Understand how to burn fat – calculate the proper carbohydrate intake

The “power house” of the muscles, the so called “mitochondria”, only can use glykogen directly, so everything you  eat has to be broken down into glycogen before the muscle can effectively use it.

How to control fat burning

To understand how you can burn fat or loose weight you first have to know how your body stores “fat” as an energy source. This will lead to an understanding how to avoid gaining weight and how to lose weight. This simple process has its roots in the metabolism of carbohydrates.

Glycogen is the most important energy source of the human body which supplies organs and cells. A lack of glycogen results in a disturbance of the function of organs and cell metabolism.

The blood sugar level has a central function in the carbohydrate metabolism, which is mainly determined by the supply, consumption and storage of glucose as glycogen in the liver.

There are different kinds of carbohydrates, monosaccharide, disaccharide and polysaccharide. Disaccharide and polysaccharide are broken down in monosaccharide so that the energy can be resorbed in the small intestine. From there it is transported with blood circulation to cell metabolism and transported primary to the liver.
To store glucose in the liver it has to be broken down into glycogen. About 150 g glycogen can be stored in the liver and in the muscles.

If you follow a physical activity this will be the first depot to take energy from because the body can transform it into energy quickly.

If the storages in the liver and the muscles are fully charged with glycogen, the rest will be stored as fat – that is the critical point to know for a proper nutrition. If you eat to much carbs, and keep on eating, more and more fat is stored in your body. So keep on calculating properly the necessary intake ( check the food section to understand how to calculate the proper carbohydrate intake)

This is the basis knowledge of a “low carb diet” and how it works – and why you should always adopt your carbohydrate intake to your level of physical activity – and last, but not least: this is the reason why you should drop your carbohydrate intake if you want to loose weight.