Garage Gym Athlete's Notes on Fat Burning...Part 1 of 2

For Part 1, I am only sharing my notes on Fat Burning. Fat LOSS gets its own set of notes.

Let’s dive in.

Fat burning machine: making the machine work how it should

Fat loss vs. fat burning

A common thing I am hearing in the influencer world is that fat loss and fat burning are not the same thing. This is a correct statement, but it is not giving the full picture of training, nutrition, metabolic flexibility, and what a healthy human vs. an unhealthy human look like.

To be clear: fat loss refers to the actual loss of stored fat in the human body, which is what most people are after. Fat burning refers to bioenergetics and how humans burn different fuels for different activities.

Does diet type matter?

Most people saying “fat loss and fat burning are not the same thing” are really only trying to make one singular point: you can follow a high-carb low-fat diet and lose fat, or you can follow a high-fat low-carb diet and lose fat.

The ultimate point is that to lose fat, total caloric intake must be less than total caloric need. That is 100% true. To lose fat, you need to be in a caloric deficit. I think it’s funny that this is even a “revelation” since it has been pretty well documented for decades.

Do we have the full picture with one statement?

I think we need to look more closely at actual fat oxidation (fat burning) and how the body uses carbohydrates at different fitness levels to get a better picture of what’s going on here.

So if you burn high amounts of fat, it does not matter? Not so fast.

We can’t stop short with an Instagram post or Tweet

The problem with influencers stopping short at saying “fat loss and fat burning are not the same thing” to “blow your mind” is that it may have you think burning fat as a fuel source does not matter, is fully irrelevant, or should not be desired.

Do we want to burn fat?

When we look at the actual physiology of an elite athlete, that’s exactly what you want to emulate. You want to be a human being that oxidizes more fat.

Sure, we can say fat loss and fat burning are not the exact same. Losing stored body fat is its own topic, but fat oxidation is still very much a desired trait for a human being.

An interesting correlation

The unhealthy human. Patients with metabolic syndrome are characterized by a decreased capacity to oxidize lipids (burn fat) and by an early transition from fat to carbohydrate oxidation, as well as elevated blood lactate concentration as exercise power output increases. That condition is termed ‘metabolic inflexibility’.

The elite athlete (healthy, as far as we know). In a professional athlete, they are oxidizing far more fat for energy than someone who has metabolic syndrome. What we see here is that people who have what most athletes desire, meaning muscle mass and big aerobic engines, all burn a lot more fat for energy than someone who is unhealthy.

What does it all mean?

We want to become a human that burns more fat. We want to burn fat for as long as possible and at the highest intensity our body will allow, which is not super high. Why? Because we want to be the opposite of someone with metabolic syndrome. We may not want to be a professional athlete, but we want to be as far away from metabolic syndrome as possible. We want our bodies to rely more heavily on fat as fuel over carbohydrate.

How do we do that?

• Training. Following a well-rounded training program is one of the best ways to burn fat as a fuel source.
• Fasted cardio, for fat oxidation practice, not for superior fat loss.

In short: training matters

It is known that elite athletes do two things differently:

• They burn more fat during exercise. Primarily because they are so fit that your and my moderate to high intensity is still in their low intensity zone, so their body can still rely on fat.
• They have increased muscle mitochondrial mass.

So how do we get there?

To be a human that oxidizes more fat, you need to increase muscle mitochondrial mass and raise the “base” for where your body switches from fat to carbohydrate. We do that with base training.

Base training is simply a reference to how you widen the base in your training. In the aerobic world it is low-intensity training like zone 2 work. In the strength world it is the boring but necessary work: the sub-max effort method, or simply hypertrophy training, meaning lighter loads lifted for more reps.

No matter how advanced you are, be sure you always still incorporate base training in your weekly split. Base training with occasional fasted cardio are two great ways to make sure your body gets good practice at using fat as a fuel source. This will keep you metabolically flexible and have you emulating top-end athletic training.

That's it for fat burning.

But that's not the end of the story. Base training is only part of the equation. What to eat, when, caloric deficits, and other forms of training all come into play when we start talking about fat loss.

Kill comfort,

JM

P.S. If you follow GGA programming, we have already planned all the types of training required for fat burning and fat loss. If you aren't following our programming, go sign up here.