Try This - What I’m doing about my belly fat + more

I've got two shares for you this week. The first one is personal, and it's the reason I've been getting back to basics this month! The second one is fascinating and will definitely help guide my plan when it comes to sugar intake for my baby boy. 

High level: 

1. My belly fat percentage has gone up. Here’s why I care…especially for my brain. 

2. An entire country cut out sugar for babies; here’s what happened. 

Let's get into it.

Number 1: Belly Fat Belongs in the Brain Health Conversation

I'm paying special attention to this one because it's hitting close to home.

A few years ago, my DEXA scan put me around 15 percent body fat (which is great for men, by the way).

Then last year, our son arrived. I spent a lot more time being a dad and a lot less time being strict about nutrition, and my visceral fat and body fat have both crept up. I can see it, and even though I haven’t done an updated DEXA scan yet, I know I’m probably back up to about 26 percent body fat.

Now that life is more stable (our baby boy turns one shortly!), I'm doubling down on the basics to bring my belly fat and visceral fat back down. And this research is a big part of why I'm not treating it as a vanity project.

A new review in Nature Reviews Neurology pulled together what we know about obesity and the brain. 

The headline: Excess body fat, especially in midlife, is linked to faster cognitive decline and a higher risk of dementia later on.

Why midlife? Because that's when the damage starts, decades before anyone notices a memory slip. Three things connect extra fat, particularly the visceral kind packed around your organs, to the brain:

• Chronic inflammation. Visceral fat isn't a passive storage tank. It pumps out inflammatory signals that reach the brain.
  

• Insulin resistance. The brain runs on glucose, and when cells stop responding to insulin properly, it struggles. Some researchers call Alzheimer's "type 3 diabetes" for this reason.
  

• Blood vessel damage. The brain has miles of tiny vessels. Anything that hurts them, like high blood pressure or high blood sugar, hurts the brain's supply lines.

Is this one review proving belly fat causes dementia? No. But I don't think we need that study to act. The link shows up in brain imaging, decades-long population studies, and our underlying biology, and it all points in the same direction. When that many kinds of evidence agree, waiting for a perfect trial is a way of doing nothing.

One more thing (because I'm Indian and I think about this a lot): Body fat doesn't behave the same way in everyone. In one study (shout-out to Ben Bickman for the link), South Asian men had abdominal fat cells roughly twice the size of white men at the same BMI, and bigger cells meant worse insulin sensitivity. 

So if you're South Asian, a "normal" weight is not a free pass on any of this. The scale can look fine while the biology is already moving.

The hopeful part is that the review also looks at what improves cognition, and the list below includes things we can control.

What I'm doing this month (and what I'd suggest if you're between 40 and 65):

• Grab a tape measure. Measure your waist at the belly button. If it's more than half your height (so over 35 inches if you're 5'10"), that's the number to work on, regardless of what the scale says. Waist-to-height ratio tracks visceral fat far better than BMI.
  

• Walk after your biggest meal. Even just 10 or 15 minutes. It blunts the blood sugar spike that feeds both belly fat and vessel damage. This is the cheapest brain-health habit I know, and it's the first thing I put back in my routine.
  

• Lift something at least twice a week. Muscle is where glucose goes when it's not going to fat. My parents started strength training in their 70s, and it's been one of the biggest changes for them. Two sessions a week is plenty to start.
  

• Get the labs that actually measure this. Fasting insulin, triglycerides, A1c, and hs-CRP. A normal BMI with a high fasting insulin is a warning sign, and most routine panels skip it. Ask for it by name.
  

• Protect your sleep. Poor sleep raises visceral fat and inflammation at the same time. If you're doing everything else but only sleeping five hours a night, start here.
  

• I’m exploring a microdose GLP-1 with my doctors. Speaking of sleep, mine has been off lately because of some airway issues I’ve written about before, and I’m working on fixing those. But in the meantime, I’m talking with my doctors about a fractional dose of a GLP-1 like trispeptide to kick-start the process, on top of everything above: a modest calorie deficit, more protein, increased steps, and lifting. I’ll share what we decide and how it goes. This is a conversation to have with your own doctor, by the way—not medical advice.

Bonus: If you can, spend the $99 on a DEXA scan. It's the gold standard for measuring visceral fat, and it gives you a real baseline instead of a guess. But the reason I push friends to do it is what else it catches. The same scan measures bone density, so you'll find out if you're dealing with osteopenia or osteoporosis years before a fracture would tell you.

That's a lot of information for the price of a nice dinner. Most cities have a DexaFit or BodySpec, and no referral is needed.

The goal isn't a smaller body. It's a brain that still works at 80. For me, that reframe makes the walk after dinner a lot easier to show up for.

Number 2: What a 1950s Sugar Ration Can Teach Us About Our Kids (and Ourselves)

Speaking of our son, I have a fascinating study that shouldn't be news to my audience, but it's still interesting nonetheless!

But first, a quick story…

Britain rationed sugar starting in World War II all the way until September 1953. Adults were limited to roughly 40 grams of sugar a day, or about eight teaspoons. When rationing ended, sugar intake in the UK roughly doubled almost overnight.

That gave researchers something they could never set up on purpose: two groups of kids, born months apart, who ate completely different amounts of sugar in the womb and in their first two years of life. Then they followed them for decades using the UK Biobank.

Here's what the 2024 study in Science found: Kids exposed to rationing during pregnancy and their first two years had about a 35 percent lower risk of type 2 diabetes and a 20 percent lower risk of high blood pressure as adults. For those who did develop them, onset came about four years later for diabetes and two years later for high blood pressure.

But get this: Roughly a third of that protection came from the pregnancy window alone, before the baby ever ate a bite of solid food!

Then a 2026 follow-up in Nature Communications went further. The same rationed kids, now in their 70s, had biological-age scores about a year younger across several aging clocks, lower organ ages for the heart, lungs, and liver, and about 19 percent lower all-cause mortality during follow-up. The protein markers that differed between the groups pointed toward longevity pathways (think AMPK) and away from growth pathways (mTOR). That's the same pattern we see with fasting and exercise.

Again, this is a natural experiment, not a randomized trial, and the kids born after rationing also grew up in a slightly richer, different Britain, yada yada yada. Sugar seems like the strongest explanation, but it’s not a proven one. But the actions here are easy and cost nothing, so I'm not waiting.

Again, I don't think this study will seem like news for my audience, but just a reminder of some things that I'm personally doing at home:

• No added sugar before age two. This is the official recommendation from the American Heart Association and the Dietary Guidelines, and the rationing study is the best long-term evidence I've seen for why. In our house, that means plain whole-milk yogurt with mashed fruit instead of flavored baby yogurts, and water or milk only. No juice.
  
  Funny enough, the only added sugar our son has had so far is the one we couldn’t avoid: children’s liquid acetaminophen (basically Tylenol). We rarely give it to him, and only when teething gets so uncomfortable that he can’t sleep. But most of the kids’ versions are sweetened, and the one we use, Genexa, has added agave. Any reasonable person, our pediatrician included, would say don’t fret about it. And I don’t. I just haven’t gotten around to finding a replacement yet.
  

• Read the "Added Sugars" line, not the front of the box. Baby pouches, toddler cereals, and "fruit" snacks are where it hides. If added sugar is in the first three ingredients, it goes back on the shelf.
  

• If you're pregnant, the window matters, but perfection doesn't. A third of the benefit came from pregnancy. Swap the daily sweet drink for sparkling water with lime, and you've done most of the work.
  
  My wife isn’t pregnant anymore, but when she was, one small change we made was making her almond milk latte at home instead of grabbing one from the local cafe, which uses the sweetened barista-blend version of almond milk. Since it was something she had every single day, it was an easy place to cut added sugar without feeling like a sacrifice.
  

Hope you enjoyed this week’s shares!

Much love, 
Dhru Purohit 

The information in this newsletter is for educational purposes only and should not be construed as medical advice; please consult a qualified healthcare professional before making any health-related decisions.