Exercise is undeniably vital to human health, including attaining/maintaining a healthily low level of body-fat. However, the way in which exercise does this is not as likely believe. We’ve always been told that exercise burns calories—but this isn’t what really happens…calories are not little packets of fuel to burned or stored; rather, nutrients can be converted to work (burned) or stored (perhaps as body-fat, but also as muscle, glycogen, bone, etc.), and we use a unit of measurement to describe that release of energy called “calories.” So if we want to understand the effects of exercise on body-fat, we need to understand NOT calories, but how fat-cells work. Fat-Cell Basics You can think of all the trillions of cells of your body as little individual creatures—each functioning for its own survival. As such, your fat-cells’ decisions to absorb or release fat is based on a selfish agenda…in other words, your fat-cells could care less about the needs of the rest of your body. Yet the fat they contain is a valuable fuel-source, especially during exercise. In order to access that fuel during exercise, your body coaxes fat-cells to release some of their fat by releasing certain hormones; these same hormones also increase the ability of non-fat-cells (like muscle) to absorb and use that released fat. These exercise-hormones are released in proportion to the intensity of physical activity. In other words, walking causes a smaller release of these hormones than jogging causes a smaller release of these hormones than sprinting. One caveat: lower-intensity physical activity can be done longer, and so the total amount of released exercise-hormones must factor in both duration and intensity; furthermore, low-intensity activities become harder (more intense) as they continue for a long time—so even low-intensity activity can start become higher-intensity with time. How Exercise Does NOT Affect Body-Fat Levels We’ve already dispelled the idea that calories control body-fat, and that these effects of exercise must be understood by understanding how fat-cells function—which we’ve done above. If we didn’t look any deeper, this would seem to be a plausible explanation as to how exercise might decrease body-fat…but it’s NOT. Yes—the hormonal responses to exercise will cause fat-cells to release fat into circulation, and facilitate the absorption and burning of that fat in other cells of the body. Then how could this not explain how exercise might affect fat-loss? Let’s talk some more about the exercise-hormones, of which there are several—but one specifically is critical to understanding this paradox. “Cortisol,” like other exercise-hormones, is released with the onset of exercise, and remains elevated throughout; but unlike the other exercise-hormones, i plays an opposite role after exercise is over. During exercise, cortisol is doing many things including facilitating the removal of fat from fat-cells; but afterwards, cortisol increases the ability of fat-cells to absorb fat. Therefore, fat-cells tend to replenish their fat-stores after exercise. Think about it, how many people do you know (maybe even yourself) who exercise diligently, but never seem to get any leaner? Yet we’re continually told ya gotta exercise to burn those calories to lose that fat. But in reality, this type of mentality leads to strategies that have little long-term impact on fat-cells, leads to confusion over what type of exercise program is best, and leads to frustration and stress. How Exercise DOES Affect Body-Fat Levels I’m sorry if that last section was disappointing—but here, I’ll explain why it’s truly liberating! If calories cannot be used to prescribe effective fat-loss strategies, and exercise is a wash in the short-term, then you can go ahead and forget all of the ineffective caloric-based exercise recommendations you’ve been told follow! This does NOT mean you can become completely sedentary and expect anything but deteriorating health, but it does mean you be feel comfortable that any type of frequent physical activity you enjoy is adequate to facilitate a healthy body-composition. To make this point clearer, let’s conclude by discussing how exercise does affect body-fat levels types of muscle (high-intensity leads to bigger/stronger/faster muscles, low-intensity to smaller/efficient/endurable muscles), each type is made healthy by regularly engaging in physical activity (in the long-term). Physical activity affects the health of every cell in your body. Healthy cells are more apt to absorb and utilize nutrients (like fat), thus competing against fat-cells. Muscle represents a major competitor to body-fat. Though different types of physical activity will lead to different. Thank you for reading
Posted on: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 13:51:57 +0000
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