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To lose bodyfat, you must decrease your intake of dietary
fat. Fat contains more than two times the calories per gram
of either protein or carbohydrate. In addition, the body uses
fewer calories to metabolize fat. The net effect is that fat
is the most fattening nutrient. Some research even shows that
your waistline is a direct reflection of your fat intake.
A relevant question is, What’s the best percentage of
dietary fat intake for effective bodyfat loss? Most bodybuilders
who have low bodyfat levels stay on lower-fat diets year-round,
although they decrease fat intake before a contest. A typical
precontest bodybuilding diet contains 5 to 10 percent fat,
which is the same level of fat intake recommended by people
such as the late Nathan Pritikin for preventing cardiovascular
disease.
The problems with these diets involve both palatability and
satiety value. Extreme lowfat diets, in which 10 percent or
less of the calories come from fat, are difficult for most
people to stick with. For many, eating fat is the only way
they can satisfy their appetites. What makes this even more
challenging is that when obese people are dieting, their fat
cells send out chemical signals to the appetite center in
their brains, causing a type of fat hunger.
Is it really necessary to go on an extremely low-fat diet
to lose bodyfat? Researchers from Brigham Young University
in Provo, Utah, were curious about this. To find the optimum
level of fat intake for fat loss, they put 48 obese young
women on 1,200-calorie-a-day diets that varied only in fat
content. The percentage of protein was 20 percent on all the
diets, but fat varied between 10, 20, 30 and 40 percent of
total calories. The women also exercised five days a week
throughout the 12-week length of the study.
The results showed no differences in bodyfat loss among the
groups. This indicates that for effective weight loss, you
must pay attention to your total daily caloric intake. It’s
still a matter of consuming fewer calories than you burn.
Burning Fat at Rest
Fat only burns in the presence of oxygen, which explains why
aerobic exercise is best for oxidizing, or burning, fat. At
rest most people burn equal percentages of sugar and fat,
but as they get more aerobically fit, do they burn more fat
even when they’re at rest? Even under optimal conditions,
humans burn only 30 to 60 percent of the fatty acids released
into their blood, with the remainder going right back into
storage in fat cells.
A new study from the University of Vermont explored this question.
It involved 14 women and 12 men between the ages of 18 and
29. The subjects were divided into aerobically fit and sedentary
groups, and the researchers tested the subjects’ fat-burning
capacity 48 hours after an exercise session.
The results showed that the sedentary group had a higher rate
of fat delivery than the fit group when at rest, but the researchers
also found that fit people burn fat at the same rate that
unfit people do. Since this study measured the appearance
of fat in the blood, fit people may simply incorporate the
released fat into their muscles faster. Recent research, for
example, indicates that the muscle tissue of fit people shows
an increased uptake of fat not explained by more fat circulating
in the blood. The mechanism is thought to be an increase of
a cell membrane fatty acid-binding protein in muscle.
In simple terms, this means that unfit people release more
fat at rest, but fit people are more effective fat burners.
Taurine: New Ergogenic Aid?
You may have read about taurine, an amino acid that some people
are promoting for increasing anabolic effects in muscle. Up
until recently, the greatest publicity generated about taurine
involved its being required in feline diets. For humans, the
findings concerning beneficial effects of taurine are less
impressive. This is probably because tanrine is a sulfur-containing
amino acid that the body can make as long as a sufficient
quantity of the amino acid cysteine is present.
The journal Amino Acids recently reported a German study involving
a taurine-based product called Red Bull. Besides taurine,
Red Bull also contains caffeine and a glucose-lactate compound.
In the study 10 endurance athletes consumed three different
versions of the drink, some without the added taurine.
The results showed that the group drinking Red Bull original,
with the three active ingredients showed significantly lower
heart rates within 15 minutes of exercise, as well as a decreased
release of stress hormones called catacholamines. The most
impressive finding, however, was that the taurine group showed
increased muscular endurance. The researchers concluded that
by helping to modulate stress responses during exercise, taurine
may increase endurance.
This is not to be confused with the beer called Red Dog. Attempting
to use Red Dog beer as an ergogenic aid will simply leave
you barking up the wrong tree.
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