Belly fat tends to get a bad rap, but new research shows that one kind of belly fat can be healthier than others — provided you’re willing to get moving. The fat, the study found, essentially behaved differently in people with the same percentage of body fat, based on their long-term exercise habits. Regular exercisers had less rigid or fibrous fat tissue, which allows fat cells beneath the skin to expand to store fat, one of the body’s primary sources of energy. While expanding fat cells may sound like a bad thing, it’s actually better for health than having inflexible fat tissue. Another indication of this was that they had more proteins involved with fat metabolism in their fat tissue, the study found.

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Persons: —, ”, Jeffrey Horowitz, Horowitz, exercisers, Jaime Almandoz, Aayush, Rutgers Robert Wood, ” Visaria Organizations: University of Michigan School of Kinesiology, BMI, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Rutgers, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Locations: exercisers, nonexercisers, Dallas