Exercise

Exercise Information for Burning Fat

May 1, 2008
By J White

Unless you’ve been living in a shell, you’ve probably heard by now how exercise can increase your vitality, lower your risk of heart disease and other chronic aliments in addition to burning unwanted fat. Exercise truly appears to be a remedy to what ails you.

So what exactly is it about exercise that makes possible all these wonderful benefits, especially when it comes to burning fat. To address that, let’s first take a look at the primary source needed for us to even move and then we’ll take a look at how exercise utilizes that source.

Our Energy Source
This mysterious source that we need to use to simply move and stay alive is of course energy. It is the basis for all the things we do. The energy source supplied to your body comes from the foods we eat, which fall into three types: carbohydrates, protein and fats. For these sources to function as energy, they must first be converted into a form the body can use, namely adenosine triphosphate or ATP.

Your body needs a continuous supply of ATP in order to perform any type of physical activity. It can get the ADP from three sources. The first source comes from the ADP stored in your muscles. The second source comes from a process called anaerobic metabolism which uses the carbs present in your body. The third source and the one of most importance to the process of burning fat comes from the process known as aerobic metabolism ( thus the name aerobic exercise) which uses carbs, fat and oxygen to produce the ATP.

As for the exercises, they can be classified into two categories: aerobic and anaerobic. Aerobic (meaning requiring free oxygen) exercise are activities such as jogging, speed walking, bicycling, swimming or any activity that raises your heart rate for an extended amount of time. Aerobic exercise is also the exercise we typically think about when someone says that they are going to start exercising.

So by performing aerobic exercise, you cause your body to start the process of aerobic metabolism. The process uses the fat stored in your body as part of the catalyst needed for aerobic metabolism, therefore starting the much desired state of fat burning. As long as you’re in this state, your body is burning fat.

Anaerobic exercise on the other hand uses anaerobic metabolism and is usually overlooked because of the lack of understanding of how it burns fat. Anaerobic exercise also know as resistance training can be defined as any exercise in which force must be applied to move an external object. The first type of resistance training that comes to mind for many is of course weight lifting.

To understand how resistance training contributes to the in fat burning. Let’s take a look again at the energy your body needs for physical activity, ATP. As mentioned previously, there are three sources for ATP in you body. In the performance of resistance training the primary source comes mainly from anaerobic metabolism.

So how does resistance training help you to burn fat when anaerobic metabolism uses carbohydrates to create ATP?

Well the benefit actually comes after you have completed your resistance training and has to do with your basal metabolic rate or BMR. BMR is the minimum caloric requirement needed to sustain life when at rest and can be responsible for burning up to 70% of the total calories expended. This values varies, however, and is dependent on such factors as genetics, gender, age, diet and exercise.

Where resistance training plays a part in this process pertains to your lean body mass. Lean body mass burns more calories than the fat on your body. Resistance training builds more lean mass such as muscles and as a result increases your BMR. If you ever saw the headline “Burn Fat While You Sleep” and the product doesn’t involve drugs then this in all likelihood is what they’re referring to.

So if you want to burn fat while you sleep, you need to preform resistance exercises to build more muscle mass.

As a side note, I recognize that many people and especially women say that they don’t want to lift weights because they don’t want to become big and bulky. I can only speculate that the reason that some of you think that way is because of The Rock, Arnold Schwarzenegger and other musclebound behemoths that you’ve seen throughout the media.

Let me put your worries to rest. To become that huge takes years of hard work and a religious devotion to diet, exercise and rest. Unless you are a part of that very small percentage of genetically gifted individuals who can gain muscle easily, this need not be your worry. Plus for women, it is harder for you guys to gain muscle than men because of a lower amount of testosterone. So ladies don’t worry about becoming huge and do your body a favor and lift those weights.

However, if one of your goals is to gain lots of muscle, don’t let these facts discourage you from trying. Depending upon how out of shape you are at the moment, within 3 months you’ll will be amazed at how well you will look if you stick to a proper diet and exercise program. You probably won’t look like The Rock, but you’ll definitely be proud of your results.

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