Do you ever feel like your body is working against you? Do you eat a healthy diet and exercise but are just not getting the results you think you deserve? It could be that you have a hormone imbalance – one where you have low levels of fat burning hormones and too high levels of fat storing hormones at work in your body.
Fat burning hormones need to be boosted
When your fat burning/storing hormones are in balance you have what is called as good ‘metabolic fitness’ which relates to the body’s ability to burn (calories) for energy rather than promoting slow but constant weight gain.
The old fashioned view of exercise was to focus on weight loss but the new way is all about building a healthy metabolism (the body’s engine) which has nothing to do with body weight or food restriction. You want to become ‘metabolically fit’ with the goal of achieving a strong, lean, healthy body and for that to occur you need the right formula.
When you eat food you either burn it for energy and in terms of calories you either ‘burn’ them up or you ‘store’ them as excess fat weight. The main benefit of improving metabolic fitness is that your body is running at an elevated rate burning more calories both when you are at rest or during exercise or other physical activity.
It is now the right time to take the science of good health and weight loss out of the dark ages and apply our new understanding of how proper exercise impacts our hormones and our metabolism. One that places way less emphasis on the amount of calories burnt during an exercise session and put the emphasis on what happens and the calories burnt long after the exercise session is over.
For the last four decades we have focused our exercise attempts on long duration low intensity activity (walking, jogging, cycling etc) with the only goal to burn up calories completely ignoring the after-effects. Yet we now know that it is the after-effects of exercise that are the number one most important aspect of determining our metabolic fitness and how well our fat burning hormones are working.
Your fat burning hormones are your fat loss key
When it comes to weight loss or building optimal health, calories are important but it is our fat burning/storing hormones that determine when, where and how those calories will be used. Doing more long duration activity is not the answer neither is restrictive food dieting as they both work against the metabolism slowing it down and causing it to burn less fuel. The opposite is needed to achieve not only weight loss but good health as well.
This starts with a proper exercise program that contains mostly strength training exercise to bolster the muscular system. Muscle tissue is highly active so we need to keep it in a good strong and toned state as it is the driver of our metabolism. Just 2-3 sessions each week are needed but you will have to put some effort into your sessions to make the necessary changes to your metabolic motor so fat burning is accelerated.
Support your exercise program with not less food but better food choices. This means getting rid of as much processed non-nutrient foods as possible. While you are eating these things you will find weight loss difficult or even impossible as the chemicals and additives in them throw the body’s fat burning hormones ‘out of whack’.
When your hormones are unbalanced you are in inviting fat storage instead of fat burning so replacing these foods with natural whole protein rich foods is vital. Implement these two strategies and you will be well on the way to finally building that strong, lean, healthy body and heading in the opposite direction from one that you know is not on a path to living your best life.
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