‘Why is it harder to lose fat around the stomach area than anywhere else as I seem to lose it everywhere apart from my stomach?’

I got asked a very unique question by a client and that was ‘Why is it harder to lose fat around the stomach area than anywhere else as I seem to lose it everywhere apart from my stomach?’

Answer:
What do we actually mean when we talk about ‘burning’ bodyfat? We mean that the fat stored in the fat cell is removed and ‘burned’ as energy. Most tissue in the body can use fat for the fuel, but the main one for our purpose is muscle tissue.
The 3 major steps of fat metabolism are mobilisation, transport and oxidation? (Burning).

Mobilisation:
Body fat is essentially stored triglyceride with a small amount of water. Mobilising fat requires that we first break down the triglyceride into free fatty acids. The single step that limits how quickly or slowly fat is mobilised is the activity of an enzyme called Hormone Sensitive Lipase or HSL.

The only hormones to effect the HSL activity is Insulin and Catecholamines

Insulin is the main inactivator of HSL and it only takes small amounts to have a detrimental effect.

The main activators of HSL are Catecholamines. They have their own specific receptor called adrenoreceptors. There are two major adrenreceptors beta and alpha, which are found all over the body. The main receptors in the fat cells are alpha 2 receptors and beta 1-2 receptors both of which actively bind to catecholamines.

When catechomlines bind to beta receptors they increase fat break down. However when they bind to alpha receptors fat break down decreases.

It’s important to realise that insulin pretty much wins the battle over fat cell metabolism. Regardless of catecholamine levels if insulin is elevated, fat mobilisation with be impaired.

Transport:
Once we break down the stored body fat into free fatty acids which enter the blood stream. Since the free fatty acids can’t be burned in the blood stream, it has to be transported away from the fat cell; depending on the blood flow from to and from the cell.

Fat deposits also differ in term of blood flow. Visceral fat for example has an extremely high blood flow and is therefore mobilised fairly easily and generally is reduced the fastest (especially with exercise) Abdominal fat has less blood flow and is sensitive to the catecholamines, (not as many beta receptors as other areas of the body) and more sensitive to insulin. This makes it more stubborn than visceral fat.

So poor blood flow, high insulin sensitivity levels, lower beta receptor around stubborn fat is why it is difficult to get lean.

How do we improve this?

The real world message is that we want higher blood flow, low insulin levels and high beta catecholamine levels. These can easily be achieved by altering eating habits (lowering carbohydrates) which decrease insulin levels and exercise (which with the right program increase catecholamines and blood flow)

Oxidation
Eventually the FFA (free fatty acid) will run into a tissue (e.g. muscle) which can use it for fuel. To be used, the FFA has to be transported into the mitochondria by carntine. When glycogen is high, carntine activity is low and fat burning is low, and vice versa. By depleting muscle glycogen, we can increase carntine activity, allowing us to burn of the fat faster rate.

As you can see – we ramp up fat metabolism very effectively with a combination of lowered carbohydrates and intensive exercise.

I hope you found this interesting to read, and I hope that, I have gave you a more understanding of burning fat and a snippet of how we create programs here at Results Weight Loss.

Sam Hanney (Head coach at Results Weight Loss)