your body will feed on muscle mass aswell. Thing is, if you're not active, the body won't have any use for your muscles. And the body doesn't want things hanging around if it's not used for anything (unless it's fat) so it burns it as energy and saves the fat stores for later. Again though, the two flow into eacother, you will burn fat aswell as muscle if you starve yourself.
Does muscle turn to fat? They teach in school that it does!
- Thread starter realworksuks
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okokok! I did a search and found out you are right. I'm reading a book by a former US Marine Captain. So I would have thought it would be a pretty reliable source.. Thus I provided by somewhat ignorant views.
Ok so what I read online says that more fat that carbs are burnt between meals but more carbs are burnt just after meals.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
I think we all agree that if you " starve yourself " there is a greater likelihood your body will access protein for energy to a greater degree than under normal circumstances. Obviously, " starving yourself " is an extreme and atypical scenario.
However, skipping just one meal and claiming this one missed meal will automatically trigger your body to " eat your own muscle tissue " - is a bit misleading IMO.
If you miss a meal, the likely result is just that your blood sugar may drop a bit....even so, glucose, fatty acids and amino acids may still be present in your bloodstream nonetheless. Once your blood sugar drops, the first likely response is that your body produces more of a hormone called glucagon. Glucagon catabolizes the glycogen stored in your liver so that glucose gets pumped back into your bloodstream for energy. Glucagon can also create glucose using the amino acids still in your bloodstream. So, given all that, to suggest your body would be going after your muscle tissue for energy after missing a meal .......is anything but automatic.
As I said before, your bfody has been designed to burn - ' preferentially ' speaking - fat most of all for energy, carbs to a lessor extent and then protein only as a last resort ...and usually in response to unusual situations....i.e starvation, depleted glycogen stores etc. etc.
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well that's good news, thanks for the reply wrangell.
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Not sure I follow.
Cause if you extend your logic, alleged selective burning of food energy after a meal might be considered as the the exact same thing as burning food energy till your next meal - i.e which is actually the same as burning food energy between meals..
Could you elaborate a bit more ?
1lb of fat can carry you aprox 35miles,it is the bodies most efficient energy source thats why it doesnt want to let it go.
wrangell is correct again fat is burned first depending on what you are doing,if you are walking or typing etc it will burn fat first, but once you up the intensity it will use carbs,then if you do it for long enough the body will release cortisol which uses up protein/muscle which is where i think people get confused.
wrangell is correct again fat is burned first depending on what you are doing,if you are walking or typing etc it will burn fat first, but once you up the intensity it will use carbs,then if you do it for long enough the body will release cortisol which uses up protein/muscle which is where i think people get confused.
firstly i never said anything is fact,and if you read
my post you would see i said"fat is burned first depending on what you are doing," and fat is more efficient than carbs,you would run out of carbs long before you run out of fat.
+1 repHey mate! I went back to the website.
Here is the specific section.
The link is here.
How "true" do you guys find the info?
" There is an "order of priority" that dictates which fuels are burned first " - I agree with matt182...this is very misleading if not just plain wrong statement IMO.
The issue isn't one of - which fuel is used " first " or " second " etc. etc. Your body doesn't use energy sources in such a formal rigid sequential sequence - " Next, we burn protein, then carbohydrates, then fat " - in which one source is used one at a time only at the exclusion of others. Your body is using fat, carbs and protein for energy all the time.........at the same time . It's just a matter of how much of each - fat, carbs and protein - is being accessed for energy at any given point in time. Or, to use matt182's term, which - among fat, carbs and protein - is the ' predominant ' fuel being used.
As I said before - at rest - you burn somewhere around 70% of your calories from fat and 30% from carbs and probably a very small % from protein. If you start to do aerobic cardio, you still burn both fat and carbs but since you tend to get winded a bit doing cardio, the proportion of fat and carbs you use changes from what you might use at rest since fat burning is very oxygen dependent. So, the harder intensity of cardio you do ( i.e HIIT ) the less fat you'll burn ( due to less oxygen ) and the more carbs you'll burn ( which don't need oxygen to burn ). BUT even when doing some high intensity cardio you still will burn some small amounts of fat along with carbs. And if your cardio is of the less intense ( ie, than HIIT ) but more of the long steady endurance variety, you'll burn not only fat and carbs but an increasingly a larger % of protein....you in such a case, you burn all 3 at the same time.
" Just after meals we burn mainly carbohydrate, while between meals we burn more fat " - sorry, I'm not sure what they're driving at here as it intuitively makes no sense to me.
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I don't have time for a super long lengthy explanation, but energy source is based first and foremost on intensity of activity, which in turn may be influenced by availability of the sources of energy (carbs, fats, and proteins, as well as oxygen supply during activity). You never utilize any single substrate exclusively, but one source (fat, carb, etc) may be the predominant source, depending on the activity. And contrary to popular body-builder myth, the body tends to try not to use protein as a significant energy source. They are too important in cellular function and tissues to be "wasted" as energy if it can be helped, and we never would have survived as a species throughout our history if protein wasn't preserved in the body...it can and will be used for energy, but it's not even close to being the "first" source and choice for energy under most circumstances...
I get what your saying. But I was under the impression that a singular energy source can be used by itself when someone respitory quotient reaches a high enough value is this correct? or nah
Nah. You are always using more than one energy source.
Become an alcoholic and see what happens. I am sure you will not get super lean.Also alcohol can be stored. Alcohol is a carbohydrate, though there are 7 calories per gram as opposed to 4. The human body breaks alcohol down into fatty acids. (which can be stored as..... guess what...... FAT)
Now just some basic info.
At rest the human body uses fat, on average, for 70% of energy used, and carbs for 30% of the energy used. (protein as an energy source is negligible at this point)
As activity increases the percentage of fat used goes down and the percentage of carbs used goes up.
(the above % examples are averages and will vary some from person to person)
It takes pretty extreme circumstances for the body to start catabolizing muscle for energy. It does not happen as easily as most people may think.
OH, and +rep for bipennate.