Metabolism and Fat Loss Secrets

The human body sends signals and communicates itself in two ways: 1) biologically, through electrical impulses and 2) chemically, through hormones. Metabolism can be thought of as a balancing of chemical and biological reactions.

The amount of fat or muscle a person can gain depends not on diet or physical activity, but on one's metabolism. Of course metabolism can be influenced by nutrition and physical exercise but too often we think that by eating less and exercising more, we can achieve our ideal body image.

Sorry guys but without considering metabolism, this formula will only lead to failure. Think of your very thin friend who eats like crap and never works but stays lean. Or about that fat friend who invests himself and never loses a pound.

Your metabolism can make your body a fat burning machine, or it can cause your body to lose unreasonable amounts of fat. The good news is that your metabolism is constantly changing and easy to control, if you know how.

Metabolism is regulated by our hormones, or more specifically hormone sensitivity. Fat and protein (muscle) tissue is always in the form of anabolic (or anabolic) or broken (catabolic). Hormones move into tissues and attach to receptors.

Hormones can be either anabolic (Testosterone, Growth Hormone, Insulin), or catabolic (Cortisol). The effectiveness of hormones is determined by the amount of hormone released and the sensitivity of the tissue.

You want your tissue to be very sensitive. This will allow some hormones to do a lot of work. If your tissues are insensitive, a large amount of hormones will be released and there is not much work to be done. This is where you can encounter problems.

It can be counted as 10 people doing 1000 people, or 1000 people doing 10 people. When you have a large amount of hormones without doing the work, they will start to have harmful effects.

Insulin is the most important hormone in metabolism. Insulin is the most anabolic and anti-catabolic hormone in the body, and luckily for us, it is the most easily regulated.

When we eat, glucose (blood sugar) is released into the bloodstream. Insulin is then triggered to take this glucose into the tissue. If our tissues are not sensitive to insulin then, both glucose and insulin levels will remain high for a long time.

Guess what, this is a Type II Diabetes profile. It is very easy to enter the country, even for non-diabetics. It's also very easy to avoid this situation, if you know how. This is the worst situation you can go into. This is when most fats are stored and when the body's organs and defenses are most vulnerable.

You want to always have a low level of insulin release (except for post-workout), and very sensitive tissue. Poor sensitivity to insulin causes low sensitivity to lipids as well, which can lead to a whole list of other problems.

So how can we get our metabolism to work for us? Through diet, supplements, resistance training, and cardiovascular exercises, we can affect tissue sensitivity. Also, by having more muscle mass and less fat, metabolism can be improved.

Studies have shown that older subjects have greater tissue sensitivity and increased metabolism. So the goal of metabolism training is to increase tissue sensitivity and increase lean muscle mass.

------------------