I know this seems so simple: eat less = lose weight. Unfortunately it's not that simple, our bodies are fascinating and work ingeniously. That said, here goes my attempt at making something complicated simple: the way our body handles and burns calories.
*BMR is very important-keep that in mind throughout this explanation. Meaning that your body needs a certain amount of calories to sustain basal metabolic functions (ie. Breathing, circulation, brain functionality, digestion etc.).
The order in which we metabolize:
a) first we burn off glucose (calories)
b) then we burn off glycogen (stored glucose/stored calories)
c) lastly we burn off lipids (stored fat)
Remember my favorite cell the MITOCHONDRIA? That's the "power house" that makes adenosine triphosphate(ATP). ATP is Energy. The more mitochondria we have, the more energy or ATP we have. So how do we get more energy? This is what's so crazy.-Guess where the mitochondria is located-the MUSCLE!! Thus the more muscle we have the more "power houses" we have to burn calories that in turn create energy and ultimately burn fat and lost weight.
More muscle = more mitochondria = more fat burning action!
I've had quite a few clients lately that are frustrated with their weight loss endeavors. We all know that losing weight isn't at all easy-it's incredibly tough, time-consuming work (if you do it right). Saying "no" to yourself all day with food and working out vigorously isn't an easy task 365 days a year. Here's one more explanation about calories and metabolism that should clear up any confusion.
The Every Day Issue
Life gets in the way of life. The demanding jobs we have and busy world we live leaves little room for eating meals. Usually in our daily lives we only have time for are the three basic meals: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This, however, leads to an unseen problem…
Let’s take for example the average times we eat lunch and dinner. A common lunch time is between 12 to 1 o’clock. Then we go back to work and don’t see dinner until around 6 or 7 o’clock. What wrong with this? That’s up to 6 hours without an ounce of food! Sure, we might not get all that hungry, because we know that once we get home, we will eat. Our bodies, on the other hand, do not grasp this concept. The body’s internal checks and balances system recognizes that it has not eating for over 5 hours. It then begins to worry for its survival because it does not know when the next meal is coming. Although you know that food is readily available and that you can eat whenever you need to, you’re body’s metabolism thinks it’s starving and therefore begins to take action to ensure its own survival. So what happens now? The body actually SLOWS DOWN ITS OWN METABOLISM to compensate for the lack of calories. That’s right, you’re body will store energy and fat when you don’t eat enough. So imagine what happens when you don’t eat breakfast! That could be over 12 hours without food! Now we can understand the importance of eating breakfast to speed up our metabolism.
To reverse this fat storing process, we need to ensure that we eat frequently and turn our metabolism into a fueling system. When the body sees that it is getting adequate nutrition, it realizes that it does not to hold on to those calories and burns them as fuel!
So work diligently to eat often and fuel your body's metabolism often so it stays fired up!
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