If you're looking to burn fat to use it as fuel, see how to do it. Diet and activity recommendations

In order to burn fat, if that is your wish or need, you should know some facts first:

You have your fat depots mainly in muscles, breasts, the insulating fat layer under the skin, and others. Tryglicerides that you eat are taken to those depots by Low Density Lipoproteins (better known as LDL), which may also contain cholesterol, phospholipids, and protein.

Let's say you were very active and your body starts running out of fuel available from food (basically glucose and glycogen), so then your body begins to retrieve the stored fat for energy.

How is this possible to happen?

Well, your fat cells respond to the call for fuel by cutting fat molecules into smaller fractions and then releasing fat components into the blood. Upon receiving this components, the cells that are striving for energy break them down further.

In the end, each fat fragment is combined with a fragment that derives from glucose, and the energy releasing process can go on, liberating energy, carbon dioxide and water. Great!, How nice is biochemistry!

How can you use your stored fat for energy?

How to burn fat? The answer looks simple now: You should create a demand for energy in your body, and you do this by decreasing intake of food energy, by increasing how much energy the body uses, or both options.

But be aware. In order to avoid formation of ketone bodies production (incomplete fat breakdown products), which are dangerous for your health, carbohydrates must be available always.

Without them, ketosis will occur and ketones will appear in the bloodstream and urine. This process and its consequences are important in weight control.

Sometimes excessive glucose can also be transformed in fatty acids, but they are not efficient for energy. Before glucose can be stored as fat, it must first be broken into small fragments and then reassembled (and this process will require energy too).

When burning fat, you body goes through fewer chemical steps before storage and the body will always store more calories from fat than from carbohydrate.

So in conclusion, if you eat a high fat diet, it is more probable that you gain weight from it than on eating the same number of carbohydrate calories.

Understand the process of ketosis and why it is dangerous if your looking for weight control

If you want to produce more energy from fat and you're performing an activity, what is recommended to eat??

Sometimes athletes eat fat rich diets with little carbohydrates in order to burn fat during activity, but this with frequency sacrifices endurance. Instead, if the athlete eats a high carbohydrate diet, endurance can be longer.

Though, research suggests that medium and high fat diets may have some benefit when looking for ultra endurance performance, there are higher risks for the heart and cardiovascular system. So, most nutrition experts agree that high fat diets may be and unwise decision.

Sports nutrition experts recommend that endurance athletes consume 20-30% of their energy from fat.

Pretty soon during activity, the muscles draw fatty acids from two sources: fats stored within the working muscles and fats from deposits such as the fat under the skin. Obviously if you have more fat in some areas, your body will take more from them, though, this may not be the ones you want to loose fat from.

Can activity and duration affect the way we use energy?

The answer will be a perfect yes! Not only it affects fat, but also the percentage of energy that is being produced by it.

One important point is, that in order to produce energy, the activity must be aerobic, but when it is so intense and lasts longer than your available fuels, your body starts working in anaerobic metabolism and no more fat will be burned. What a shame!

The duration of the activity matters too. When you've started the exercise, the blood fatty acid concentration falls, then some minutes later, norepinephrine (a neurotransmitter) signals the fat cells and tryglicerides start to break and release fatty acids into the blood.

At twenty minutes the bloodstream has more fatty acids and only after this first 20 minutes fat cells will begin to shrink in size as they begin to empty. This is some of the reasons why an aerobic activity performed for weight control must last no less than 20 minutes.

How degree of training affects fat use?

If you repeteadly perform an aerobic activity, you will stimulate your muscles to develop more fat-burning enzymes. So, if you train more, you burn more fat.

There are some other benefits. Aerobic training will make your heart and lungs stronger and more able to deliver oxygen which obviously will allow more energy coming from fat. You will also see your basal metabolic rate (BMR) increase. Want more???

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