Your Parking Lot of Fat: Your Omentum.
The omentum, which is located next to your stomach, serves as your primary storage facility of fat, where you park some or (in really bad cases) all the excess foods you eat. Ideally, the garage is empty. But as we gain weight, some of our bellies are housing four stories of Winnebago-worthy fat. Most important, the omentum serves as our body’s ultimate stress gauge: YOU-reka! As we’ll explain in a moment, bigger bellies indicate higher levels of inadequately managed chronic stress—which causes chronic levels of inflammation.