The Economy of the Body

08 Aug The Economy of the Body

Our bodies are amazing!!! I’ve been doing some research about how our bodies work and I think we are truly walking miracles!  If you’re asking yourself why you don’t feel so great then, I hope this article will give you a little bit of insight into what we can do to interfere with the way our bodies are supposed to function, and how we can learn to remedy that.

Did you know that the majority of our activities are fueled by fat?  In our normal lives – when our body is functioning properly – our body burns the fuel that is the hardest to come by – fat, saving the stuff that’s even more easily converted into fuel – carbohydrates a.k.a. glucose, for times when it knows that more energy will need to go other directions besides fueling the body.  Let me give you a case in point.  In a “normally” functioning body that is just doing day to day things without any extra stresses, about half of the calories that are used come from fat.  You’re not burning a lot of calories, but you are burning fat calories.  Yay!!!!  When this “normally” functioning body starts to add stress – like extra exertion – our bodies start to burn a higher percentage of glucose, and a lower percentage of fat calories.  The more exertion we make, the more of those calories come from glucose.  Since our body is working harder to send oxygen to our muscles, it needs an easier way to fuel itself, so it starts using that easily available glucose to do the job.  After a certain point our economical bodies will realize that they need to fuel themselves entirely with glucose because that easily converts into energy, and they need to use the energy that has been converting fat to fuel to keep up with the exertion or stress that’s being placed on the body.  The point where this happens is VERY SPECIFIC to each individual, and can only be found by doing an exercise metabolism test.

Did you know that our bodies are so smart and economical that we can actually train them to burn glucose from the very beginning of a workout – even if during something as simple as a warm up period?  If we work out regularly at a high intensity level, our bodies begin to equate exercise with the need to burn the easiest fuel source available.  They will adapt so that the majority of the fuel comes from glucose right from the start of the workout.  So – at that point – we’ve trained our bodies out of our best fat burning opportunity.  Working out at a lower intensity level will help us retrain our bodies to be more efficient at burning fat.

Now, besides exercising at a point that our bodies no longer burn fat for fuel, our hormones can play a role in how economically our bodies work.   Anyone who has been into the office for a consultation will know what a role the hormone insulin plays when it is out of control.  High insulin levels wreak havoc on the economy of our bodies.  They basically put our bodies in glucose burning mode all the time because they prevent them from being able to convert fat to fuel.  This causes our bodies to constantly crave more of that easily converted fuel and we move into a vicious cycle of high insulin levels and craving the foods that keep those levels high. 

Our goal at Prolean Wellness is to help each of our clients move back to that economical body they were born with.  We want to help bring insulin levels down by choosing foods that won’t raise those blood sugar levels, and we want to help them learn to exercise economically – smarter, not harder – so that the body learns to fuel itself from fat more readily.  We send each of our Elite clients to Jeff Kitchen at Endurance Rehab for the exercise metabolism test that will give you the heart rate zones that are specific to each individual. Through this test clients can find out how to exercise so that they are burning optimal amounts of fat and not just carbohydrates when they exercise.