So you want to lose fat!

This is a two part article in which you understand fat gain, fat loss, and the ways to speedup fat loss.

Fat loss can be hard or easy; which depends on you.

Yes you!

There are lots of diets and workout programs out there that helps you to lose fat. All these programs work on one principle.

Yes you read it right!

That one thing is “calorie deficit”

Those diet and workout programs will work for you, if they can cause a calorie deficit in your body.

While calorie surplus diet can make you fat or help you build muscle depends on whether your exercise or not.

In this article you will learn about What is fat and what are the benefits of fat

Why does your body choose fat as a storage medium What leads to fat loss and what happens to fat

What is fat?

Fat is a macro nutrient that is essential for your survival. Fat gets stored inside fat cells or adipose cells in the form of triglycerides.

They serve the purpose of supplying energy when your body is deficit in calories. When your body needs energy the fat cells release free fatty acids into blood. Then transport it to the cells that use it for energy.

90% of fat cells are triglycerides and remaining part contain cellular matter. Cellular matter is essential for its functioning.

Fats get stored beneath your skin. They are also found deep inside and around your internal organs, protecting it. They absorb the shock thus providing a cushion effect in protecting our body.

How fat is stored?

Fats get stored in fat cells which expands when quantity of fat increases. Fat storage mechanism in your body works in two ways.

It comes as direct fat that you have ingested. The fats from foods gets broken down by bile acids to smaller form in intestine.

They gets transferred across intestine to lymph system via a lipoprotein called chylomicrons. It also contains the cholesterol and other fat soluble vitamins in your food.

From lymph system the fat, cholesterol and fat soluble vitamins (via A, D, E, and K) enter the blood stream. It then get transported to various tissues.

Chylomicrons are responsible for transporting fats and fat soluble vitamins from your intestine to various tissues.

Your cells (Except brain cells and RBC) can use fat to release energy. The mitochondria in your cells use oxygen and fat to release energy (ATP) and co2.

Your cells will use this only when they are in need of energy.

Other times fats from the chylomicrons will get transferred to your fat cells. Then chylomicrons return to your liver.

That is one part only.

Your liver can synthesis fat from excess carbohydrate and protein that you have taken.

The excess carbohydrate you taken will get converted into ﻿fats (triglycerides﻿) in liver. Then it will be transported to fat cells for storage.

Fats from liver is taken by VLDL (very low density lipoprotein)to fat cells for storage. Fats get absorbed to fat cells and VLDL becomes LDL (low density lipoprotein).

These two mechanisms add fat to your abs and other areas.

Fat cell will increase in size while absorbing the fat. Do you know what happens when they are stretched to max size? Will it stop absorbing more fat? When fat cells reach a certain size it releases﻿ ﻿e﻿nzy﻿mes (Angiotensin II, prostacylin). these enzymes trigger preadipocytes. These will grow to form a mature fat cell. This process is like hyperplasia as there is an increase in muscle fiber number.

Why does your body choose fat as a storage medium?

You have three options for storage - carbohydrate, protein and fat

Protein is break down into amino acids with which your body builds muscles and tissues.

When your body have excess amount of amino acids, body will use it for energy or excrete the excess amount.

Your body has a mechanism to turn amino acids into fat, but that is a rare case. This study shows that high protein diet help in increasing body weight. That is due to gain in lean body mass.