Originally Posted by
BlazingPedals
We all 'burn' a little bit of fat along with the glycogen our muscles use. If you're talking about a low-carb diet to 'force' fat-burning, then it doesn't work the way you think it does. First, low carb causes you to lose water weight. Water weight may look like any other weight to the bathroom scale, but it's Good Weight if you're exercising. Lack of it means you're dehydrated. Secondly, while most of us have large reserves of energy via our body fat, it's not quickly accessible; meaning that it can only provide a trickle of energy compared to carbs. Muscles don't burn fat directly, your body has to convert it, which is an inefficient process at best. You cannot retrain your body's chemistry to do it more efficiently; you can only train it to 'get used to' the effects. When we're reduced to using only fat as fuel, it's called "bonk." Low-carb leaves your muscles depleted of glycogen, less able to sustain prolonged use, and makes recovery much slower.
The best way to lose weight is still to eat less. Don't be afraid of eating carbs; but make sure the ones you eat are complex and 'nutrient-dense.' Or, to put it another way, avoid sugar and if you want to weigh 150 pounds, eat like a 150-pound person.
Actually, beta-oxidation, the process by which fatty acids are broken down into acetyl-Co-A which then enters the TCA cycle, takes place in the mitochondria and muscle cells most certainly have these organelles. Anyone remember Greg LeMond? In fact, the more aerobic training you do, the more mitochondria your muscle cells will have. Further, if you train hard under hypoglycemic conditions and avoid large releases of insulin, you can induce higher levels of the enzymes involved in beta-oxidation.
This stuff is old news. (Interestingly enough, some of the best work was done on collegiate cyclists.) Much of it was well worked out when I was an undergraduate studying biochemistry. Better yet, the results were predicted based on assumptions of early pre-human lifestyles.
We now return to the snake-oil.