Dr Zoe Williams discusses visceral fat on This Morning

Visceral fat, also known as belly fat, is stored near vital organs such as the liver and intestines. This is bad company to keep – a build up of visceral fat can intrude on these vital organs, raising your risk of chronic complications, such as diabetes and heart disease. Fortunately, you are not powerless to the perils of visceral fat.

Improving your diet will help to eliminate visceral fat, and, while you cannot rely on just one item, research suggests certain dietary components boast visceral fat-beating properties.

Pu-erh tea — a unique type of fermented tea that’s traditionally made in the Yunnan Province of China – is a lesser-known candidate.

A single study in 36 overweight people found that consuming 333 mg of pu-erh tea extract three times daily for 12 weeks resulted in significantly improved body weight, body mass index (BMI), and visceral fat measurements, compared with a control group.

Research points to a number of possible explanations for pu-erh tea’s weight loss effect.

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Animal and test-tube studies have shown that pu-erh tea may help synthesise fewer new fats while burning more stored body fat — which can lead to weight loss.

Yet, given the lack of human studies on the topic, more research is needed.

Furthermore, pu-erh tea is fermented, so it can also introduce healthy probiotics — or beneficial gut bacteria — into your body.

These probiotics may help improve your blood sugar control, which plays a key role in weight management and hunger, research shows.

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However, there are some limitations to the human study worth noting.

Namely, the research doesn’t prove that drinking pu-erh tea can help you lose weight.

These studies employed highly concentrated extracts, which contained the active ingredients of pu-erh tea in much higher doses than those you’d get from drinking it.

Nonetheless, the results are encouraging and calls for further research into the weight loss effects of pu-erh tea extract.

General dietary advice

“If you want to reduce your belly fat, you’ll need to burn more calories (energy) than you consume, and eat the right kinds of food,” explains Maya Aboukhater, senior specialist dietitian at Bupa Cromwell Hospital.

According to Aboukhater, make sure you eat a balanced diet – try to eat at least five portions of fruit and veg each day, and include higher-fibre starchy foods in meals.

She also says to:

• Have some reduced-fat dairy or soya drinks fortified in calcium
• Eat more beans, pulses, fish and eggs
• Eat small amounts of unsaturated oil
• Drink six to eight glasses of water each day
• Avoid adding salt or sugar to your meals.

“And finally, cut out sports drinks, sugar sweetened drinks and other foods that have a lot of added sugar in them,” adds Aboukhater.

In addition to improving your diet, regular exercise plays a key role in reducing visceral fat.

“Fortunately, visceral fat is very sensitive to weight loss,” explains Harvard Health.

According to the health body, thirty minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise on most days plus resistance exercise a few days a week has been shown to reduce visceral fat.

“Sit-ups tighten abdominal muscles, but they will not decrease visceral fat,” it adds.

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