body fat

Everybody tries to get lower body fat to make themselves more toned. Here is a detailed breakdown of what body fat is and why, quite frankly, you need some. Your body stores fat because it has learned to survive and over thousands of years has developed a survival technique that has proven itself to work. Your body cannot survive without fat and all your internal organs need fat in order to continue functioning correctly.

The Evolution of Body Fat

Body fat, or adipose tissue, is composed of long-chain fatty acids and usually is manufactured by eating excess calories or carbohydrates. The storage of fat on the body is a critical defense mechanism and originates from the time of the Stone age when we did not know where the next meal was coming from.

Carbohydrate is the major source of energy for the body. Although the body will readily convert this carbohydrate to glucose, which is the preferred fuel, the remainder will be sent to the liver. The liver will then convert these carbs into liquid glycogen and fatty acids. These fatty acids are then loaded into the bodies fat storage facilities which is how the adipose tissue is made. Technically, the adipose tissue was already there but was “empty.” It is only when this starts to fill that you actually get fat.

Fat cannot turn into muscle, never has been able to, and never will be able to as fat is composed of completely different structures. Even muscle has a little fat in it, but we will get to that later in this article.

Storing Body Fat & Energy

Your body is able to eat more than it needs and stores the rest as fat in case you need energy later on. This fat is used in the mitochondria which is a small organelle inside of the cell. But the mitochondria also use sugar in combination with fat as its source of energy.

This energy is stored in the muscles as muscle glycogen and it the primary source of energy used when you exercise or move. It is only when the muscle glycogen is depleted in the muscle that the mitochondria start to look elsewhere for energy and that is when you start to burn fat.

The muscle will need more fatty acids as you exercise more with the by-product being lactic acid. Your body does not like this acidic environment and tries to solve the problem by increasing the amount of blood vessels. It is this that will add more muscle or increase your cardio capacity.

Metabolism and Body Fat

The result of all this is that the speed of the internal metabolism or your basal metabolic rate (BMR) will increase. This is the only way that you will slow the process of storing fat. There is a way that you can speed up this process even more by simply eating more often during your day.

Your metabolism slows down when you eat only once a day as it tries to keep that one meal from processing too quickly. But when you are eating every three hours it gets fooled into thinking there is plenty of food around and slows down the fat storing process.

The result is an increase in the BMR that your body has and not only will you detoxify faster but you will continue to lose fat even when you are sleeping. So the bottom line is diet and exercise is the only way to speed up the survival mechanism we all have of storing fat.

There you have it. That is the science behind body fat and why your body stores fat. If you are looking to shred body fat, feel free to navigate the site for more detailed tips. As mentioned in this article, eating more frequently, eating less carbs, and doing cardio all promote reduction of body fat.

By Daniel

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