What is Body Fat?
The more technical term for body fat is adipose tissue, with individual cells being called adipocytes (adipo = fat ; cyte = cell). In humans, the primary type of fat cell is called white adipose tissue, or WAT, so named because of its color (it’s actually sort of a milky yellow). While there is another type of fat, called brown adipose tissue or BAT (which is actually reddish/orangeish), it’s generally been thought that humans didn’t have much BAT and hence it could be ignored. As I’ll discuss later, this has been brought into question by recent research. I’ll come back to BAT in the next chapter.
All Diets Work: Qualification
Fundamentally, any diet that is restricted in calories will cause weight loss. Of course, dieters, ideally, shouldn’t only be concerned with the scale. The composition of what is lost is important too and, generally speaking, dieters want to lose fat not muscle (or just shift water around).
An Introduction to the Psychology and Physiology of Dieting
Frankly, in a lot of ways, I think addressing the psychological aspects of dieting is far far more important than the physiology or nutrient metabolism or what have you. Simply put, at this point, with 40+ years of dedicated nutritional research, I think we have a pretty good idea of what is required for a diet to generate weight or fat loss.
How Detail Oriented Do You Need to Be?
If the internet has accomplished one thing, it’s making people extremely obsessive compulsive about the most minute details of their training program and diet. Arguments and flame wars erupt over the absolutely least consequential of things. How many minutes should pass between sets, how long after workout before you drink your liquid beef aminos with waxy maize starch, stuff like that.
Is a Calorie a Calorie?
Simply put, the debate comes down to this: all that matters is caloric balance (calories in versus calories out) or do the source of those calories matter? The short and simple answer, of course, is ‘No’. The longer answer is what this article is about.
Introduction to Dieting
I am credited with having made the following statement on an internet newsgroup “Diet books tell you that you don’t have to reduce calories to lose weight, and then trick you into doing it anyway.” In this article, I want to look at some basic concepts related to dieting, the myriad weight-loss diets that exist, etc.
You Are Not Different
All over the internet, on forums dedicated to everything from weight loss to muscle gain, people will loudly argue that they are different. “My metabolism is different.”, “My nervous system is different”, “My muscles are different”, things of that sort. Everyone is a unique and delicate flower, just like their mom told them.
Training Secrets
Now, this is the American way, look for a quick fix secret instead of realizing that the only way to succeed is with ass busting work over a long period of time. Give me a pill, a piece of equipment, a piece of clothing (UnderArmor being the new clothing of choice for gym posers everywhere). Anything except for having to put in ass busting work over a period of time.
Metabolic Rate Overview
Long-term changes in energy balance are what ultimately determine what happens to the body. A long-term excess of energy balance (energy in exceeds energy out) will lead to a gain of body mass; a long-term deficit in energy balance (energy out exceeds energy in) leads to a decrease in body mass. Whether that changed body mass is made up of fat, muscle, or some combination depends on a few factors.
