaner, low-inflammatory, low carb ketogenic diet, we reduce inflammation. That inflammation reduction will reduce the swollen size of the omentum and its reactive fat. So, here is my surmise, is that some abdominal visceral fat reduction, is from reduced inflammation of the gut supporting tissues. Recording a thought. It is likely old news to the keto veterans.
