Healthy Weight Loss

Original Article @ Lose Weight USA

Healthy Weight Loss
Burning Fat

Have you ever wondered how your body actually burns fat?

Years ago a popular health magazine decided to try to answer that same question with a novel approach. They looked at how people actually gain weight, reasoning that if we knew all the "tricks" to gaining weight, we could reverse engineer for healthy weight loss wanted to stay lean.

They followed around a bunch of Sumo wrestlers whose job requires them to maintain enormous stores of body fat. So whatever it is they were doing, that's exactly what we shouldn't do.

Now, Sumo wrestlers gain weight for a number of reasons, and genetics certainly plays a role, but what they did eating- wise is the thing we want to pay attention to because it's ultimately going to teach us something about how to burn fat.

Here's what the Sumo guys did. They worked out a bit. They lazed around. They worked out some more. They took a nap. And then, at the end of the day, they ate their one meal, a veritable Roman orgy of food that would make the buffet at the Bellagio in Vegas seem skimpy.

Shortly after this multi-thousand calorie feast, they'd go to bed for the night.

Lessons to be learned for healthy weight loss

One reason this "technique" is so effective for weight gain is that it mobilizes every fat-storing mechanism we have in our body (I'll explain how in a moment).

The main point here is that if you want to burn fat instead of store it, you have to learn how to turn off your fat-storing mechanisms, and instead turn on what you could call your"fat- burning switch".

Needless to say, the fat-burning switch on a Sumo wrestler doesn't get much "on" time.

So here's the biochemistry behind the Sumos' weight gain.

When you eat a big meal--which is inevitably loaded with carbohydrates--it sends your blood sugar soaring. The body immediately releases a hormone (insulin) whose job it is to wrangle that sugar and get it out of the bloodstream where-- if it were to stay elevated for very long and if that were to happen frequently--it would do some serious damage.

Insulin escorts sugar into the cells. When the muscle cells don't need it, it goes into the fat cells. No wonder insulin is also known as "the fat-storing hormone."

Insulin does its work with the help of an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase (LPL), which is kind of like the "fat-storing enzyme". LPL takes triglycerides from the bloodstream, cleaves them into smaller parts (called fatty acids), and then promptly helps store these fatty acids in your fat cells.

In the Sumo scenario, there are plenty of triglycerides to break up and store, because he just ate a high-carb meal which not only increases triglycerides but also drives insulin levels up.

It gets worse. Once insulin is riding the seas of the bloodstream, it effectively locks the doors to the fat cells. They won't open up and release their bounty (that is, you won't"burn" fat) until insulin levels come back down. Of course the more you continue to eat that same high-carb diet, the less your insulin levels go down.

That's the (very oversimplified) biochemistry, and it works that way whether you're an audience member of the Ellen show or you're a professional Sumo wrestler.

How do you burn your fat fat?

You do the exact opposite of everything above, and here's why.

Insulin has a sister hormone, and its name is glucagon and it's probably something you've never heard of before, but it's a critical component of your fat burning biochemistry.

When blood sugar is low, and you need more energy and food isn't available, glucagon is secreted. Its purpose is the exact opposite of insulin's. Glucagon goes into the cells and causes fat to be released. And it does so with the help of a "fat-burning" enzyme called HSL or hormone-sensitive lipase.

Much like glucagon is the opposite of insulin, HSL is the opposite of LPL, the fat-storingenzyme we spoke of earlier. HSL breaks down triglycerides into fatty acids and glycerol so as they travel around the bloodstream, they can be burned for energy or excreted. This glucagon-HSL axis is what I call the "fat-burning" switch.

Working backwards, we can see the obvious: Fat burning (and weight loss) won't take place unless the fat-burning switch (glucagon/ HSL) is turned on. The fat-burning switch is in the "off" position as long as insulin levels are high. Insulin levels are high whenever blood sugar is high, and blood sugar is typically high in response to high-carbohydrate meals.

Hence the solution to the problem of"how to burn fat" is pretty simple. Keep blood sugar in a nice, moderate range where it won't trigger excess insulin. By keeping blood sugar (and insulin) down, you allow glucagon/HSL--the"fat-burning" switch--to do its magic.

If you want to trigger your fat-burning switch, you have to learn to eat in a way that won't trigger excess insulin. Fortunately, that isn't that hard to do.

A diet composed mainly of food you can hunt, fish, gather or pluck.

David Ogden
Healthy Weight Loss
Phone 386 308 1956 after 6PM EST

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