What is fat loss?
For most people, weight loss manifests itself in lower body weight. Many fitness beginners or most people’s understanding of fitness, weight loss or exercise starts with the number on the scale. With the popularization and improvement of fitness knowledge concepts, people gradually realize the importance of weight loss, or to be precise, fat loss. After all, too much fat is not a good thing.
- Physiological principles
First of all, it must be clear that the discussion of fat loss must ultimately come down to physiology. First of all, for weight loss, it is equivalent to an alienation effect. The so-called alienation effect is to turn something already in your body into something outside your body, a bit like taking out the money in your wallet and spending it. This is a catabolism, which is a negative energy balance, meaning that the energy you take in every day is less than the energy you expend every day.
- Operation method
Traditionally speaking, the most classic way to lose weight is long-term endurance exercise, which is mainly characterized by large training volume, medium to low intensity, or even low intensity. Low intensity is mainly suitable for middle-aged and elderly people or fitness beginners. Young people are transitioning from low intensity to medium intensity, or even medium to high intensity. Generally speaking, the training frequency for fat loss is higher. Because it requires long-term total energy consumption, the recommended frequency is six to seven days a week, which is quite high. The answer given by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) is to train at least five days a week. It is recommended to train seven days a week. The minimum time limit for each time is 30 minutes and the upper limit is 90 minutes. In fact, there is no upper limit. In addition to sports, this also includes physical activity. For most people, the training intensity for fat loss is about one hour a day, six to seven days a week, which is still good.
The most important thing about losing weight is the negative balance of energy. In addition to increasing consumption through exercise, the most important thing for negative energy balance is to control diet. If you don’t control your diet, the energy gap in your body will cause appetite in your nervous system, and you will keep eating. As energy is consumed, dietary intake will also increase, so a negative balance cannot be achieved. Although the body will get better, it will not show fat loss or weight loss. Therefore, in the process of losing fat, you must combine training with diet control.
Let me add a sentence here. My teacher’s theory back then was to practice hard, eat as much as you want, and be more willful. At that time, I felt young and reliable, but now I can’t stand it anymore. Here, I would like to express my highest apology to the friends who were deceived by the editor and teacher back then! Let me reiterate, if you want to lose weight, practice steadily and control your diet. This is the rule and must.
- Physiological adaptation
Training methods for weight loss in the traditional sense are basically long-term, continuous, low-intensity endurance exercises. The physiological adaptations brought about by these exercises basically allow your body to develop towards an economic adaptation. In other words, the energy consumed per unit of movement will decrease, and excess body fat, or excess weight, will decrease over time and as exercise increases. At the level of fluid regulation, levels of cortisol, a typically pro-catabolic hormone that inhibits muscle synthesis, increase.
In terms of muscle adaptation, these long endurance events often primarily affect slow twitch muscle fibers. At the beginning, the slow-twitch muscle fibers may expand adaptively, but with further training, these expanded muscles will also atrophy to a certain extent. Because it has to adapt to a long-term consumable state, and then become more economical and efficient, redundant things will be removed. This is why those marathon runners and long-distance endurance skiers are thinner, but every muscle is the most essential part left. Because of these physiological adaptations, it is decided that if this form of training is used to lose weight, the development direction will be towards thinness.
Summarize:
The physiological principles of weight loss are dissimilation, catabolism and negative energy balance.
Its operation method is long-term continuous endurance exercise, medium and low intensity, high training frequency, and combined with diet control.
The physiological adaptation to weight loss is often the development of economy. Cortisol levels increase, which mainly affects slow-twitch muscle fibers and inhibits muscle growth.
Q&A
- What kind of exercise is effective in reducing fat?
Answer: This kind of exercise involves the whole body, is sustainable, and puts little pressure on joints. This kind of exercise has a good effect on fat loss. Such as swimming, cycling, and elliptical machines. Some people say that HIIT is effective in reducing fat? This is not actually the case. Although your energy consumption per unit time has increased, because HIIT is very intense and puts great pressure on your body, the time you can last is very short. In a limited time, the total amount of energy you consume is low. For more HIIT knowledge, click What are the disadvantages and limitations of HIIT? -Shao Su’s answer
But sports like marathons, long-term jogging, swimming, and cycling, although their intensity is very low and the energy consumption per unit time is very low, they have low physiological pressure and you can fight for a long time. You can ride for one hour, one and a half hours, or even two hours, five kilometers, ten kilometers, or even twenty kilometers. In this case, your total energy consumption will be very high. So generally speaking these exercises have the best weight loss effect.
- How long is the weight loss cycle?
Answer: It is recommended to lose 1-3 pounds per week. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends losing 1-3 pounds per week. In fact, it is not much different. 1-3 pounds per week is a relatively healthy state. If this indicator is exceeded, the probability of a negative impact on your health will be relatively high. Therefore, the editor’s advice to you is to lose weight steadily and slowly every week, and lose 1-3 pounds every week. Generally speaking, it takes 3-6 months to lose weight before the effect is obvious. Question: Can it appear in a short time? Answer: Yes! It will overdraw your health. The effect of diet control is obvious in the early stage of weight loss (generally speaking, about the first 3 months), but the effect of exercise will become significant in the later stage. And often you have to exercise to control your weight and maintain your lost weight through exercise.
- Movement and energy supply, what are the three major energy substances?
Answer: The previous saying was that exercising for 30 minutes will start to consume fat. This is actually wrong. For example, when exercising at an intensity below 50% of the maximum oxygen uptake, many people think that the most energy-consuming substance is sugar, but in fact it is fat. Under very low-intensity exercise, fat consumption is mobilized first. Generally speaking, the increase rate of fatty acids in his blood will be very fast, but because its intensity is very low, its consumption rate is also very low, so it will take a long, long time for you to lose weight. For example, if you want to go, you can go for a whole day. In fact, we don’t have that much time. So generally speaking, we increase efficiency through exercise.
The main energy substances are sugar, fat, and protein. But what we most often discuss is sugar and fat, because although protein can be consumed to provide energy, protein is a structural substance and we are extremely unwilling to consume it. And the metabolites after it is consumed are very nasty and will make you smell bad. The difference between sugar and fat is that sugar is very economical and provides energy very quickly. So generally speaking, as your exercise intensity increases, the proportion of sugar involved in energy supply gradually increases, and in the end it is dominated by sugar. Of course, if your exercise intensity further increases, the aerobic metabolism of sugar will change into sugar. Anaerobic metabolism. Because the glycogen in the blood, glycogen in the muscles and liver glycogen storage are limited, after it is consumed. The wisdom of the human body is shown in that it must maintain a certain amount of glycogen at all times. So where does this sugar come from? It will be converted from some energy substances like fat through a very complicated process. As exercise time increases, glycogen consumption increases and more fat begins to be consumed for energy. But in this case, your exercise intensity will inevitably decrease. If you run for two hours, your speed in the first hour and the next hour will definitely be different.
