Understanding the Importance of Fat Metabolism in Weight Loss
Understanding the Importance of Fat Metabolism in Weight Loss: It’s Not Just All about Calories and Exercise
Many people believe that eating a low calorie diet and maintaining regular exercise will help them to lose weight. While this is of course an essential part of a healthy lifestyle, it doesn’t reflect the whole story about how your body burns energy to lose weight. Your body’s fat metabolism also plays a crucial role in your overall weight and understanding what keeps it running smoothly is important if you are serious about healthy and long-term weight loss.
Fats: They Aren’t All Bad
Contrary to popular conception, fats are very important to our health, and are a major structural component of our body. They play many vital roles such as helping our skin to stay soft, storing energy for later use and transporting nutrients to the rest of the body. Fats are the preferred source of fuel for our heart and are important to a healthy brain. For the most part, our body is very good at sifting through the fats we ingest, and turning them into positive attributes.
Fat Metabolism: Sort the Good from the Bad
Fat metabolism is defined as the “metabolic process that breaks down ingested fats into fatty acids and glycerol into simpler compounds that can be used by cells of the body”. To put it more simply, it is the process by which the fatty foods that you eat are either used for the positive benefits as listed above or – when not functioning at a healthy level – storing itself in unwanted place such as your hips, thighs or stomach. If this is the case, then there a number of underlying health issues that could be causing your body to hold onto excess fat, which we will look at here.
How to Keep Your Fat Metabolism Running Smooth
There are five major organs in the body that help to regulate and breakdown fat in the body, and it is when these are not functioning properly that our ability to burning off excess fat is impaired. The gallbladder, the thyroid, the uterus (for women) and the prostate for (men), the liver and the spleen are essential to maintaining a healthy fat metabolism, and it is important to ingest a good balance of vitamins and minerals that support the functionality of these parts of the body.
Eating a lot of simple and refined carbohydrates is also a key factor in weight gain, which not only lack essential nutrients that our body needs, but also trigger fat storage. Starchy foods too, like potatoes and grain, signal to our body that it should build fat reserves. Managing stress levels will also factor into your body’s ability to metabolize fat, as high levels of insulin can contribute to the loss of muscle mass.
Healthy Fat Metabolism for a Healthy Body
So, rather than just chaining yourself to a treadmill and enforcing a liquid diet, think about the role that your fat metabolism will play in your role towards the perfect weight. Simply eating less and exercising will not target the parts of the body that help to maintain a healthy fat metabolism, nor will it necessarily help you to avoid foods and activities that impair it.
My name is Michael Forman. I am a Doctor of Oriental Medicine. I practice what is called Clinical Nutrition, a form of ‘Functional Medicine’. Perhaps some of you have heard this term before and many of you might be wondering what this means. ‘Functional medicine’ is a Holistic approach to supporting and correcting the body’s organ functions as a means of handling disease, symptoms and