I was gonna call this piece ‘fat metabolism, fat mobilization and why a truly integrated approach to fat loss is necessary.’ Yawn. You can see why I decided to change my mind.
The subject is vast. And believe me - everyone has an opinion!
Day after day I read a facebook updates, blog posts and articles in the paper by so-called intelligent people and can’t help but feel many are missing the point.
Fat loss is a physiological process and I’m sorry to burst your bubble IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT EAT LESS & MOVE MORE!!! Sure, there is an element of truth to it BUT if you want to achieve fast and sustainable results there is a better way.
Fat loss is simple. It is simple, not easy. It does involve a deliberate effort - even if you understand the mechanisms of fat metabolism and fat mobilisation. Therefore I will emphasise from the start that the most important aspect in any fat loss plan is to adopt the fat loss mindset (more on that later).
The first aspect you need to understand is fat metabolism. Or more accurately metabolism.
Your metabolism is in essence how your body burns calories. It is your bodies total energy expenditure. This is the result of all the chemical reactions within your body. This includes the metabolic affects of functions such as breathing, digestion, heart beat, movement, etc.
To give you a dictionary definition ‘metabolism is a set of chemical reactions that occur within the body to maintain life.’
The sum of all these chemical reactions within the body equals metabolic rate.
Quite simply the metabolism or metabolic rate is how much energy (or calories) you burn on a single day.
You NEED to understand that a large percentage of total metabolism (60-70%) is derived from your resting metabolic rate. This is the percentage required to maintain basic function WITHOUT ACTIVITY. So simply put, if you stayed in bed all day and didn’t move (it does happen!) this is your bodies resting metabolic rate. Just to remind you this accounts for 60-70% of your total metabolism. When explained like this you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see why this is important, that being said we will revisit this in a moment to explain why this is relevant. Just to remind you your resting metabolic rate equates for 60-70% of total calorie expenditure.
It is estimated that a measly 20-30% metabolism is activity induced (exercise and movement). Many people will have heard me expose the inadequacy of slow steady cardiovascular exercise for fat burning and understanding how the body burns calories, understanding this aspect of the fat loss process and understanding metabolism highlights exactly why.
If we take a step back, a large contributor to metabolism is resting metabolic rate. Included in this is muscle. Muscle is perhaps the most metabolically active tissue that we can directly affect. Even at rest muscle is metabolically active. Building muscle (I’m NOT talking about body building and doing this will NOT make you bulky girls!!) will increase your resting metabolic rate giving you the ability to burn more calories at rest (without moving!!)
Slow and steady cardio will have a moderate metabolic affect in the short term (i.e. While you do it...) however does not build muscle and will not have a large metabolic effect in the long term. Therefore not only is cardiovascular training slow, boring and have a high incidence of injury (ankle, knee, hip and lower back pain), it is not the most efficient method of fat loss.
For a faster more sustainable way to lose fat, building muscle is the way to go. And I’m sorry guys this doesn’t involve doing 10 repetitions on the bench press and then spending 10 minutes looking at yourself in the mirror! I will elaborate on a better way for both guys and girls to build muscle later in this piece.
The remaining 10% of fat metabolism is dietary induced. Certain foods have a thermic effect and this can have a metabolic demand.
The Thermic Effect of Food (TEF) can vary. For example fat has a very low TEF meaning it doesn’t have a high energy cost to the body to process and store for use. On the other hand protein does and so we could also can also carefully manipulate macronutrients to stimulate fat loss.
Just to remind you, metabolism is the sum of your resting metabolic rate (60-70%), activity induced (20-30%) and dietary induced (10%).
The way most people go about this from this point is to work out there resting metabolic rate and only consume that amount of calories using the any activity and dietary induced energy expenditure to create a energy deficit. This will stimulate weight loss.
Creating an energy deficit to some degree is important for fat loss. We’ve all heard the eat less, move more mantra. However, if you consume too few calories to support basic function, over time, the chemical reactions within the body slow down meaning a slower resting metabolic rate.
In fact, following a reduced calorie diet for an extended period of time can mean your body stops using fat for fuel and starts to use muscle. Of course muscle is a metabolically active tissue and so any reduction in muscle is a bad thing.
If you are reading this and have spent years going from diet to diet and now ‘struggle’ to lose weight consider - perhaps the restricted calorie diet you have followed (sometimes they call it points, red days, green days... It all amounts to the same thing!) might now contribute to your weight loss challenge. You might actually have a sluggish metabolism due to eating less.
Therefore the answer should be clear. Increasing activity levels, increasing muscle and as a consequence increasing resting metabolic rate is the way to go. Calorie counting and slow steady aerobic exercise are not!
Understanding fat metabolism - the way your body burns calories - leads to a far greater understanding of the fat loss process. From this we can create a truly integrated approach to fat loss that includes both exercise and nutrition. One that lends itself to developing or at least maintaing muscle, a metabolically active tissue that will increase our resting metabolic rate and make us look ‘hot’ and ‘toned’.
So you can understand why developing muscle is important to the fat loss process, right?
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