Post No.: 0751
Furrywisepuppy says:
Some obese but young people can be regarded as ‘metabolically healthy’ depending on the selected definition for this term. But this would only be a temporary state because if they don’t lose any weight, they’ll eventually become at high risk of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes.
Fat on the hips (pear shape) isn’t as harmful as around the belly (apple shape) – but we cannot choose whether we deposit most of our fat on our hips or around our bellies since this is down to our genetics. (One’s overall fat distribution, muscle shapes (some people appear more angular or round than others when they develop large muscles) and skeletal proportions are largely genetically determined.) Some suggest that fat on the hips can even be beneficial; although when we place fat on our hips, we still place some fat around our bellies too, and the disadvantages of having more fat around the belly will outweigh any advantages of having more fat around the hips.
Relatedly, there’s a misconception that if you want to lose the fat around your belly then what you’ll need to do is target the abdominal muscles specifically and exclusively. There’s nothing wrong, and plenty good, with incorporating abdominal exercises into your routines but you’ll achieve far greater total weight-loss results by doing all-over-body cardio, aerobic or anaerobic exercises to burn off that fuzzy fat that’s obscuring your abdominal muscles. Although different individuals put relatively more weight on their hips versus their bellies or vice-versa – we gain and lose fat more-or-less globally rather than locally (despite the marketing claims from certain exercise equipment makers). So you won’t naturally have fat ‘bingo wings’ (arms) in conjunction with a thin waist, or you won’t normally have slender hips in conjunction with a chubby face, for example – hence if you want to lose weight from a specific body area, you’ve got to think about losing it everywhere. Therefore don’t be too obsessed about targeting just your abs or arms directly – any form of quality exercise will help reduce that flab, in conjunction with (most crucially) dietary improvements.
So isolated exercises that only target single areas won’t be as effective as all-body or compound exercises that utilise more muscles per rep – if your goal is to lose weight. You can of course build muscle size locally hence you could end up with muscular arms but scrawny legs if you solely exercised your arms. (As an aside – whether one can build, say, one large arm and one small arm, there exist tennis players who have one noticeably larger arm than the other depending on which they primarily use; albeit the differences between each arm won’t be as great as having a bodybuilder’s arm on the one side and a marathon runner’s arm on the other! In terms of strength rather than size though, research has shown that training one arm can weirdly improve strength and reduce muscle atrophy/wastage in the other arm too, even if the latter arm is immobilised.)
Liposuction cosmetic surgery can reduce the fat of and contour specific areas only, but the results tend to only be temporary, plus it only deals with the fat just under the skin when it’s the fat located around the internal organs that’s the most dangerous; hence liposuction won’t reduce the risk of obesity-related diseases. To attempt to surgically remove the visceral fat located around the vital organs would be an incredibly risky procedure.
Anabolic steroid usage is associated with higher levels of visceral fat. So you could look good skin-deep according to the mirror but be risking your health. High testosterone levels are correlated with overconfidence too, thus users will likely be overconfident about not suffering from any long-term ill side-effects from anabolic steroid abuse. Post No.: 0654 investigated slimming pills too.
Your particular body morphology will only really matter if you’re overweight. And regardless of your natural fat distribution – if you have cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes or other obesity-related diseases then losing any amount of fat will be beneficial. Even a disease like COVID-19 is exacerbated the more overweight one is.
Levels of LDL cholesterol are higher in people who are stressed than those who remain calm. Blood lipids, including cholesterol, are released during times of stress because, in ancestral times, we needed to fuel our ability to flee from sources of stress. But today, it’s not lethal predators or similar that tend to cause us stress (which serves the point that there’s seldom much we should truly stress about in modern life) hence these fats aren’t being used up and remain in our blood. Managing stress is therefore vital for controlling cholesterol levels.
People who use their brains more will burn off more calories. It’s not as much as physical exercise but every bit helps if the alternative is being both sedentary and cognitively lazy. Woof!
A study has shown that women generally burn more fat during exercise if they eat before exercise, whereas men generally burn more fat during exercise if they exercise on an empty stomach. But more research is required to be sure.
In the body, white fat stores energy whilst brown fat – which contains many blood vessels in order to rapidly regulate body heat – burns it; and fat cells switch between these two modes. Most of our fat is white fat, but this brown fat can be utilised more by eating more chillies, having cold showers or reducing the room heating to 16-17°C. Some also swear by the mental health benefits of cold water dipping, showering or swimming. Adding chillies to your food, especially if you don’t normally eat chillies, might help reduce your appetite too.
Body temperature is an important factor for one’s metabolic rate. Being hotter will increase one’s metabolic rate – although living in colder climates can also increase it since shivering uses up energy. Being larger increases one’s metabolic rate too, as well as being physically active, and eating (due to digestion processes; albeit of course the net effect of eating is gaining more calories).
Larger people (regardless of their fat or muscle ratio) will have a higher metabolism – thus the common conception that ‘some people are thinner because they have a faster metabolism’ is largely incorrect. Obese people are, generally speaking, obese despite their faster metabolism. Increasing your muscle mass is therefore a healthy and effective way to increase your metabolism, or, as suggested, you could try living in either a cold or very hot environment (reduce that heater and air conditioner usage in winter and summer respectively). Or the most obvious way to increase your metabolism is to get active! Even standing compared to sitting down helps.
Some studies suggest exercising under infrared lamps. I guess that exercising in a hot environment (for infrared light is, in simple terms, heat) will make us burn more energy. Exercising under infrared lights might be able to improve our mood better than just exercising too? But more research is needed regarding this.
Although more research is required here too(!) – cooling your muscles to very cold while exercising, or exercising (although not too vigorously) after 14 hours of fasting, might also help you to burn more fat? The latter isn’t healthy if you’re trying to exercise to get stronger rather than just to lose weight though because we need to consume carbohydrates for an optimal workout. We must also consume enough calories for the amount of exercise we overall do otherwise we could develop Relative Energy Deficiency in Sports (RED-S) syndrome – which, despite its name, one doesn’t need to be in sports to develop. Those with anorexia or bulimia, or who just exercise too much and eat too little, can develop it. It affects all genders but women in particular may miss menstrual periods, lose bone mineral density and exhibit disordered eating patterns.
All these tentative findings related to temperature may appear to contradict each other. But it could be the case that both extreme hot and cold temperatures while exercising will help burn more calories compared to exercising in a comfortable temperature because your body basically has to work a bit harder? Indeed one of the biggest factors when it comes to affecting endurance performance is the temperature. Sub-optimal conditions make training harder but we want optimal conditions when in competition. (World record performances arguably need to therefore state the temperature they were completed in?)
Cold temperatures make fluids more viscous, including our blood, and along with the constriction of our blood vessels at limb extremities when exposed to the extreme cold, it increases the risk of having a heart attack because our hearts need to pump harder to get the blood circulating. Thus being fitter would theoretically help us to survive cold spells.
One study has even suggested that eating cold – or even better, re-cooked and hot – starchy foods like pasta won’t raise blood sugar levels quite as sharply as when eating freshly cooked and hot starchy foods. Another effect is increasing the effective fibre content. Cooking and cooling somehow changes the bioavailability of the sugars. Yet even if this result is true – it’d be better and less wasteful of energy to simply eat less starch and sugars, and to consume a bit more fibre from less-processed sources of starch. Taking hot baths may help lower blood glucose levels quicker after a meal too.
We have a tendency to naturally want to eat more when the weather is cold because of thermoregulation. But because many humans live in temperature-controlled buildings nowadays, the sudden craving for heavier/richer meals and snacks when they’re exposed to the cold outside elements – even for just a short moment – means that many people will consume more calories than they really need for thermoregulation even on the coldest days outside, thus these extra calories will be stored.
New Year’s resolutions to lose weight therefore probably come at the worst time of the year because it’s cold, we desire wintry comfort foods, and it comes at the end of a festive period when plenty of victuals are consumed and people are generally relaxing and are on holiday. It’s winter in the northern hemisphere and eating helps us to feel warm inside. (Now a one-off 6,000 calories on Christmas Day isn’t a problem – the problem is that for many it’s not a one-off because they’re feasting on many consecutive days throughout this period. This can lead to a pleasurable habit and long-term weight being put on.)
Woof. So it’s probably not the best time to have any high fitness goals – such resolutions are more likely to be successful if they start in spring, with a target of a ‘beach body’ by summer. Although a short period of going to the gym is better than none, if we feel demoralised for quitting before February, it likely won’t be for the best in the long run.
(I neither regularly snack nor drink alcohol during the rest of the year, but after gorging on tons of stuff during Christmas time, I personally feel that I start to get used to consuming large quantities of junk, and it takes a couple of weeks before I return to eating regular healthier meals and amounts that are sustainable again. I don’t normally drink soft drinks either, so when I suddenly do, I notice how incredibly sweet they taste for my unaccustomed taste buds. But then I can soon get used to them – which demonstrates how quickly we can desensitise to the taste of sugar. It’s the same with breakfast cereals that are mainly targeted at children or adolescents – some of them are so sickly sweet but we won’t realise unless we recalibrate our taste buds to less-processed produce. If you regularly consume them – try weaning yourself off all high refined-sugar goods for a while. Then come back to them. You might notice how ridiculously sweet many of them are! And that’s what a lot of kids consume every day nowadays.)
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