It’s a good idea to reduce visceral fat – BionicOldGuy

The book Get better, not older by Dr. Sean O’Mara came to my attention because of my interest in this blog. He is a doctor who himself was sedentary in his late 40s and was not very healthy. He discovered the importance of visceral fat, the fat that surrounds our organs, as opposed to subcutaneous fat (“under the skin”). From a cosmetic perspective, we usually worry about the subcutaneous fat, like when we’re trying to lose our love handles or our “beer belly,” but it’s the visceral tissue that has worse health consequences. Dr. O’Mara noted that this is often seen routinely on MRI scans, but is not often noticed by doctors because the scan is usually done to diagnose something else. In his case these were previous editions. After discovering that he had excess visceral fat and realizing how important it was, he changed his own lifestyle, including becoming more active and changing his diet. This led to a sharp decrease in visceral fat and a healthier diet. Dr. O’Mara was so thrilled with the results that he converted his own practice to focus on it and has since helped many clients achieve better health. He goes through a list of 10 lifestyle changes, with exercise and diet at the forefront. When it comes to training, he believes that short, intense workouts are more effective than long cardio workouts. For his own diet, he cut out most overly processed foods and opted for a low-carb version of the Paleo diet. Since it worked so well for him, he recommends it (or something similar). I will go into more detail about whether this special diet is necessary, but I still recommend Dr. O’Mara’s book, both for inspiration and for the 10 useful lifestyle tips.

I wanted to learn more about the exercise and nutrition recommendations. Especially for me, short, intensive exercises such as: HIIT is not recommended because of my leaky heart valve. That’s why I wanted to find out which alternatives work well against visceral fat. When it comes to diet, I asked myself whether low carb is really a key factor or whether it would be enough to simply avoid processed foods. This was a good candidate for in-depth research on Gemini AI, so I asked the question: “What are the latest findings on diet and exercise for reducing visceral fat??” The resulting chat is Hereand the generated report is Here. The report begins by confirming the negative effects of visceral fat on health. It also appears that the recommendations of Dr. O’Mara are spot on, although there are some nutritional alternatives.

For training, this chart of effectiveness in reducing visceral fat was created based on evidence in the literature:

Sucra stands for “Surface Under the Cumulative Ranking Curve”. The higher this number the better, it indicates the effectiveness of different treatments. I’ve looked at the workout below with my limitations. It turns out that the 10×1 higher intensity intervals I’m allowed to do on my bike are enough to check the “high intensity” box, so should be effective. As far as nutrition is concerned, there is this table:

VAT stands for visceral adipose tissue, just like visceral fat. The nature of Dr. O’Mara’s recommended diet performs well. I was concerned that “plant-based diet” was too vague without specifying “whole foods,” so I asked:

I have a follow-up question to the “Comparative Effectiveness of Diets on Visceral Fat” section. I think the plant-based diet result (ppbd) might be misleading. A plant-based diet can include highly processed foods and foods high in sugar or refined carbohydrates. Whole foods plant-based (wfpb) are better because they eliminate these inferior foods. Are there any research results on VAT reduction specifically for wfpb?.

The answer can be found in the chat below Here. The answer is: whole foods, plant-based foods also work well, although I haven’t had a direct comparison to see the relative effectiveness compared to low-carb foods. I would like to point out that you should never directly trust the results of these chats. I looked at the references to confirm the important points, which I also recommend.

To be sure, I read a second book on the subject:

This author also recommended short, intense exercises, and his diet emphasized avoiding highly processed foods.

My conclusion is that exercise is important, especially at higher intensities. When it comes to diet, everyone seems to agree on avoiding processed foods. If you want to pursue this more aggressively, you can take the further step of a more restricted diet such as low-carb or WFPB.

I was curious about how the medical understanding of visceral fat has evolved over time, so I posted another Gemini query “History of medical understanding of the role of visceral fat” which led to this this chat. It appears that our understanding has improved greatly from around the 1990s to the present day. One of the confusions cleared up is that some people are overweight and metabolically unhealthy, others have a lower BMI but are not healthy. This would make sense if the former had more subcutaneous fat and less visceral fat. Here is a summary diagram:

Read the chat if you want to know more about it. The knowledge about drainage into the liver is significant and fascinating.

Gemini asked me this follow-up question: “Would you like me to find a dedicated “masters athlete” cycling protocol that balances steady-state and intervals for optimal metabolic health?and I said “Yes. However, since I have a moderate paravalvular aortic leak, this also needs to be safe“. The result is in the same chat and it largely confirms what I’m already doing. My 10×1 intervals should be effective, as should longer, less intense “Zone 2” rides.

Published
February 7, 2026February 6, 2026