My adversary has a name, and that name is adipose.
For some reason I have been fixated this week on how fat loss occurs, physiologically speaking. As though known that will somehow help me lose weight. Uy.
Actually, I have this irrational (well, not totally irrational) fear that I will hit an untimely plateau in my weight loss efforts, fall off the wagon in a fit of disgust, and yo-yo back and beyond my peak weight. If that happens, again, I have a feeling it'll kill me this time. Like my heart will just up and keel over with an anticlimactic whimper.
Anyway, I've done a bit of reading this week, and learned the following:
- Fat is stored in the body in the form of lipoproteins (triglycerides) stored in cells known as adipocytes aka adipose tissue
- Fat is "mobilized" (released from fat cells) through a process called lipolysis
- Excercise helps lipolysis (interesting!)
- When you lose weight, adipocytes shrink, but don't necessarily go away. Thus you can be left with a panniculus (literally: apron of skin)
So that last item perturbs me somewhat. It is a bit depressing to think that I will go through all this trouble to lose weight, and still not look so hot with my shirt off. Oh well I guess I'll jump off that bridge when I come to it. At least I'll be healthy.
It was also interesting to learn that bit about how exercise helps lipolysis. It has something to do with how epinephrine stimulates lipolysis, and how this process works better when there is an increase in body temperature and concentration of epinephrine in the bloodstream. Makes me want to go for a walk!
Meanwhile all of this is somewhat academic, and doesn't really answer my nagging question about hitting a plateau. I still think the answer to that lies in maintaining (or increasing) your metabolic rate, by avoiding loss of lean muscle tissue, or - even better - gaining lean muscle tissue. This is reminiscent of the Mike D philosophy of why strength training is so important to dieters.
All of this leads me to the inevitable conclusion: it's time for me to get off my fat !@#$ and get to the gym.
1 comment:
I think there a couple of reasons you can hit a plateau. 1) Sometimes, we get lazy with watching our calorie intake and output. Slowly the creep toward eachother until the output equals the input and you hit a plateau. 2) As we lose weight, our metabolism actually decreases because our mass decreases. In other words, the smaller you are, the less calories you need. Therefore, you can still be eating the same calories and exercising the same, but the body simply doesn't need as many calories and you have another plateau. The solution to both is the same: Decrease calories and/or increase exercise.
All this is my NON-EXPERT opinion.
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