Train your body to burn fat for energy. Physical fitness and extended time without food improve nutritional fitness. You can learn to burn fat. meal plan

During exercise, our muscles get fired up using sugar and soon switch to burning fat. Overnight, insulin clears sugar and fat into fat tissue and cells soon switch to burning fat until the next meal.

Why would people of normal weight ever get hungry? There’s enough energy stored in 10 pounds of fat to live without eating for 2 weeks. We get hungry because our body cells forget how to burn fat. 

Let us help you train your metabolism for good nutritional fitness.

To learn more about programs Herd Healthcare offers, our website is:
www.herdhealthcare.com

Energy Metabolism

Our metabolism can use sugar or fat for energy. Whatever’s in the blood flowing through our organs. When levels of sugar and fat are high, sugar is used and stored. When levels of sugar and fat are low, stored fat is mobilized and used.

During a meal, levels of sugar and fat rise and stimulate secretion of insulin from the pancreas. If there’s plenty of storage space in liver and muscle cells, levels fall quickly. At the same time, sugar is combined with fat and stored more slowly in subcutaneous fat tissue.

After a meal, levels of sugar rise to a peak in about 90 minutes and fall quickly. Levels of fat rise to a peak in 3 to 6 hours and fall slowly. Clearance of sugar combined with fat occurs more slowly in fat tissue and takes more insulin than sugar and fat cleared into liver and muscle.

Overnight, levels of sugar, fat and insulin fall to low values. Energy is supplied from stores in liver, muscle and fat. When amounts of energy consumed in food and drink use up all the storage space, levels stay high until new subcutaneous fat cells develop. Levels of insulin stay high as long as levels of sugar and fat stay high.

Early in life as organs are growing, energy is required to build muscles as well as other organs. Energy also is required to fuel metabolism and physical work. Along the way, fat cells develop to store excess calories.

With adult maturity, less energy is required for growth. At the same time, muscles continue to develop and get stronger in response to physical work. Peak energy requirements occur in early adult years in response to high intensity work requirements.

The daily sequence in time of food intake, metabolic requirements and physical work establishes a pattern. There is a period of burning sugar and storing fat followed by burning fat released from subcutaneous fat stores. Most people consume more food than they need during the day and release fat to burn during the night while they sleep. As long as energy consumed matches energy required, body weight and fat stores stay constant.

Overeating, more food consumed than can be used or excreted, eventually requires more fat storage than is readily available. Some people can continue to expand subcutaneous fat stores almost indefinitely. Many others divert fat to intraabdominal fat stores. Still others force fat into abnormal storage in muscle, liver, pancreas and heart.

Sugar Metabolism

Sugar is absorbed from food, transported into cells and converted into fuel for temperature control, chemical reactions and physical work. The process starts with the level of sugar in blood stimulating release of insulin from the pancreas. Insulin turns off fat burning and promotes burning sugar for energy.

Sugar is an important source of energy for many organs and the storage capacity for sugar is small. Some is stored with water as glycogen and some is combined with fat molecules to form fat droplets. When the supply of sugar runs out, muscles, liver and other organs convert to using fat for energy.

As long as sugar levels in blood stay high and insulin levels stay high, fat does not get released from stores.

Sugar metabolism is the most direct path for energy quickly available. To maintain levels of sugar in the blood, the natural appetite is to eat something, especially something sweet. Consequently, more food often gets eaten than is really necessary for calories from all sources to supply energy.

Fat metabolism

Fat is absorbed from food and broken down into smaller molecules. Some molecules are burned directly as fuel. At the same time, insulin stimulates formation of fat molecules in muscle, liver and fat. Most is stored almost directly as larger molecules combined with sugar.

After a meal, when sugar is almost all used for energy or stored, insulin levels fall and fat is released from storage and burned for energy.

Fed and Fasted

When sugar and insulin levels are high, calories are stored in muscles, liver and fat. When sugar and insulin levels are low, sugar is released from storage in glycogen. When stored sugar is all used, stored fat is mobilized from muscle, liver and subcutaneous fat tissue.

Stored fat is only released when insulin levels are very low!

Most people in modern times carry body fat stores more than 20% (men) or 30% (women) proportion of total body weight. Also, food is available and eaten all day long. From early morning to late in the evening. Often 12 to 16 hours a day.

The 6 to 8 hours of sleep at night are barely enough to use and complete the storage of all the sugar that was consumed during the day. Pathways of cellular energy use become adapted to sugar metabolism and resistant to fat metabolism. The muscles, liver, heart and brain forget how to burn fat.

Hunger for something to eat drives appetite for more food. Even when there’s ample energy stored as fat for 2 or 3 months without eating anything.

Metabolic Training

Time-restricted meal planning stimulates the ability of cellular metabolism to release fat from storage and use it for energy. Normally, it takes 12 hours after a meal to lower the levels of sugar and insulin and convert to fat metabolism. Gradually extending the time between the last meal or snack in the evening to the first meal of the next day lengthens the time for fat metabolism to release fat from stores.

Exercise helps the process of converting to fat metabolism for energy. Exercise training not only uses sugar for energy, it adapts skeletal muscle to absorb sugar from blood.

Calorie restriction also lowers the excess of calories that must be stored in muscle, liver and fat.

Hunger and appetite gradually decrease as your metabolism becomes accustomed to using stored fat for energy. This is the point of all this effort to adapt to using fat metabolism. When your body becomes accustomed to using stored fat for energy, you no longer feel uncomfortable consuming fewer calories. Your body no longer resists mobilizing fat from subcutaneous storage.

Time-restricted Meal Plan

Take advantage of the normal overnight separation between meals while sleeping. Gradually extend 6 to 8 hours while sleeping to include a longer separation between your last meal or snack in the evening and the time you retire for the night.

Summary

Physical fitness and extended time without food improve nutritional fitness. Your cellular metabolism can learn to burn fat.

Our metabolism can use sugar or fat for energy. When levels of sugar and fat are high, sugar is used and stored. When levels of sugar and fat are low, stored fat is mobilized and used.

Sugar metabolism is the most direct path for energy quickly available. The natural appetite is to eat something, especially something sweet.

After a meal, when sugar is almost all used for energy or stored, insulin levels fall, fat is released from storage and burned for energy.

Exercise helps the process of converting to fat metabolism for energy.

Calorie restriction also lowers the excess of calories that must be stored in muscle, liver and fat.

Hunger and appetite gradually decrease as your metabolism becomes accustomed to using stored fat for energy.

Gradually extend 6 to 8 hours while sleeping to include a longer separation between your last meal or snack in the evening and the time you retire for the night.

The final objective is to extend time of separation to 16 hours.

Let us help you train your metabolism for good nutritional fitness.

We are pleased to share our blog articles with you, and we are always interested to hear from our readers. Our website address is: www.herdhealthcare.com

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