subject: Training Your Body To Burn Stored Fat [print this page] The human body is a wonderfully crafted mechanism that has developed, evolved, and refined over thousands of years into the condition we all share today. But it does still retain many of its original traits that were sort of inbuilt safety mechanisms, and storing fat is an example of one such throwback. Here in this article we are going to look at ways that we can train our bodies to burn stored fat, but before we do, let's just explore the concept of body fat a little further.
Our bodies contain two basic types of fat; essential fats, and stored fat. Essential fats pretty well speak for themselves; their significance is in what they are called, "essential" fats, and in simple terms we must have this sort of fat to enable our bodies to work at optimum levels.
Stored fat however is quite a different proposition, and as intimated above, it is a throwback to the times when food wasn't as plentiful as it is today, (at least in the modern West), when it acted as our "safety cushion" to provide nourishment until out next meal came along. But with food in abundance and little danger of starving, teaching our bodies to burn stored fat is a great way of losing weight, and keeping fit and healthy.
I guess that by now we all know where fat comes from. It is simply the result of ingesting more calories than we spend in maintaining good body function, and carrying out our chores on a daily basis.
By changing the balance between how much we ingest and much we use, we can burn stored fat, and get our weight back under control. But bearing in mind that all fats are not bad, (remember those essential fats?), it is also important that we eat a healthy well balanced diet to make sure that we get all the essential fatty acids and nutrients that our bodies need.
As far as diet is concerned, you will need to minimize carbohydrate rich foods, whilst you maximize foods high in protein. Protein gives you the strength that you need, whilst carbohydrates gives you energy. The problem with carbohydrates is that when unused, it is these that turn into stored fat.
Some carbohydrate is also essential, but you should choose complex rather than simple carbohydrates, because this will help to keep your potential daily fat production lower, thereby helping your body to burn stored fat instead.
The other important things about training your body to burn stored fat are regular exercise, and your body's metabolic rate. Your metabolic rate is the level at which your body burns fat when it is at rest. The higher you can get your metabolic rate, the faster you will burn off fat. The way to get your metabolic rate higher, is through regular physical exercise.
However, physical exercise doesn't have to be exhausting. If you are simply looking to lose weight, then regular gentle aerobic exercise will suffice quite nicely. Aerobic or cardio exercise is exercise that stimulates the heart and lungs and makes them work a little harder. There are charts that you can download from the web that show you the desired heart rates, (dependent on age, gender and weight), that signify you have reaches the aerobic or cardio heart rate area, at which your body will burn stored fat.
The truly awesome thing about aerobic exercise is that it increases your body's metabolic rate even whilst you are asleep, so your body will be trained to actually burn stored fat whilst you are catching up with a few zzzzz's. How cool is that?
