Fat is so much more than an unattractive, an annoying by-product of too many donuts, contrary to popular belief. Losing fat is not just about counting carbs or increasing your weekly exercise. Fat is a metabolically active organ: it produces hormones, tells the fat in your blood where to go, responds to the toxins in your environment and even controls the way you think about food. Bit scary, right? Fat can be your friend, fat is not only a fact of life, but a highly necessary one. We are all guilty of going crazy after a bikini body, It may not be the best way to think about your health goals. Being honest with yourself and thinking realistically is the way to go. Do you really need to lose those last few pounds? Or are you competing with models again?
Fat it’s not just sitting there. It’s not just a reserve of calories, and you don’t wanna get rid of all of your fat. This is the most surprising thing, fat is actually an endocrine organ, meaning that it makes hormones and it releases them into your bloodstream and it has a vast impact on a lot of different organs in your body, fat affects your immune system. If you get too low of fat, you’re not as strong with your immune system. Fat affects reproduction. Women with too low of a body fat actually can’t conceive, they can’t get pregnant. You can’t even go through puberty if you don’t have enough fat. Our brains are linked to fat, brain size, brain weight, it’s linked to how much fat we have. So through the hormones it emits, fat’s having a great impact on our body and because fat is so important, nature wants to protect it. So even though we don’t value our fat, we wanna get rid of our fat, nature doesn’t, and our bodies don’t. And fat has ways to fight back, and this is what people really need to know. It’s actually a very clever organ inside of us. So through one hormone it makes, leptin, fat can affect our satiation, our appetite, and it affects our metabolism. So we have normal levels of fat, we’re pretty satiated overall and our metabolism is strong. When you lose fat you lose leptin, and with less leptin your appetite really increases, your metabolism goes lower. You get a preoccupation with food, and in that way, fat is fighting to come back. Nature’s trying to protect fat, trying to keep it at the set point that we have. So the effect doesn’t really go away, as far as people can tell. It’s been studied for up to six years, and people have that effect for six years. So anyone who has yo-yo dieted, lost some weight, they actually have to eat less, fewer calories than someone who is naturally at that weight to begin with because their metabolism is affected, probably around 22% fewer calories than someone naturally at that weight to begin with. So really fighting obesity, fighting fat, it’s a life-long endeavor. Losing it is not easy and staying at that weight will take chronic effort.
Visceral (bad) fat versus – straight (good) fat!
So one way to test for visceral fat is you lie on your back and you look at your belly. And when you’re lying down if your belly is still protruding, then that’s probably visceral fat under your stomach wall. If it flattens when you lie down, then you’ve probably got subcutaneous fat there and it’s not as bad. So that’s one way to test for visceral fat. You can see where it is too on your profile. If it’s more in your hips, your thighs, your buttocks, that’s safer deposits to have. You might still wanna reduce it just for the way you look and how you feel about how you look, and those are different issues than where is it really dangerous fat for your body or not.
So figuring out where on the spectrum you are, there’s a number of things. One is, how is your health? Do you have metabolic disease? Do you have to get rid of some fat? Get rid of dietary fat and make sure you exercise so that it’s deposited in the right place. What size do you really need to fit into? Part of it’s just being realistic about the goal. Do you really have to look like you did at 22? Do you really have to look like a bikini model or an athlete? And just being realistic about where it is you belong. I think that will help too. I do think the diet industry gives us unrealistic goals and unrealistic promises.
What I have learned and I really like is intermittent fasting 9-6. I find works really well. That’s a way to extend the growth hormone release and burn fat. It also releases testosterone and other things that you get, you know, from overnight. HIIT exercise is a very good way to lose fat it as well. If you want to learn more please contact me or visit my camp in Mallorca.