Understanding the Fat Burning Process, and Why it's So Difficult
In reality, everything in fitness that personal trainers, weight loss specialists, and everyone in between is working off of when building diet and or exercise plans to lose weight or build muscle can be broken down very simply into one absolute formula:
Weight Loss = Calories burned > Calories consumed. Weight Gain = Calories Consumed > Calories burned. That’s it. End of Story.
Weight Loss = Calories burned > Calories consumed. Weight Gain = Calories Consumed > Calories burned. That’s it. End of Story.
Whatever excuses you may have for not being able to gain or lose weight all come down to that. If you are gaining weight, you are eating more calories that you are burning. It is as simple as that. Everything in fitness, be it weight loss or gain revolves around that simple statement - If you eat more calories than you burn, you will gain weight. If you burn more calories than you consume then you will lose weight
There are VERY few medical conditions that truly prevent you from loosing weight, of which only 1-5% of the population have.
More often than not, medical conditions that people think prevent them from losing weight are due to side effects of the condition - or medications taken for it - which slow their metabolism. This just equates to having to increase the caloric deficit, and increase your Basal Metabolic rate through increasing your LBM.
From this baseline concept, we work towards learning how to utilize this process to accomplish the goals we want. The first concept we need to cover is in relation to a question many have, which is “why is it so hard to burn fat in the first place?” You would think that since our bodies naturally tend to do what is best for us, it would use fat for energy whenever it had the opportunity.
Technically, this is correct, in our modern way of thinking, but in order to understand why your body clings on to fat like a child to their mom, you have to have you have to realize that we are looking at fat from our modern perspective, which our primal biology hasn't yet caught up with.
From this baseline concept, we work towards learning how to utilize this process to accomplish the goals we want. The first concept we need to cover is in relation to a question many have, which is “why is it so hard to burn fat in the first place?” You would think that since our bodies naturally tend to do what is best for us, it would use fat for energy whenever it had the opportunity.
Technically, this is correct, in our modern way of thinking, but in order to understand why your body clings on to fat like a child to their mom, you have to have you have to realize that we are looking at fat from our modern perspective, which our primal biology hasn't yet caught up with.
Our bodies have evolved over thousands of years for survival while we existed as hunter-gatherers.
Our Bodies are built to adapt in order to allow for survival in environments where everything had to be done by hand and on foot.
We had to hunt for all of our food, and prepare for, and in some cases travel with; the seasons - within which various dangers existed including food scarcity and harsh weather were very real and even probable possibilities.
Compare that to modern society: Many of us sit all day for work, or stand in one place. We no longer even have to prepare our own food, let alone hunt or search for it. We have cars or public transportation, so very few of us have to walk more than a few hundred feet per day, and much of the general public’s entertainment involves us watching others either recorded; such as movies or TV, or live; such as sports - perform activities themselves.
This doesn't even cover the way we have drastically shifted our sleeping patterns or the actual quality and variety of the food we eat - which is predominantly processed - compared to our evolutionary diet of eating in the season with whatever the land provided.
In order to make the changes we want, we must look at the activities we perform in our modern society from the bodies evolutionary perspective.
Compare that to modern society: Many of us sit all day for work, or stand in one place. We no longer even have to prepare our own food, let alone hunt or search for it. We have cars or public transportation, so very few of us have to walk more than a few hundred feet per day, and much of the general public’s entertainment involves us watching others either recorded; such as movies or TV, or live; such as sports - perform activities themselves.
This doesn't even cover the way we have drastically shifted our sleeping patterns or the actual quality and variety of the food we eat - which is predominantly processed - compared to our evolutionary diet of eating in the season with whatever the land provided.
In order to make the changes we want, we must look at the activities we perform in our modern society from the bodies evolutionary perspective.
Looking at fat from this perspective, to your body - fat is like gold.
This is because fat produces more energy than any other source including carbs, proteins, or fibers. In fact, fat provides slightly over twice the calories of your body's preferred energy source, carbs which provide 4 calories per gram, versus fat coming in at 9 calories per gram.
Since your body is still in hunter-gatherer mode and is always preparing for a worst-case scenario - such as food scarcity - any excess fat, carbs, lipids, etc. you take in that your body doesn't need for another metabolic process will be stored as fat.
Since your body is still in hunter-gatherer mode and is always preparing for a worst-case scenario - such as food scarcity - any excess fat, carbs, lipids, etc. you take in that your body doesn't need for another metabolic process will be stored as fat.
Think of it as your bodies emergency savings account.
Since fat is the most calorie rich nutrient it has, it uses it as a last resort, so if you have any other available energy source stocked up in its primary account, such as carbs and proteins, it will spend all of that prior to digging into its emergency savings.
This is the mechanism we are constantly fighting in our modern society and what we must learn to work with in order to achieve our goals. So, how do you convince your body to expend its precious fat stores?
This is the mechanism we are constantly fighting in our modern society and what we must learn to work with in order to achieve our goals. So, how do you convince your body to expend its precious fat stores?
You have to convince it that it is safe to do so.
This leads us into meal frequency. There are many different viewpoints on how frequently you should eat. You have probably heard that you should eat from 4-6 times a day to increase your metabolism, (which is b.s., by the way). There has also been some research introduced recently, causing some controversy stating that it is better to eat less frequently, even only twice a day, since doing so spikes protein synthesis to much higher levels than eating frequently.
In reality there are merits to eating more frequently,
In reality there are merits to eating more frequently,
however - the most important rule to follow is to eat consistently.
Only have time for two to three meals per day? Great. Just make sure the times and quantity remains consistent. Are you able to, or due to increased calorie requirements need to eat 5-6 meals a day. Great, same rules apply here.
After setting consistent meal times, convincing your body it is safe to burn fat for fuel, the next step in switching your body to fat shred mode is by creating a caloric deficit.
After setting consistent meal times, convincing your body it is safe to burn fat for fuel, the next step in switching your body to fat shred mode is by creating a caloric deficit.