The blog posts
over the last few weeks have been targeted at building muscle and gaining
strength. However, the most common complaint made by gym members is that they
want to lose weight. These clients want to lose weight, but more specifically
they are wanting to lose their body fat.
What is body fat? What is it made of? Body fat is stored as adipose tissue in cells
called adipocytes (McDonald, 2008). Each adipocyte is comprised of a triglyceride and three free fatty acids (FAA).
The two main types of body fat are visceral
fat and subcutaneous fat.
The next question that needs to be answered is “what is the
purpose of body fat?” To put it simply, body fat is energy storage. Whenever
calorie intake is higher than the caloric need, they body will store the excess
for a later time. The most common example of this is how bears will hibernate.
The bear will eat larger amounts of food than needed to insure fat storage.
Over the winter, when the bear is hibernating, no intake is needed and the bear
will survive on the fat storages. After the math is calculated, one pound of
body fat roughly holds about 3500-3600 calories of energy. To put 3,500
calories in perspective, an individual can run 35 miles on that amount of
calories. Body fat is used to survive
without food intake. This is also why
body fat is so hard to burn off. Your body begins to regulate the amount of
body fat used as energy to survive longer.
Many doctors agree that carrying excess body fat will
increase your risk of heart disease and diabetes (National Institutes of
Health, 1998). Many times our emotional self-image is connected to our body
weight. Continued next week, this discussion will dissect how to make your body
want to burn that body fat.
McDonald, L.
(2008). The stubborn fat
solution. (1 ed.).
Clinical Guidelines on the Identification, Evaluation, and
Treatment of Overweight and Obesity in Adults. Obesity Education Initiative. 1998. National
Institutes of Health.
The hardest part about talking to people/clients about losing body fat is the "Oh, I can not do that". I have found talking to people, particularly about the diet, people are not willing to give certain things up, like sodas or certain junk foods. When people eat those things they do not think about what they will have to do in order to burn all of the calories off, like your example 3500 calories for 35 miles. I think it is important for people to know what body fat is, and the adverse side effect of carrying too much on your body in order to takes stepos forward in reducing the amount being stored.
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