Fat burning, metabolism, blood sugar and thermogenesis…here’s how to put the pieces together and make sense of weight loss.

Losing fat helps you lose fat…what?

When you are sitting around doing nothing, that’s pretty much what fat is doing too. As far as energy expenditure goes, most fat isn’t very active. Muscle however, is a different story… Muscle tissue uses more energy than fat, and using energy is what weight loss is all about. As you burn fat and build muscle, your metabolism (the total sum of all your body’s chemical reactions) increases. Increasing your metabolism basically means you burn more energy doing less, which is good news for weight loss.

Burning fat

When you burn fat during exercise, the stored energy in fat tissue gets turned into action. Like using fuel to drive your car, energy from fat is used to make you run, dance and ride your bike. Exercise is vital for any weight loss program not to mention benefiting your general heath. You can however, affect your body’s capacity to burn fat.

Thermogenesis

This is just a fancy name for transforming energy into heat instead of action. The important part is you’re using energy, which is why thermogenesis also helps boost your metabolism and influence Weight loss.

Why is your blood sugar important for weight loss?

Healthy blood sugar balance is important for weight loss because it influences how effectively you burn fat. Unhealthy fluctuations in blood sugar (dips from skipping meals and peaks from sugary snacks), lead to corresponding fluctuations in hormones, which can be a problem if you want to lose weight. Healthy consistent blood sugar levels however, can have a positive influence on fat metabolism, good news for weight loss!

A helping hand from nature

There’s lots of excitement about thermogenic compounds (things that cause thermogenesis) because they can activate fat burning. Two thermogenic compounds of particular interest to weight loss* are chlorogenic acids (CGA) from Green Coffee (Coffea canephora) and catechins found in Green Tea (Camellia sinensis). Both are known to:

• Promote burning of stored fat for energy
• Regulate fat and glucose absorption from food
• Help maintain healthy fat and sugar metabolism**

CGA from Green coffee also helps maintain blood sugar levels**

Mr Vitamins recommends

Fusion Health Weight Burn

Containing Green Coffee extract (Thermolean providing 47.5% CGA) and Green Tea (234mg catechins) to enhance fat burning and weight loss FInd out more about Fusion Health Weight Burn here See our Weight Loss Tips. As always, whatever questions you have regarding your health and weight loss, all you have to do is drop by Mr Vitamins and ‘Ask a Naturopath’. *When combined with regular exercise and a calorie-controlled diet **In normal healthy individuals