A quick search on google for the term “burn body fat” brings up over 1 million search results so information in plentiful. Unfortunately though, most of the information is your standard article that tell you to do any of the follow

-Do high intensity cardio

-Eat less carbs

-Eat more healthy fat

For those of us that want physique excellence and are striving for our best body, that information won’t cut it. It’s too basic.  We know what good nutrition is but do we really know how body fat is burned? Once we can figure that out then we’ll have a easier time burning body fat( of course is a cliff notes version)

How do you exactly burn body fat?

Most people talk about burning body fat as a simple thing but it really means that the body is working harder and producing more ATP.  Our body always uses ATP for energy but the degree of ATP depends on food intake, training, hormones and other factors. So there’s three factors involved in burning body fat. Let’s cover them.

Breaking Down Fat

Obviously we have to get fat out of the cell to burn it, we can all agree on that right? Fat is stored triglyceride and a little water and the process of getting it out of the cell is regulated by a enzyme known as hormone sensitive lipase or HSL. Now it’s important to note that  not every hormone effects HSL. The main hormones are insulin and catecholamines, every other hormone as little to no effect on HSL. It’s common knowledge that the catecholamine, adrenaline and noradrenaline are powerful fat burning hormones and rise during activity.

Now we should understand that insulin actually inactivates HSL. Every single food that we put in our mouth inactivates HSL. Even resting low insulin levels may inactivate HSL so every time you eat you shut off HSL.

What about carbs? The amount of force that carbohydrates exerts on HSL depends on the intensity of exercise. Low intensity levels and HSL will be impaired greatly, exercise hard with moderate to low carbohydrates and you’ll activate HSL pretty good. So insulin shuts off fat loss and the catecholamines increase the buring of body fat.

Mobilizing Stored Body Fat

Don’t think that just because you mobilizes fat that you actually burned it, it’s not that easy.The trick comes when you have to get the fat out of the cell and into muscle tissue to burn up the fat. As a matter of fact, if you get the fat out of the cell but don’t move it to muscle tissue to burn it will be restored in the body.It all depends on blood flow at this point.

Now various factors effect blood flow such as hormones, aerobic exercise in longer time periods, body temperature. So we see that blood flow is the most important step or else the same fat you just worked so hard to break down will get restored.

Using Stored Fat

So now all of this fat is floating around for us to use. This is where the enzyme carnitine will come in to “push” the fat toward the liver or muscle to be used for energy So we see that carnitine enzyme is important so how do we activate it? Well for starters when muscle glycogen is high then carnitine is low. So this is where the low carb guys go nuts, they’ll tell you to keep carbs low and you’ll burn fat. Not so. The main way to activate the carnitine enzyme is to deplete muscle glycogen, so some has to be there. It’s why bodybuilders for years though that the high rep, short rest, aerobic cardio worked so well for “cuts” precontest. In reality, it might be the answer.