Did you know that all fat is not created Equal? To understand the following Blog you will first need to know there are a few different types.
Part 1 - Types of fat
Subcutaneous fat ...This is the fat you don't like visually. It is the stuff that cellulite is made from. It is just below the skin and doesn't cause any real health issues unless you are at obese levels. It makes up 30% TO 40% of your total body fat in most people. However it is not visually appealing and it is what we want to get rid of. Really that is all you need to know about it other than women have more sub-q than men for the most part
Visceral Fat ....This is the fat that pushes your pot belly out...It is the most metabolically active fat in the body and it is the first thing lost when dieting ...and with good reason. It is associated with many serious health problems. Have you ever lost a few pounds and "Feel" thinner but looked in the mirror and still look basically the same??? In this case you probably lost visceral fat first. Keep it up you are on the right track. Here is a good illustration of visceral fat (and sub q) Males especially and the obese tend to have more visceral fat and also the health problems that go right along with it (Heart Disease, diabetes, insulin resistance , high blood pressure, Cancer etc) http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/the-risks-of-belly-fat
The Trade-off - Since most Women have more sub-q fat and less visceral they have less health problems in general associated with the visceral type .... However they have a harder time loosing the sub-q fat that goes along with it on their hips and thighs. I will explain why that is later in this blog. Most men can loose weight easier but are more prone to have visceral fat and the health problems that go along with it.
Essential Fat - This is the fat you have that pads your organs ...you couldn't get rid of it if you tried and wouldn't want to because if you did you would die. So don't worry about it. It makes up 3% of your body fat so if you hear some d-bag at the gym saying he is 3-4% body fat ...he is an idiot and he is wrong.
Brown Fat - This is really cool fat ...most babies have a lot of brown fat but as we get older we loose most of it."It is especially abundant in newborns and in hibernating mammals" It is the fat that burns fat in your body ...like a cellular furnace almost. One neat thing other than how it burns fat is it actually regulates your body temperature and many lumberjacks and people that have regular exposure to cold actually have more than the average person. Cold water therapy or cold therapy have been shown to increase brown fat and also fat loss. But you really don't need to know any more other than Brown fat is Cool....
If you do want to learn more Google it or read it on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_adipose_tissue
Part 2 - Fat Distribution and Gender
Every person has a genetic code that they are blessed with. Some people have more fat cells that are smaller (and can grow) others have less fat cells that are larger . Everyone is different. Now that being said every one also has different fat patterns but there are a few very common ones.
- Gynoid Body type
This is the typical "PEAR" shape that most women have. This type is more prone to subcutaneous fat storage and less Visceral Fat. Bad for physique goals but great for health reasons.
- Android Body type
The popularity of the phone company i think already shows you what this looks like
This is defiantly a male fat pattern however some post menopausal women can also develop android tendencies as well. That leads us to believe it is hormonal but it is past my level of expertise and for another blog maybe. Android's are more prone to disease because they develop more visceral fat and less sub-b and i explained earlier this is a bad thing.
Body types start to develop during puberty so hormones defiantly play a part but again for another blog and not important here.
Part 3 - Lipolysis and Fat Burning
How fat is burned is simple for the most part ...but at the same time very complex. Simple because when the body runs out of energy it turned to the body's natural energy store via fat. So to burn fat off your body you will need to eat a calorie deficit. One pound of fat can produce up to 3500 calories of energy and that is where you get the whole 1b of fat a week thing on -500 a day diet. If you would like to know more ..here you go
Now there are 3 steps to burning fat ...first the fat must be reached by the blood to "open" it so the fatty acids can be liberated ...second it must be carried away into the blood to be burned ...and finally it must be burned off and used for energy or it will be redistributed back into the cells. For most people the fat being burned is usually when not in a Fed state /overnight when the body runs out of what you have eaten for the day (remember a calorie deficit is needed or there will be plenty of newly distributed dietary fat and or carbs to live on and you previous fat stored will not need to be accessed) So if you are in a calorie deficit whenever your body needs energy it will start to jack up your stress hormones like Neoadrenaline and adrenaline and send it to your fat to be liberated.
Explained better than i can by Martin Berkhan
From Martin Berkhan
"After you eat, insulin and fatty acids are elevated. You are in the fed state and there's zero fat burning going on. Your body is relying completely on glucose oxidation during the hours following the meal.
One way of measuring this is via the respiratory quotient (RQ). An RQ of 1.0 denotes pure carbohydrate metabolism ("storage mode"), while 0.7 denotes pure fat metabolism. To put this into perspective, consider that RQ is 0.95-1.0 for about 1.5-2 hours after a meal, 0.82-0.85 after overnight fasting and 0.72-0.8 after 16 hours of fasting.
As the hours go by and the nutrients from the meal are done being absorbed, RQ drops in conjunction with insulin. There's a shift towards fat burning and mobilization of stored fat. This process is mediated by insulin and blood-borne fatty acids; when levels drop, an energy deficit is "sensed" and catecholamines (adrenaline and nordrenaline) increase.
The catecholamines travel through the blood and bind to receptors on fat cells. A receptor can be thought of as a "lock." Hormones and neurotransmitters are keys that fit into that lock and make something happen. In this case catecholamines trigger fat mobilization by activating hormone sensitive lipase (HSL), which then shuttles the fat out of the cell to be burned off.
Now here's the critical difference between regular fat and stubborn fat: regular fat have a lot of beta-2 receptors in proportion to alpha-2 receptors.
In The Stubborn Fat Solution Lyle McDonald used the analogy of b2-receptors being "accelerators" for fat loss and a2-receptors acting as "breaks" for fat loss. That's the easiest way to think of them without getting too deep into the physiology.
The ratio between b2-receptors and a2-receptors determines how easy it is to facilitate fat loss from one region of the body. "Easy" fat has a high ratio of b2-receptors to a2-receptors, while stubborn fat has a high ratio of a2-receptors to b2-receptors.
One notorious example that Lyle brings up in his book is that women have up to nine times (!) as many a2-receptors as b2-receptors in their hip and thigh fat. Though I can't recall if similar numbers are available for lower ab and lower back fat for men, you can be sure that the a2-receptors outnumber the b2-receptors in these areas as well."
One way of measuring this is via the respiratory quotient (RQ). An RQ of 1.0 denotes pure carbohydrate metabolism ("storage mode"), while 0.7 denotes pure fat metabolism. To put this into perspective, consider that RQ is 0.95-1.0 for about 1.5-2 hours after a meal, 0.82-0.85 after overnight fasting and 0.72-0.8 after 16 hours of fasting.
As the hours go by and the nutrients from the meal are done being absorbed, RQ drops in conjunction with insulin. There's a shift towards fat burning and mobilization of stored fat. This process is mediated by insulin and blood-borne fatty acids; when levels drop, an energy deficit is "sensed" and catecholamines (adrenaline and nordrenaline) increase.
The catecholamines travel through the blood and bind to receptors on fat cells. A receptor can be thought of as a "lock." Hormones and neurotransmitters are keys that fit into that lock and make something happen. In this case catecholamines trigger fat mobilization by activating hormone sensitive lipase (HSL), which then shuttles the fat out of the cell to be burned off.
Now here's the critical difference between regular fat and stubborn fat: regular fat have a lot of beta-2 receptors in proportion to alpha-2 receptors.
In The Stubborn Fat Solution Lyle McDonald used the analogy of b2-receptors being "accelerators" for fat loss and a2-receptors acting as "breaks" for fat loss. That's the easiest way to think of them without getting too deep into the physiology.
The ratio between b2-receptors and a2-receptors determines how easy it is to facilitate fat loss from one region of the body. "Easy" fat has a high ratio of b2-receptors to a2-receptors, while stubborn fat has a high ratio of a2-receptors to b2-receptors.
One notorious example that Lyle brings up in his book is that women have up to nine times (!) as many a2-receptors as b2-receptors in their hip and thigh fat. Though I can't recall if similar numbers are available for lower ab and lower back fat for men, you can be sure that the a2-receptors outnumber the b2-receptors in these areas as well."
Now there are many types of receptors that body fat cells have ....the two we are concerned with here are Alfa 2 and Beta 2 receptors . Males and females have different numbers of these in there body. Males have more B2 receptors and these are basically accelerators like martin said ...visceral fat is mostly B2 receptors and is very east to burn off. Sub-q fat that women have on their hips and thighs has as many as 9x the A2 receptors than viceral fat and that is why some unfortunate women have so much trouble loosing this fat and why when they do loose it...it is the very last thing to go... as well as the first to come back... Sorry ladies... sadly the blood flow to these areas is poor when trying to burn it and even worse blood flow increases to those areas when in an overfed state. Some VERY unfortunate Women can actually have fatty acids from other cells in the body (stomach arms etc) be liberated and go into the bloodstream and be re-distributed into the fat in the legs ...but this is rare. It isn't fair ..it is just the way it is.
Here is how Lyle Mcdonald explained it
"The most extreme example of this is lower body fat (hips and thighs), which have been found to have roughly 9 times as many alpha-2 receptors as beta-2 receptors. Some research suggests that men’s abdominal fat has higher alpha-2 receptor density (relative to say, visceral fat) although it’s not as bad as lower body fat. While not studied, lower back fat is likely to also be relatively resistant to lipolytic stimuli due to a greater alpha-2 receptor number.."
Part 4 - How do we use this information
Training -
DIET -
I recommend a very high protein diet. The carbs and fat are more of a personal choice and different bodies respond differently to either or. Most people reading this i am guessing a low carb with a "cheat day/carb refeed" would work better but on the other hand some people respond to high carb low fat diets just as well or better. Until you become very lean it doesn't really matter as long as you are eating less calories than you are burning a day. Now that being said the high protein diet will help with diet adherence and also help you feel fuller and will help preserve the muscle you have on a deficit.
So basically get your calorie goal ...set your protien to 1 gram per body weight so if you are 180lb lean body mass ... you need 180 grams of protien a day which is around 760 calories or so ...give or take ...now if you are trying to hit a 750 cal deficit that means your tdee is 2520 that means (2520-760) 1760 calories of yours can come from either fat or carbs ...you choose... when you get very lean these matter more but if you get to that point you either have become obsessive or your ready to have a coach.
Of course i also am a proponent of Fasting to some extent. It isn't for everyone but it will help burn fat because it keeps your insulin levels low
I cant really say it better than Martin so here is a simple explanation
How can intermittent fasting then selectively target stubborn body fat more effectively than other diets? Well, to target stubborn body fat we need to activate b2-receptors while deactivating a2-receptors. Intermittent fasting achieves this by the following mechanisms.
1. Fasting increases catecholamine levels.
2. Fasting increases abdominal subcutaneous blood flow, which means that catecholamines will have an easier time reaching those hard-to-get areas.
3. The low insulin level reached during the fast inhibits a2-receptors. A greater time spent in the low insulin state equals a greater time spent in a state where fat can be mobilized from stubborn areas. Now you're probably thinking "why not just go on a low carb diet" to keep insulin low, but keep in mind that triglycerides inhibit HSL in a similar manner as insulin.
4. My research has indicated that the ideal state of fat burning is reached after 12-18 hours of fasting. Coupled with high levels of catecholamines, increased blood flow to stubborn regions, and low insulin for a2-receptor inhibition, this time interval is the "golden age" of stubborn fat mobilization.
Let me just explain real quick what I mean by the ideal state of fat burning. Studies have examined free fatty acid (FFA) oxidation from anywhere between the overnight fasted state to three days of fasting. While FFA oxidation increases the longer time you spend in the fasted state, the contribution of fatty acids to whole body fat oxidation changes.
In short-term fasting there's a significant increase in subcutaneous FFA oxidation. That's just a fancy way of saying that you're mainly burning body fat and nothing else. For up to 14-20 hours* after a 600-calorie meal in normal-weight subjects, fat is only mobilized from body fat stores in resting individuals.
* 14-20 hours in a completely sedentary state should easily equal 12-18 hours in real life.
1. Fasting increases catecholamine levels.
2. Fasting increases abdominal subcutaneous blood flow, which means that catecholamines will have an easier time reaching those hard-to-get areas.
3. The low insulin level reached during the fast inhibits a2-receptors. A greater time spent in the low insulin state equals a greater time spent in a state where fat can be mobilized from stubborn areas. Now you're probably thinking "why not just go on a low carb diet" to keep insulin low, but keep in mind that triglycerides inhibit HSL in a similar manner as insulin.
4. My research has indicated that the ideal state of fat burning is reached after 12-18 hours of fasting. Coupled with high levels of catecholamines, increased blood flow to stubborn regions, and low insulin for a2-receptor inhibition, this time interval is the "golden age" of stubborn fat mobilization.
Let me just explain real quick what I mean by the ideal state of fat burning. Studies have examined free fatty acid (FFA) oxidation from anywhere between the overnight fasted state to three days of fasting. While FFA oxidation increases the longer time you spend in the fasted state, the contribution of fatty acids to whole body fat oxidation changes.
In short-term fasting there's a significant increase in subcutaneous FFA oxidation. That's just a fancy way of saying that you're mainly burning body fat and nothing else. For up to 14-20 hours* after a 600-calorie meal in normal-weight subjects, fat is only mobilized from body fat stores in resting individuals.
* 14-20 hours in a completely sedentary state should easily equal 12-18 hours in real life.
Finally in closing ...My tip of the day is Overestimate your calories by 20-30%. Most people underestimate their calories and do not weigh their food ...if your not weighing and counting every calorie most underestimate by up to 60% of what they actually eat. So to be save ALWAYS OVERESTIMATE and if you start to suffer in your strength and are loosing weight too fast then add 100 calories or so at a time.
Thanks For reading hope i helped someone out and you learned something
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