Lack of sleep leads to an 11% increase in visceral belly fat

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Studies have also shown that just four hours of sleep a night can increase total belly fat by nine percent.

Visceral fat is stored deep inside the abdomen and protects and insulates our vital organs. While this means that a certain amount of it is necessary, too much can be harmful. In fact, having excess visceral fat is linked to conditions like diabetes, cancer, and heart disease.

Like subcutaneous fat, which is the fat that sits under your skin, it's well-known that what you eat and how much you exercise can affect the amount of visceral fat in your body. While it may be out of reach for some people, one expert has suggested another way to combat visceral fat.

So what can you do to get rid of this invisible but potentially deadly fat? The most obvious thing you can do is lose weight. But before you start running on the treadmill seven days a week or cutting your diet to plates full of nothing but broccoli, there's one very simple thing you can do to get rid of visceral fat: go to bed earlier. Reduced sleep time is directly linked to increases in body mass index (BMI), body fat percentage, and visceral fat.

Sleep deprivation can cause an 11 percent increase in abdominal visceral fat.

The study compared dieters who slept eight hours with those who slept only 5.5 hours per night over a 14-day period.

The results showed that those who were sleep deprived had more than 50 percent less weight loss and increased hunger.