Being lean and fat simultaneously
Published: 31 May 2017
If you think being lean equates to being healthy, you may be wrong. Although many people in Singapore may look lean and have a normal body mass index (BMI), they may be “viscerally obese”, which means they have a high body fat content. This leads to a higher risk of developing metabolic diseases like diabetes.
Dr Asim Shabbir, the director and senior consultant at National University Hospital’s (NUH) Centre for Obesity Management and Surgery, said our bodies are made up of muscle, bone, fat and water, though the ratio of fat to muscle and the sites of deposition of fat differ from person to person. A person with a normal weight can have a high percentage of fat mass and a low amount of muscle mass, which results in the term “skinny fat”, he said. This is also known as normal weight obesity. The centre has seen people with a healthy weight but who have metabolic diseases like diabetes, hypertension and hyperlipidemia, he added. Data on the number of people here who are “skinny fat” is not available, but the figure could be higher than expected.
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