When you read anything at all, you’re bound to see an ad for something having to do with weight loss.
And it almost always promises the nirvana of burning fat.
There are different ways that you can get rid of fat.
You could get the fat removed surgically.
But that kind of is expensive and harmful.
You can eat low-calorie, and run a calorie deficit.
Your body will then start tapping into its stores of fat, and it will start converting some of that fat into energy to make up for your dietary calorie deficit.
The problem with low-calorie diets is that they also create high cortisol and result in your body digesting its own tissues.
Your metabolism falls when you follow low-calorie diets, and you lose lean mass like heart tissue, muscle tissue, maybe even brain tissue.
And we want to hold onto that as long as we can.
Another way of getting rid of fat is to go on a low-fat diet.
Your body always uses some fat all the time.
Each cell consumes both fat and sugar.
Although in diabetics, the cells consume very little sugar because of a defect.
But all cells consume some fat all the time.
So if you eat a very low-fat diet, your cells will not get enough fat from your diet so that they will tap into the fat cells and you will burn your own fat.
And this way you don’t have to run a calorie deficit.
You just have to run a fat deficit.
And you can actually lose weight this way, and keep your lean muscle mass because you’re not lowering your metabolism.
But back to the promised land of diet and weight loss, which is burning fat.
There’s another way you can get rid of fat.
And that is by burning it off.
What I mean is, that your body has a mode called mitochondrial uncoupling that it can shift to — and when you’re doing uncoupling, a lot of your fat and sugar is burned off into fat into carbon oxide and heat.
Mitochondrial uncoupling is a thermogenic (heat producing) form of metabolism that concentrates on maintaining body heat rather than using energy for movement.
You’re actually warmer, so the energy is being consumed — it’s not being consumed in exercise, but instead being consumed in heat.
Heat and carbon oxide are the results of true fat burning, which is called Thermogenesis.
Thermogenesis was discovered quite a while ago in all animals.
In fact, when it comes to fat cells, there are white cells, and there are brown cells.
White fat cells are the fat cells we’re all familiar with… and are trying to lose.
These are the pockets of stored inactive fat that we lug around to convert to energy at a later time.
Brown fat is supposed to burn fat and turn it into heat.
The brown cells are actually designed to be uncoupled all the time.
Babies have a lot of brown fat because they need to stay warm.
But as soon as a baby is born, what happens?
We put blankets on them.
We keep them nice and snug and warm.
And so they lose a lot of their brown fat cells.
But you can stimulate normal, or white fat cells, to become brown fat cells.
And there are a whole lot of chemicals that do that stimulation.
This review paper covers a lot of the different ways of activating normal white fat, so it becomes fat-burning brown fat:
You can see how thermogenesis works in this really cool diagram.
There are a lot of chemical processes involved, but the fundamental magic takes place inside of the mitochondria, which can either create useful energy or create mostly heat and carbon oxide.
In thermogenesis, you’re getting mostly heat and carbon oxide.
That’s what you want if you want to burn fat.
Otherwise, you’d have to do a lot of exercise in order to burn off the excess fat, and it may be an impractical amount of exercise.
So the article talks about these particular agents that can convert normal white fat into thermogenic brown fat.
The agent column is very interesting.
Some of the substances may be dangerous, such as polyunsaturated fatty acids, and resveratrol.
But some of these substances are definitely worth pursuing.
For example, methionine restriction would be a good option.
It’s very easy to do because methionine restriction can be accomplished by eating a little bit of gelatin when you eat meat.
And it’s been shown that methionine restriction, along with many other thermogenesis promoting methods, can lengthen life 30% or 40%.
These chemicals all cause mitochondrial uncoupling in addition to promoting normal white fat cells into fat-burning brown fat cells.
It’s very worthwhile living with nutrition and dietary and supplement methods that use several of these at the same time.
They are pointers to improve health, effortless weight loss, and higher virility as we age.
Citations
Could burning fat start with a brite spark? Pharmacological and nutritional ways to promote thermogenesis
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mnfr.201500251/full
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