We're Tough, Not Toxic (How to Burn Visceral Fat- Part 1)

Hi Byte Wellness Fam!

How are you feeling?

I’m excited! I don’t know about where you are, but it finally feels like Spring here. Southern California’s covered in greenery and blossoms after the historic rains earlier this year.

Spring has a way reinforcing 2 central themes of nature: resilience and balance.

With the right amount of rain and sun, tree branches that were bare only a few months ago boast bright green sprouts and fragrant flowers.

Every year, Spring happens. With the right input, nature produces predictable output. That’s what we’ve been exploring in the #PhyteWellWednesday Workshops this month. We’re uncovering the habits (input) that help us get to a healthy weight (output) and help us maintain it.

Check out the recording below. If you want an invite to next week’s workshop, jump on the text message thread by sending TEXT to 1(224)302-6224.

Discussion Question

Once again, you (the community) asked the discussion questions for this week. Here’s one that we took a deep dive into during the workshop:

• What are some immediate steps I can take to lose weight?

  Have you successfully lost weight and lowered your disease risks? What worked for you?

  Keep reading for the short-story response.

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I Don’t Need to Burn Fat If I’m Skinny, Right?

Before we jump into answering the discussion question above, let’s do some level-setting. First, if our goal is to lose weight for health reasons, then the “weight” we want to lose is the toxic deep belly fat called visceral fat.

Toxic visceral fat is the stuff that increases our chances of developing otherwise preventable conditions like high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes, etc. This deep belly fat that we can’t see from the outside can build up in bodies of any size and shape based on a combination of habits, genes, and environment.

We can’t look at a person’s size and know whether their body has too much visceral fat. Some people with plenty of fat on their hips, thighs and around their waist could have healthy levels of visceral fat. Some people who have very little visible fat can have unhealthy levels of visceral fat.

So, we should all be on the lookout for visceral fat build-up, no matter what our size or weight is.

Especially with all of the health barriers built into our society, we should all be focused on keeping our fat healthy.

How To Maintain a Healthy Fat Balance?

So, how do we keep our visceral fat at low levels so that the fat on our bodies works with us instead of against us? There are 2 big categories of Fat-burning buttons we can push.

The first one relates to energy quantity. Our bodies are carefully tuned into how much energy we need to get live. They’ll store fat if we have too much and burn fat if we have too little energy.

The second button relates quality of energy use. Our bodies get signals about whether to store or get rid of fat based on the nutrients in the food we eat and from fat and muscle.

This week, we’re focused on understanding what habits can factor into that first button (energy quantity).

What Can I Do to Lose Toxic (Visceral) Fat?

1. Get Into a Calorie Deficit is a fat-burning signal. It tells our body that we’re all out of energy, so it needs to open up its energy stores (stored as fat= triglycerides) and let us use some of that energy we saved from some of our past meals.

   1. What Can I Do to Achieve a Calorie Deficit? We can eat our way into a calorie deficit. To get into a calorie deficit, we eat less energy than our body needs.

      1. How Big Does My Calorie Deficit Need To Be In Order to Burn Fat? Having 1 less calorie than we need counts as a deficit (net -1). But, our body is more likely to use our stored sugar (glycogen) to cover smaller calorie deficits. Many weight loss studies aim for a deficit of 400 calories/day.

         Keep in mind, the ideal deficit for safe fat-burning varies per person, and very low calorie diets (as low as 800 calories per day) can be dangerous. Very low calorie diets should only be tried under the guidance of a medical professional.

         *People who use insulin (for type 1 or type 2 diabetes) should talk to their doctors about how to adjust their insulin dosing before making major cuts to carbohydrates.

   2. How Do I Figure Out How Many Calories Can Put Me Into a Deficit?

      1. Figure out how much energy our body needs to live (resting metabolic rate)

         1. We can consult a dietician or trainer for your resting metabolic rate

         2. We can use an online calculator like this one from MD-Calc . (Keep in mind that calculators like this one can’t account for variability in our personal situation. Things like stress, chronic conditions, and body composition can change our resting metabolic rate in ways that the equation can’t account for)

      2. Eat fewer calories than we need to live

         How Can I Make Sure I’m Eating the Right Foods to Get Into a Calorie Deficit?

         1. We can consult a medical professional to recommend a well-balanced meal plan that will achieve a calorie-deficit while leaving us, otherwise, well-nourished.

         2. Can An App Help Me Track Calories? We can use apps like MyFitnessPal or FatSecret (free) to log calories in our food and keep track of intake.

         3. How Does Eating More Veggies Help Me Get Into a Calorie Deficit? Non-starchy veggies and beans (like lentils) have lots of fiber that makes us feel full without adding many calories to our meal. A plant-heavy way of eating that helps us burn fat:

            1. prioritizes filling at least half of every meal with non-starchy veggies (like broccoli, cabbage, etc) that help us get into fat-burning mode.

            2. includes lean protein (like non-fried skinless chicken or beans)

            3. includes unsaturated fatty acids (like omega 3s in salmon or chia seeds)

            4. and minimizes starches (breads, potatoes, etc), free and added sugars (agave syrup, fruit juice) and highly-processed foods (soda, many store-bought snacks/desserts)

   3. Can I Get Into A Calorie Deficit By Working Out? In addition to cutting our calorie intake, we can also increase our calorie deficit by bumping up our calorie output. Adding cardio (aerobic) activities like walking can help with this.

   4. What Type of Exercise Can Help Me Get Into a Calorie Deficit? Aerobic activities (like walking, running, biking, using elliptical, skating, jumping rope, etc) speed up the heart rate and keep it there in order to send fat-burning signals to our fat cells (more on that later).

      Meanwhile, aerobic activities also burn up the first-round fuel sources we have (sugar in the blood and stored sugar, called glycogen, in the muscle). Once we burn first-round fuel, we’re ready to start burning harder-to-access fat.

      Don’t miss this part: Even walking can help us burn fat (when we do it for 30 or more minutes at a time)!

   5. Can Lifting Weights Put Me Into A Calorie-Deficit? Anaerobic activities (like weight-lifting with a single body part) are great for building muscle, which increases our resting metabolic rate and makes it easier to achieve a calorie deficit in the long run. But, anaerobic exercise itself burns fewer calories and is less likely to lead to fat-burning than aerobic (cardio) exercises.

      A happy medium might be combo exercises like H.I.I.T (high-intensity interval training) that include full body weight-lifting exercises that involve so much quick movement, our body treats them like cardio.

      1. How Hard Should I Exercise to Burn Fat? Again, there is no one-size-fits-all, but studies show that ideal fat-burning happens in the range of moderate-to-high intensity activity. Also, in general, longer periods of exercise lead to more fat-burning.

         1. How Hard Am I Exercising? Remember, we can rate the intensity of our exercise using the sing test: In moderate-intensity activity, we can’t sing, but we can hold a conversation. In vigorous-intensity activity, we can’t hold a conversation, but we might get a word out in-between breaths.

   6. Should I Eat or Exercise to Get Into a Calorie Deficit? Both, if possible! It takes less time to achieve a calorie deficit through eating (vs. only exercising). But, studies show that while we can lose just as much weight by only calorie-cutting without exercise, we can hold onto more of our precious muscle when exercise accompanies calorie-cutting.

      Losing muscle sets us up for weight regain…thus goes the cycle of yo-yo dieting.

The Calorie-Deficit approach to losing visceral fat is only part of the equation. The other part depends on the chemical signals that come from the nutrients we eat and from our organs (like muscles, and fat) regardless of the amount of calories we eat..

We’ll cover that second part next week. Until then…

Happy Healthy Living,

Dr. Wuse