Fat Burning Or Fat Storage You Have Hormones To Do Both

How Fat Loss Happens

What you need is a basic understanding of how fat loss happens in your body. Learn the basics and you can in a safe and healthy way reach your fat loss goals.

The overweight and obesity problem in this country is running rampant, one problem in dealing with it is lies and misinformation. The internet is full of the latest and greatest fad diets and quickie weight loss (garbage) products.

Fat loss is a hormonal event, the right hormones telling your body to release the stored energy in the fat cells to burn it off. It is important to know there are also fat storing hormones that tell the body to store energy into these cells. The body uses these hormones through many different stimulus like food, drink, exercise, stress and sleep.

Fat cells are the body's emergency storage tanks. These cells are a built-in survival mechanism that is getting all the wrong signals today. The body wasn't designed around constant intake of processed foods, especially the high sugar variety.

Fat loss occurs when oxygen is present, known as aerobic (with oxygen) The other stage is called anaerobic (without oxygen). Anaerobic training is also known more commonly as strength training.

Exercise can be confusing. Most people think that by doing aerobics you burn all the fat you want. Well if that was true we would all have single digit body fat levels from the 1980's aerobics craze.

You have the ability to burn fat all day! The only thing left is the hormones and are they emptying or storing.

Empty Your Stores!

The Fat loss hormones are insulin, glucagon, and growth hormone (GH). Insulin is a fat storing hormone, while glucagon and GH are fat burning hormones. If insulin is high, the other hormones go down. Another hormone called cortisol (stress hormone) is a muscle breakdown hormone not something we want.

Maximize the fat burning hormones and minimize the muscle breakdown/fat storing hormones (not all muscle breakdown is bad, you need to break down and rebuild the cells it's when you have excessive breakdown and minimal rebuilding that will lead to muscle loss).

Everything You Eat Or Drink Counts!

Why is sugar bad? Sugar is quickly absorbed into the blood which causes a spike in your blood sugar and with that spike the body releases insulin to take care of it. Every time you put sugar into your mouth your telling your body let's store some fat and that is exactly the hormonal signal you are giving it. Remember also when insulin is high, glucagon and GH go down.

To Burn Fat:

Minimize insulin levels thoughout the day (no high levels/spikes except during the post workout window when the insulin sensitivity is maximum, it goes into muscle not fat)

Maximize Glucagon (which is directly inversely proportional to insulin levels)

Maximum GH (which is controlled by insulin, exercise response and sleep)

Keep Cortisol in check (you will have some, but excessive will lead to muscle loss)

For Insulin control (and max Glucagon response):

Keep levels low by not eating sugar or foods that quickly break down into the bloodstream (any processed foods)

Have protein with every meal (slows the digestion of sugar). Also protein stimulates the release of glucagon.

Improve insulin sensitivity with glycogen draining exercise (weight training) which will reduce your insulin resistance (which is one of the biggest reasons for obesity and a serious increase of risks for many other diseases including heart disease, cancers, diabetes, accelerated aging and more!)

For Max Growth Hormone Response:

Keep your insulin levels low (no big meals or sugar 2-3 hours before bed). Get your sleep, shorting yourself of sleep will hurt your efforts and may lead to weight gain from improper hormonal responses.

Exercise with Intensity, whether weight training with short rest periods or doing interval training. Short burst of anaerobic intense exercis will signal the body to release GH. Long aerobic activities (jogging, etc) will NOT. (look at the body of a sprinter vs the marathon runner the sprinter has more muscle and very low bf%, the marathon runner has little muscle and a higher bf% even if they look smaller).

Exercising in a fasted state has also shown to increase GH levels (make sure you have enough energy to get through your workout, have a small meal 1-2 hours before).

Minimize excessive Cortisol:

Keep strength training under 45min and interval training under 25min (increase the intensity, not the duration). Anything longer will just start using muscle as fuel.

Relax, don't stress the small stuff. Get perspective decide what's really important.

Master these small steps, and you will see tremendous changes. Remember that fat loss is an all day event! So eat and live your life that way! Don't worry about how many calories you burn doing something. Worry about what you eat all day and how your hormones are going to react to it. Eat the foods your body was meant to eat, live an active lifestyle and you will look and feel great and be healthier.

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