People are spending billions trying to get rid of their old enemy: FAT. But there is no short cut, pill or diet that can do it alone.

Fat is nature's fuel. It is stored because the energy is not being used. The body will use that stored fat as soon as it's needed for FUEL.

Therefore, any weight-loss program that does not include aerobic exercise (like, uh, cycling) is a magic show. The enemy will always come back until the body is trained to use that fuel.

The main customer of FAT FUEL is the muscles. Muscles use glucose, but also use fat. In fact, when muscles are inactive, such as in sleep, they use almost nothing else but fat for energy.

I can't help but wonder why people don't realize that their bodies are supposed to be storing fat. Their bodies are programmed to
store fat because it's a potent fuel to feed muscles.

The problem in these modern times is, muscles aren't used.

i know exactly what you mean... all the 'newest' diet fads...

i'm currently reminded daily by this whole issue b/c my girlfriend - who is not at all fat but actually quite thin (something like 5'10" 139lbs) - but she won't believe me - another issue of advertising or whatever. anyhow, she is convinced that she must loose weight and has been dieting on and off for a few months now. She's now made a 'firm committment' to losing weight which means all kinds of crazy eating restrictions (i'm also required to leave the room if i eat late at night soas not to tempt her (i eat a lot since i ride 150-300km per week plus my other sports) but she makes comparitively very little effort for exercise - she does some aerobics and uses hand-weights a little and then cycles occaisonally in the evening and jogs once a week. plus she buys into this whole bogus 'fat-burning' zone idea that if your goal is to loose fat you should only do low-intensity exercise because you 'burn more fat'... yes, you burn a higher PERCENTAGE of fat at low-intensity, but at a higher intensity you burn a slightly lower percentage of FAR MORE CALORIES (percent x rate = amount per time), so more FAT per unit time... -- i've confirmed this one with a few trainers and a few articles and some research, but it's in one of her 'fitness' magazines so it must be true! (with no references as to the source)

i've mentioned cycle-commuting a few times (we work at the same office 10km away and we have showers here and i have offered to ride slowly/leisurely with her) but she says she views bike-commuting or 'exercise' as stressful which she doesn't want at the beginning of a work day... i must say i'm floored by that since my bike-commute is my STRESS-RELEASE for before and after work... maybe we bike-commuters are really misfits or something, but do a lot of people really view the idea of bike-commuting as stressful and too much work?? (i mean if they had the time and it were safe and it didn't rain, would they still not commute by bike?)

it's also annoying (sorry i'm ranting her) b/c her goal is not to be fit or be healthy, but merely to have less fat so she looks better which i just don't get. if you work and make yourself more fit and the byproduct is you look better, then cool... anyway, i say very little to her about the whole subject and hope maybe she'll figure it out on her own (she's very hard-headed and if i attempted to tell her what to do it would not work) but i offer any info if asked, of course

but again back to the original question, why is it so hard for people to understand that while both diet and exercise are important to loosing fat and weight, focusing on exercise is the easier way (and dieting alone rarely works)???

Seriously, this sounds like an eating disorder. Anorexia?

fat is an essential component of our body (machines) and any diet that curbs one major machine requirement (see adkins diet) is trouble. if you eat no fats at all, your body (liver) will produce it itself. and once you get that engine turned on, it is tough to turn off.
people violently shift their fuel sources during these diets and their bodies revolt. all you need to do is curb 250 calories (snickers bar?!) out of the diet and shift your potential energy to kinetic energy (thats fancy talk for getting off the sofa) to the tune of 250 calories and you have a 500/day calorie deficit. that translates into 1 lb every 10 days to 2 weeks or so.
you have to burn off what you take in.
besides, we should always be looking at inches, not pounds.

There was actually a woman on television promoting a new weight-loss program of hers. I have to say, it certainly was unique!

As far as I could tell, it involved, "breathing." I'm not sure exactly how, but by "breathing" on could lose ALL those unwanted pounds.

I didn't buy it. Even if there was some merit to "oxygenating the blood" or something, that would best be handled by exercising...

("BREATHING???!")

Oh I get it, you do some form of excercize (like biking),
to a point where you are "gasping" for breath. At
this point in time you stop excercizing and all you do
is breath to gain the benefit. . .
Marty

Fat is fuel yes. But unfortunatly it is the last thing to be burned as energy after all of your glucose and protein are gone. From what I understand the glucose is burned first, then protein then fat. Depending on how hard you are exercising, or in our case riding, determines how fast your glucose and protein stores are burned up. Glucose usually only lasts about 20 min to half an hour, protein I think is up to 1.5 hrs, not sure though. Well if your ride is only 1 to 2 hrs long you are not going to burn much fat during your ride. But after your ride your "fat burning engine" stays turned on for a while and you do burn the fat that way.

Fat is used all the time: before, during and after exercise. It's used most during exercise. There is no "waiting period" for glucose to be used first before fat is used.

However, once glycogen stores are exhausted, the body turns to fat and protein exclusively to fuel itself, at the expense of muscle tissue. This is an emergency response similar to starvation.

It's also another reason not to run out of carbs.

It's amazing that people can't figure that out. CNN had a big "news" story last week about people who lost large amounts of weight and kept it off. The bottom line for all of them was portion control and EXERCISE. CNN made this seem like some incredible revelation.

ack, i think you really misunderstand fat. The fact about these modern times is that fat isn't needed as much as it was by our ancestors. Fat was nature's way of preparing our bodies for periods of time when we might run out of food. Our bodies would kick into low metabolism gear, and start using fat. When muscles are inactive, they actually use... NOTHING for energy. Well, a tiny bit of glucose to keep the cells fed and happy, but DEFINITLY not fat. Fat is "precious" to our cells... kinda like candy that you only get to eat once a year on special occasions... like centuries and marathons ... and sleeping is not a "special occasion". Fat is used when our glucose stores have been depleted. Though fat is the most energy packed fuel our body has (energy per weight), it does not metabolize it (produce as much energy) as well as it does glucose.

Given that we live in a culture of abundance, it is a luxury to have lean, toned bodies. Definitely too low fat is a really bad thing, but because most of us will never need to worry about having to go more than a day without food, extra fat is unnecessary, and alot of us think it's an encumberance. Since most of us can eat whatever we want, whenever we want, there really is no need for alot of fat, definitely not the kind of need that hunting/gathering societies would have needed. Back then having fat bodies was a luxury, cuz it meant when bad times came, you were more likely to survive than the ones who weren't as successful in finding food.

www.tri-ecoach.com/art3.htm

ah ok.. yes that makes alot of sense. you didn't make that clear in your first post.

i should have prefixed my post by saying that people who live a SEDENTARY lifestyle consume less calories than an endurance athlete in tip-top shape. Their metabolisms are really low, so they don't need the extra reserve capacity provided by body fat. The last thing we should be telling lazy people is that they need to get fatter to stay healthy. THAT was the point i was trying to get across. If you don't exercise and you want to lose weight, then getting rid of fat is a good thing.

HOWEVER, an athlete in top shape has a very high metabolism. Even when resting they are consuming alot of calories. Their bodies have alot of muscle, and these muscles are EXPENSIVE in terms of energy consumption. That's why our bodies "use it or lose it"... cuz if you don't use it, you just have these muscles that are eating up all your body fuel, and making you eat more to keep them happy. On top of that, an endurance athlete will exceed his glucose and glycogen stores alot sooner than they stop running/biking/etc. This is why they would need to fatten up a little before a race. This is also the reason why people eat energy gels and bars while exercising, cuz it keeps the body from having to tap into the "precious" fat, once again.

Weight loss is a tricky thing.

People vary in metabolisms. When some people go on calorie restricted diet, their body thinks that this is the big famine and just scales down its metabolic rate to avoid starving to death. The result is very slow weight loss. Also when many people diet, they lose as many lbs of muscle as lbs of fat and that is a bit counter productive.

If you try to lose weight by doing routine aerobic exercise, eat a healthy diet (avoid lots of fats and sugars), and do reasonable portion control. What you often achieve, is fat loss without muscle loss. That is a good thing. Another nice thing about exercising is it gives you another area to improve in. Weight loss can be frustrating because one can go weeks without any progress. If you exercise, you will almost always have some perfomance improvement to look at.

I'm a kinesiolgy student who just finished an exercise physiology course and is currently taking a writing class where I am writing a 6 page paper comparing the Atkins diet to a conventional diet. The point about fat being used at rest is correct. There is the so called crossover concept which shows substrate usage during exercise. At low intensities or rest fat is the primary fuel while carbohydrate is a low percentage of fuel usage. At about 70% of VO2max there is a crossover where carbohydrate becomes the primary fuel source and fat a minor source. The interesting thing about this is that endurance training pushes the crossover higher so an elite endurance athlete may still be using mostly fat at 80% of VO2max. One more thing about fat metabolism, if anyone is trying to get rid of stomach flab by doing sit ups don't bother. the mobilization of triglycerides from adipose tissue is hormonally regulated. This means that during exercise a hormone is released into your blood which breaks down fat all over your body, not just at the site of working muscle.
Sorry this got a bit long but I find this stuff really interesting and may end up doing grad work in this field.
Scott

I cite page 135
Calories Don't Count by Dr Herman Taller MD

a gram of carbohydrate or of protein provides you with four calories, while a gram of fat provides you with nine calories

limit your total carbohydrate intake to a maximum of 60 grams per day

you should then eat approximately 325 grams of fat ( of which 215 grams should be of the unsaturated kind) and one gram protein per kilogram of bodyweight,




grams x 0.03527 = ounces
ounces x 437.5 = grams