WHAT TRIGGERS FAT STORAGE? AN IN-DEPTH GUIDE TO UNDERSTANDING STORED BODY FAT

Do you have any idea what triggers fat storage?

Do you truly understand the mechanisms by which your body takes the food you eat and transforms it into energy—or stored fat?

The truth is that cellular metabolism is an incredibly complex process that involves dozens of different enzymes and hormones.

In fact, it’s so complicated that science is still discovering more of its hidden secrets every year after decades of research.

Below, we’re going to dive into what triggers fat storage, taking a closer look at how the food you eat directly impacts your fat stores.

By the time you reach the end of this post, you’ll have a much better understanding of how fat is stored—and, of course, what you can do to AVOID it!

What Triggers Fat Storage? Understanding Stored Fat

The process of fat storage is incredibly complicated, but we’re going to streamline it to just the basics that will be easier to understand.

The process always begins with the food you eat. That food is turned into a form of energy that your body can use: glucose. Glucose is a simple sugar that provides the energy your cells need in order to function. Your body is designed to transform the majority of the macronutrients you eat—fat, carbohydrates, and protein—into glucose.

Your body absorbs the food you eat through your intestines, sending it to the liver to be transformed into glucose. That glucose is then released into your bloodstream in order to make sure there is enough energy available for your body to use.

While your liver is releasing glucose into your bloodstream, your pancreas produces insulin, a signaling hormone that tells your body’s cells that “dinner is served”. Insulin causes your muscle cells to absorb the glucose in order to have energy enough to function.

Unfortunately, insulin also tells fat cells to absorb and store glucose. This is great if you’re operating at an energy deficit—i.e., more energy burned than consumed. The human body has developed this energy storage mechanism to make sure you always have energy in situations where there is very little food available. By storing energy in fat cells, it’s stockpiling energy in case of an emergency.

Once upon a time, such food shortages were much more common. Now, with the modern food industry, it’s much easier for the average Westerner to have access to food. This means that, on average, there are very few (or almost no) days that you are at an energy deficit. We typically eat more than our bodies need to burn.

What this means is that the energy that is stored in our fat cells, courtesy of the insulin, is never actually utilized. When the glucose isn’t used, the body transforms it into fat for easy storage. Over time, the fat cells tend to build up because more and more energy is being added to existing stores. The more food you eat and the less energy you use, the more fat you gain.

Now, this simple deficit explanation is easy enough to understand. All you have to do to avoid gaining stored fat is to burn more energy than you consume in a single day. That’s what the vast majority of diet and exercise plans aim to do, which helps you to achieve not only weight loss, but the activation and usage of the glucose that has been turned into stored fat.

Unfortunately, what you eat matters as much as how much you eat. High-carbohydrate, low-fiber foods and simple sugars tend to be transformed into glucose very quickly by your body, so quickly, in fact, that your pancreas have to secrete a lot of insulin at once to stop your bloodstream from becoming oversaturated with glucose. This is called a “glucose spike” or “sugar rush” from a lot of glucose flooding your bloodstream at a time.

The insulin response to high glucose levels encourages your muscles and fat cells to absorb as much of the glucose as possible from your bloodstream. Unfortunately, if there are very high blood sugar levels—due to eating simple sugars or high-carb, low-fiber foods—more of the glucose gets stored in your fat cells than your muscle cells. This is especially true if you haven’t used your muscles (for workout or activity) and they are already filled with energy. All that extra glucose gets turned into stored fat, and you gain weight as a result.

The solution to avoid weight and fat gain is actually fairly simple, and it’s two-fold:

1. Eat less food. Consuming fewer calories per day and/or increasing your caloric expenditure (via exercise) will prevent your body from adding to your fat stores.

2. Eat less sugar-rich and high-carb/low-fiber foods. Cutting sugar from your diet and limiting low-fiber carbohydrates ensures that you never have a glucose spike that causes a massive production of stored fats.

It’s much harder to activate and burn stored fats than most people realize, so your best option is to PREVENT it by eating smart!

Want to Understand What Triggers Fat Storage? Learn More with Get Yoga Lean!

If you’ve been struggling with weight loss and diets your whole life, you’re probably pretty sick and tired of hearing the same tired old advice on how to “drop those pounds” or “get bikini ready”. We certainly were—that’s why we were so excited to create the Get Yoga Lean program.

Get Yoga Lean is a holistic approach to better health, fitness, and weight management, one that avoids all the unhealthy mindsets and habits of fad diets and trendy workout programs. It’s a mind-and-body program that encourages better health from the ground up, preparing you for better fitness, easier weight loss, and a healthier mental state.

Learn what triggers fat storage, how to prevent weight gain, why your mind and body are so tightly linked, and so much more with this amazing transformative program!