Chilly Belly

Recently at the end of my runs I have noticed something that needed an explanation. Why is my stomach so cold? As I get ready for my post-run shower I find that the surface of my belly and sides are ice cold to the touch. What is up with that? The rest of my body is warm, even hot. My running clothes are moist with sweat, and I hardly felt the cold once my internal furnace flames started to stoke themselves. So I did what anyone would do in the year 2011, I Googled it. I found many explanations, here are a few.


From a contributer on Beginner triathlete:  It's very simple. Those of us with a little "ahem" extra fat around the mid section will experience this.  Your muscles are burning glycogen, in a very literal sense.  As your body takes fuel and burns it for energy, it generates heat.  However, fat does not burn fuel, it is fuel (in a manner of speaking), so it doesn't generate heat.  If we all had great 6-pack abs with 4% body fat, I daresay we wouldn't experience the cold tummy syndrome.


From Answers.com: Your stomach gets cold when you workout because you are burning calories/losing weight. The fats and carbohydrates get digested much quicker and the blood begins to rush to other organs at a faster rate. Fermentation then kicks in and replaces the oxygen being lost from your blood going elsewhere in your body with lactic acid. The lactic acid will cause both a buring in your abdominals along with a colder feeling on the surface of your stomach. 


Many websites said this: My coach says that if your belly/fat is cold after a workout then your body is burning its fat reserves.

I truly have no idea if any of the above are the correct answer to my original question. Who knows with the stuff you find on the net these days? What I do know is that those cold areas are definitely the areas where fat is stored on my body. So when those areas stop getting cold I am guessing I will be closing in on my weight loss goals. Nature and biology has provided me a little blueprint of my problem areas. Isn't that special!