The other day at the local gym a friend of mine just got done with a two-and-a-half mile run on the treadmill before hitting the free weights for a little weight training when someone politely told him, "hey, you are wasting your time doing that before lifting weights. You are burning up all of your energy that could be used into building muscle which helps burn calories at rest."
The guy nodded and stated that he was aware of that and, "if I do not run every single day then I put on weight like none other."
Let us take a look at that last statement for a second as it is possible that many of you find yourself in that exact same boat--if you do not do some cardiovascular activity every day then you will start to pack on the pounds.
What does this mean?
Well, in short, this means that your body is depending on carbohydrates for its primary energy source instead of utilizing fat both ingested and on the body for its fuel. We know this because carbohydrates are the most readily available and burn almost as soon as they hit the blood stream which tells us that a body that needs intense cardio to keep the weight off is depending on a significant carbohydrate intake throughout the day.
This also like means that their lean mass makes up a smaller percentage of their total body mass and suggests that their diet has been stripped of its fat content.
This system will work for a period of time but in the long run you are going to want your body to look towards both dietary fat and fat on the body for its primary energy source. It is a better burning fuel as it is more than twice the caloric load that carbohydrates are.
So how does a person burn more fat?
There are a couple of things that you can do to help ensure that your body becomes 'fat-dependent'.
The first thing that you have to do is significantly increase your dietary fat intake via healthy oils, nuts, and seeds. The idea behind this is if you keep feeding your body fat instead of carbohydrates it will have no choice but to start burning it and if you continue this trend long enough your body will adapt to this energy source. That is not to say that you should quit eating carbohydrates altogether but rather eat them in a dimished capacity or just eat more overall in general.
The other thing that you need to do in order to get your body to be more fat dependent is to spend more time with free weights instead of cardiovascular activity. All that cardio is doing is reducing your lean mass along with the food that you took in throughout the day and we need that lean tissue to help burn more calories when we are at rest. It does not have to be very long, they can be short sessions that utilize major compound exercises grouped together with minimal rest periods in between exercises.
If you find yourself needing that run to keep the weight off then your body is less fat dependent than others. Give those two steps a try and see if down the road you do not need that run to help keep you lean.
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