When Do Calories No Longer Need To Be Counted?

     Calories do count! If you consume more than you burn, the excess has to go somewhere, and that means your body will store it as fat, or will it? Body chemistry is very complex and quite mysterious. Researchers at Penn State and Duke Universities have shown that the metabolic process can be altered in many ways, including diet and exercise, but also by factors like how often we eat, what we eat, natural hormone production, blood sugar variations and insulin spikes.

Studying people who are diabetic or who have developed type 2 diabetes later in life, has revealed the influence that insulin production has on the storage of fat in the body. Insulin spikes promote the storage of fat! When we eat the "normal" three square meals a day, our blood sugar (glucose) rises sharply with each meal. That, in turn, prompts the body to produce more insulin to lower the glucose level in our system. One way the body accommodates the process is to burn it off as fuel, and the alternative method is to store it as fat. The more insulin we have in our system, the more we promote the storage process.

If you are trying to lose weight, you do not want to experience insulin spikes that promote the storage of fat. The way to avoid them is to keep your blood sugar level on an even keel, no huge fluctuations allowed. You can do this by having five or six, evenly spaced, meals or snacks a day, and choose foods that promote the burning of fat. Raw nuts, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, flax, string cheese, avocados, carob and dark chocolate all make good snacks. Skinless chicken, shrimp, fish, egg whites, lean beef and monounsaturated fats make good entrees and promote the burning of fat.

Increasing your metabolism means increasing the efficiency of your body's process of converting food to energy. The more efficient this process becomes, the more fat you will burn and the faster you will lose weight. You start improving efficiency by first increasing your demand for energy. Exercise is the key.

Clinical studies have proven that there is a phenomenon known as "muscle memory", whereby muscles adapt to repetitive motions and find the easiest way to perform them. What this means is that when you first start exercising using a piece of exercise equipment like a treadmill, stair climber, elliptical or rowing machine, you will burn calories at a comparatively high rate for the entire session. The more you use the equipment, the more your muscles will adapt to the repetitive movements and will be able to perform them with less and less effort. This translates to diminishing returns over a period of time because you will burn fewer and fewer calories as your muscles adapt to the movement.

The secret of getting the most out of your exercise efforts and increasing your metabolism is constant variety of motion! Take a walk over uneven terrain, up hill and down hill, up stairs and down stairs, walk backwards for a block, shadow box, skip, swing your arms, do a few squats, stretch, jump rope, shoot some hoops, do some isometrics, go for a swim, just keep mixing it up and keep on moving!

Once you have taken steps to increase your metabolism, stabilize your blood glucose and get off the couch and out and about, you can fine tune your diet. Remember, you want to favor foods that promote fat burning and block fat adsorption. You want to avoid estrogen, it promotes the depositing of fat in body cells by converting androgen (natural fat adsorption blocker) to estrogen.

When you reach the point that your lifestyle promotes metabolic efficiency, stabilizes blood glucose, discourages the storage of fat and promotes fat burning, calories will be of little importance!

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