Losing Fat
Losing fat might just be the number one exercise goal people have when they join a gym, hit the road for a jog or pick up a pair of dumbells.
There are so many misconceptions around losing fat in the exercise world, and hopefully once you've read through a few of my articles you'll have a better idea of what it really takes to lose fat and why it's worth doing.
The main reasons we want to lose fat are for for appearance, or perhaps because we think of fat as unhealthy. Conventional wisdom dictates that being overweight is unhealthy – it puts stress on your joints and heart, and eating too much clogs up your arteries. But is that the whole story?
Excessive bodyfat is actually a sign of a deeper problem, and it's not as simple as "more fat means joint and heart stress". The deeper problem most obese people have, is that their metabolism is not functioning properly. Or rather, it's being overloaded with the wrong kinds of input – namely carbohydrates, and sugar. When we're consuming too much of these foods, we release too much of the hormone insulin – which is essentially an emergency hormone. When our blood sugar level gets too high from too much carbohydrates or sugars, insulin is release, and tells our body to shuttle the sugars out of the blood stream and into the fat cells. The release of insulin occurs with an increase of inflammation in the body as it desperately tries to get the excess sugar out of the blood and stored away somewhere.
When this process is chronic, it causes a host of problems. Inflammation. Arthritis. Skin problems. Brain fog. Cognitive Decline. Obesity. And, fat DOES clog up your arteries – but it's because of the insulin process, and the bioproducts of sugar in the body, not from eating too much fat.
So you can already see that to lose fat, you have to do something about carbohydrates and sugars, first and foremost.
This is actually the key. Exercise and calorie counting have their place – but the biggest change you'll make, and the most effective one for your fat loss efforts, is reducing your carbohydrate and sugar intake and replacing it with someone else. Replacing it with what, you say?
Protein, and... fat. No, you dont need to go on the Atkins diet. You DO need to learn about healthy fats though, and realise the counter-intuitive truth:
Eating fats dont make you fat. Eating fats wont clog up your arteries. Sugars and carbs are the real criminals here.
Intrigued, confused? Good. Then you're just about ready to dive into the fat loss information on the left. :)
