Your Fat Burning Environment

Our calorie sources, activities, and environment that we keep ourselves surrounded with will not only shape us mentally and physically but will also shape our health and next generation of body cells as well. 

 These 3 are separated below, so that you can pinpoint weak spots that may be causing sticking points in your weight loss goals, (however, when these three are combined, you have a fat burning tool chest)!

 1. Our Calorie Sources: the choices we make for our calories dictates to the body our intention for our energy needs. This is why, when we eat or drink something that absorbs rapidly, it puts a lot of glucose/sugar in our blood for energy. If this energy is not needed due to inactivity, our body will store this extra energy in our fat cells causing them to get bigger. And since our body burns off sugars first, it will not release stored fat into our blood to burn until our sugar is low enough to switch energy sources.

 When we eat excess calories, especially the fast-absorbing ones and we don’t burn this extra off through exercise or activity, our insulin if working properly will remove it from our blood to keep from a sticky mess happening in our blood supply and our body parts!

 The neat thing about our body is that it knows how to release an energy snack into our system when we need it badly enough and it does this by releasing the calories we have stored in our fat cells, body fat is simply stored energy.

 Remember when eating lean or very low calorie for several days you should have a cheat meal, (where you eat and drink pretty much anything you want). This cheat meal simply helps reset your metabolism at a higher level.   

 2. Activities & Exercise: this is important since activities and exercise not only burn calories while being active but also help you continue to burn calories through the toned muscles these activities and exercises help create. The more toned muscle you have the higher your metabolism will be. One pound of muscle will burn approximately 13-17 calories a day. Activating these muscles will change it to a higher calorie burn rate, sort of like a car that burns fuel if left idling but will burn even more when revved up or in motion. 

 Simply put, activity and exercise help clear the system of excess energy so insulin will not have to tote it off to store in our fat cells for later.

 3. Our Environment: getting family, friends, and co-workers to support our fitness lifestyle can be of big benefit not only to us, but it can have a ripple effect on the ones around us! We gradually become like our environment, so it’s very important to keep things and people around that have a positive impact and not a negative one on our fitness goals!

 Surrounding ourselves with foods such as fish, chicken breasts, turkey, (occasional good quality red meats), eggs, beans, dark colored vegetables, sweet potato, quinoa, brown rice, whole grain pasta, fermented vegetables and snacks such as apples, nuts, peanut butter (without the bread), and water as primary hydration source, simply crowds out a lot of other things that are not conducive to building health or physique! 

Water note: Drink enough water that urine is pale in color. Cold water helps your body burn more calories.

 When you combine a cleaned-up fitness environment, active lifestyle, and good dietary choices with water as a fluid of choice you have a fat burning tool chest that helps turn that stored energy (body fat) into a burnable fuel!