Digestion Vol 2. How to Burn Fat

by Manny Aragon

Last week we talked peripherially about the importance of digestive enzymes, stomach acid, and probiotics.

Over the next few weeks, I’d like to take a little time to go over the nuts and bolts  of the stages of digestion and the importance of the role each process plays in the pathway to good health.

The first part of digestion happens before the food even gets into your mouth and it is by far the most important part of the process. The first ,and most important part of the digestive process is the part where you make a choice about what goes into your mouth. For many of us, this happens not just in the moment before chewing, but perhaps several days before, when we are planning out our weekly shopping list.

But for many of us, this process happens in a frenzied few moments, when in a state of high hunger- having already been hungry for a while….Like an emergency situation… Its hard to make rational choices in this state- and many of us- usually the busiest of us- eat most meals like this every day. But this first step of digestion- the food choosing part- is really the most important part to ensuring the rest of the process goes well. And we usually mess it up right here.

Problem is, as humans, we get into life patterns.  We get used to certain routines and tend to stick to them even more as life gets busier and more stressful. So, the patterns become strong and ingrained. We are trying to get it all done-right now. But at what cost? Certainly the national health care expenditure approaching 20% of GDP tells part of the tale. Poor choices lead to highly expensive, unhappy lives down the line.

But I digress- planning, by keeping healthy snacks at arms reach for the busy times of the day, is a first step to getting the first step in digestion right. You’ve got to eat food that nourishes your body, provides the pleasure of sustenance, and constantly keeps your metabolism in the most health favorable zone- fat burning.

So- the first and most important part of digestion is first understanding how your metabolism works most efficiently- for health, human performance, and most importantly, for feeling your best. Lets delve into this a little- shall we?

Fundamentally, and historically, humans face 3 basic metabolic challenges: We need to have energy to move, to stay warm, and to fuel our brains. Its important to understand that we have developed many different metabolic pathways over the millennia to make sure we are able to meet these needs in a variety of environmental conditions and food availability.

Lets start with movement- we need to get around. In order to do that- we have two basic metabolic pathways – we burn fat ( to generate sugar to burn) and we burn carbohydrate (or sugar). At any one moment, we generally do a bit of both- its really a question of the ratio- and that all depends on the activity level and the food that we have trained our body to expect to get. That’s right- metabolic pathways (genes control this) are activated over time based on what our body expects us to eat.

In the life of an endurance athlete, this point becomes very important to their ability to maintain a continuous level of physical performance over an extended period of time. Some athletes focus on getting enough simple sugars and carbohydrates into their bodies to fuel primarily from sugar sources. Others train their metabolism to function to a high level burning primarily fat stores. The most successful endurance athletes use this second strategy as it gives them all of the benefits of burning fat, some of the benefits of burning sugar, and overall more efficient performance with the fewest drawbacks.

The desk jockey and the endurance athlete have a lot in common…

Early humans, didn’t have the luxury of easy and constant access to simple sugar substances- it was seasonal and fairly rare. Wild omnivorous animals are still in this paradigm. In the summer, when fruit and berries are readily available, they feast on natures simple sugar substances, putting on fat for the winter. In the winter- they eat either flesh and fat or nuts (and usually much less food overall) which have a high fat content and far fewer easy carbohydrates.

Our bodies were optimized for fat burning- it is the most efficient energy storage strategy we have and we do it well.

We also burn energy to keep our bodies warm. Our bodies need to maintain a certain internal temperature range to maintain life and we have different strategies for maintaining body temperature. For the sake of time I am not going to cover what we do to manage heat. But the body has several strategies to deal with cold. Just as with movement- we can burn primarily simple sugars or we can burn fat. In fact, thermogenesis (heat production) is one of the biggest energy loads on the body.

Recently, scientists have discovered that humans have stores of brown fat (the fat that actually burns fat to produce heat) just like seals, whales, and other life forms that have to constantly generate heat. We don’t have a lot of brown fat but we the more cold exposure we face, the more brown fat we generate and the more white fat we burn.

The third, and most influential, energy load on the body is the energy needs of the brain. The energy needs of the brain can be likened to the energy needs of a city like Las Vegas- lots of neon requires lots of electricity. The brain uses LOTS of energy and has a basic strategy for making sure it gets what it needs to operate. Because the brain needs a relatively steady source of constant energy it is very susceptible to blood sugar fluctuations.

Fat burning provides the most steady source of constant energy and a very stable blood sugar profile while simple sugars provide a rush of energy and, unless the body is operating at a high physical capacity, sugars promote fat storage. When the blood sugar drops suddenly, the brain intervenes by sending hunger signals. The more precipitous the drop in blood sugar, the stronger the signal.

Stronger hunger signals are an emergency declaration by the brain that it needs energy NOW. So we crave high caloric, simple sugar foods that will give the brain the energy it needs immediately. This is where food planning comes in. The better we plan, the more stable our blood sugar will be (provided we eat the right foods) and the more we will be in fat burning mode and the less we will be in fat storage mode.

So- what are the practical take aways from this discussion?

1)   You work best, most often, when your metabolic ratio burns primarily fat and secondarily sugars. – You will be leanest, have better hormonal balance, and have the most stable moods, better sex drive, etc, here.

2)   Knowing this- you can better plan what you eat so that you are getting foods that promote fat burning and not fat storage.

3)   Exposing yourself to cold stimulates your body to burn much more energy. It is an important strategy for staying lean and fit (more on this in later articles).

4)   Exercise, especially extended exercise, is best fueled primarily by fat burning and secondarily by sugar burning. If you are a desk jockey this metabolic strategy becomes even MORE important to keeping you healthy.

5)   If you keep your brain happy by providing a steady source of energy via dietary choices- you will greatly reduce your cravings for foods that make you fat and unhappy.

So- If you’re busy like me ( with kids, business, racing, etc) you really don’t have a lot of extra bandwidth to figure all of the logistics of how to eat a diet that promotes fat burning out on your own. That’s why I am starting a small group program in early april to help folks who want to turn their bodies into fat burning machines without a lot of hassle. Click on over to my event page and register for my upcoming intro.