Meal Frequency and Energy Balance
Perhaps one of the longest standing dogmas in the weight loss and bodybuilding world is the absolute necessity of eating frequently for various reasons. Specific to weight loss, how many times have you heard something along the lines of “Eating 6 times per day stokes the metabolic fire.” or “You must eat 6 times per day to lose fat effectively.” or “Skipping even one meal per day will slow your metabolic rate and you’ll hoard fat.” Probably a lot.
Homeostatic and Non-Homeostatic Pathways Involved in the Control of Food Intake and Energy Balance.
The homeostatic system has to do with the idea that the body tries to maintain some specific ’set point’ in terms of bodyweight or body fat. Basically this system takes incoming signal (from hormones like leptin, insulin, blood glucose, ghrelin, peptide YY and a host of other stuff) and makes adjustments in appetite, hormones, metabolic rate and activity to compensate.
Effects of Exercise Intensity and Duration on the Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption
In the last year or three, exercise programs for fat loss have been geared around the concept of using certain types of training (either interval style cardio or highish rep/short rest weight training) to cause fat loss through an ‘afterburn’ effect where calories are burned after workouts to a greater degree than following standard training styles (esp. low intensity cardio). Clearly from a real-world perspective, this type of training ‘works’.
Endurance Training and Obesity: Effect on Substrate Metabolism and insulin sensitivity.
As a bit of introduction, it’s recently come to light that one major cause of insulin resistance in obesity has to do with the accumulation of fat within skeletal muscle. Referred to as intramuscular triglyceride (IMTG), fat stored within skeletal muscle appears to play a big role in how well (or poorly) the muscle can utilize glucose and respond to insulin. I’d note that it’s a touch more complicated than that for reasons I don’t want to get into.
