How fat works in your body
With anything in life, it is important to understand it before you can master it. Like with cooking, you can follow a recipe and get results, or you can understand how ingredients work and make something more amazing, and get to a point where you don’t need a recipe anymore to cook great food.
With weight loss or fat loss, it is the same. You can follow a diet “recipe” and get results only to revert back to your previous state. In this article, I will attempt to explain how fat in our bodies work. If you would rather watch a video, than reading this click here.
Fat Explained:
Fat is made up of 3 atoms. Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen. More specifically 55 Carbon, 104 Hydrogen and 6 Oxygen atoms.
What happens to it when it is broken down?
Oxygen which we inhale is combined with the Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen to form 2 elements which are: Carbon Dioxide and water.
Where does Carbon Dioxide go, you simply breathe it out, and water? Mostly the toilet, unless you cry or sweat allot.
The big question is how much becomes water and how much becomes carbon dioxide.
It turns out that scientist figured this out in 1948 whilst experimenting on rats. They discovered that 84% becomes Carbon Dioxide and only 16% becomes water.
Which means, to lose 10Kg of fat, you will exhale 8.4Kg of it and 1.6Kg will be lost as water.
To lose fat, you need to breathe more and eat less.
If you are thinking that sitting at your desk and just breathe faster will work, you will hyperventilate feel dizzy and not lose weight at all.
You need to coax your body to break the fat down and form Carbon Dioxide and Water, which happens faster if your heart rate goes up.
How do we hack this?
HACKS:
Hack #1 Move More
You can easily hack your movement frequency without actually exercising.
Like, park your car further from the office, if you use public transport get off a few stops earlier and walk. Walk to colleagues instead of writing emails, use the stairs instead of the lift or elevator.
You can also… good news for the guys, have more sex.
Hack #2 Move Faster:
Now that you are moving more, you can amplify this by moving faster.
There is an optimum level of heart rate that breaks fat cells down faster. This is not the same for everyone, it depends on your resting heart rate. A heart rate monitor device or app can work this out for you, but for most people, it is around 120 beats per minute.
If you just walk faster your breathing will increase and more fat in the form of carbon you will breathe out. This is where an activity tracker comes in handy. It can give you feedback on your heart rate and the number of steps you take.
I use the Huawei Band 4 Pro and it does a great job to give me feedback on how I can change my movement throughout the day.
I have a review on it: YouTube version and Blog Version
Hack #3 Intermittent Fasting
Fasting has a bunch of benefits, but of the amazing benefits of intermittent fasting is that you can reduce your calorie intake with 20 to 40% per week, without changing your diet…. That is a game-changer.
You only have to fast for 16 hours a day or 24 hours twice a week or 36 hours once a week….. more than that will just make you HANGRY, and no-one wants that.
With fasting it is not as important what you eat, but when you eat. Obviously eating whole foods is better, but if you are eating suboptimal food now, just fasting will make you lose fat.
VERY IMPORTANT: that you do not eat extra and just eat what you normally would have in the quantities that you would have, then you do not have when you break the fast.
It is not as hard as you might think. Let's take a 16 hour fast. You basically skip 1 meal. You finish eating at 8 pm, go to bed at 11 pm sleep till 7 am that is already 11 hours into your fast. Then you just have lunch at noon.
That is not so bad, you can even start with 12 hours at first and then work up slowly to 16 hours. If you do that for just 5 days a week and you have should have reduced your calorie intake by about 20% for the week.
For 24 hours fast you skip 2 meals for the day, eat dinner at 8 pm and don’t eat until 8 pm the next day for 2 days a week, but not 2 consecutive days.
I have been doing this for years and it really works. If you are serious to try it I have a FREE Survival Guide to fasting with allot of tips, tricks and do’s and don’ts and benefits to make it as easy as possible.
Just a warning, fasting is not for everyone, and in my survival guide, I stipulate exactly who should not fast.
To help you out, even more, I do 24-hour fasts every Monday and Wednesday, if you would like to fast with me or just see what it is about following me on Twitter @HealthHacking1.