body fat this wonderful tissue that is responsible for countless gym memberships millions of Google searches and the many different diet and exercise plans that are out there so clearly fat gets a lot of our attention we wonder about how it makes us look and more importantly how it influences our health the problem is fat is often misunderstood So today we're going to dive into the fascinating world of fat we're going to show you how it looks on the cavers discuss some of its essential functions and how it influences certain health conditions like diabetes and heart
dise disease and of course talk about the best way to lose fat as well as touch on the truths and myths about this elusive fat burning Zone it's of course going to be a lot of fun so let's jump right into this anatomical [Music] awesomeness so let's start with the basics what is fat fat is technically known as adapost tissue which is actually a type of connective tissue and if you were to zoom in and zoom in to this adapost tissue that you can see on the underside of the skin dissection you would see that
it's made up of specialized cells called atpo sites these cells are like tiny warehouses for storing fats in the form of triglycerides which are molecules made up of a glycerol and Three fatty acids and as you can see with this picture the triglycerides are stored as a large centrally located droplet and because the cell fills up with a single large triglyceride droplet the cytoplasm and nucleus are kind of pushed or smooshed out of the way to the periphery of the cell and as a person gains weight the triglyceride droplet gets bigger so then the cell
gets bigger and if a whole bunch of these cells get bigger then the overall adapost tissue increases in thickness and adapost tissue can range from millimeters thick all the way up to several cenm or inches thick what is also interesting about adapost tissue is that as you gain more of it it will develop or grow new blood vessels so when someone gains a substantial amount of adapost tissue they will have many more blood vessels compared to someone that is lean and due to this increase in Blood and blood vessels the heart has to work harder
and can cause someone to have high blood pressure which is also known as hypertension you've probably heard of 120 over 80 as being the normal we generally try to Target as normal blood pressure and because of this relationship with the adapost tissue and blood pressure you might think that one of the lifestyle modifications for reducing blood pressure is to try to lose weight and countless Studies have confirmed that losing adapost tissue is in fact an effective way to lower blood pressure one study in particular showed that the blood pressure could decrease anywhere from 0.5 to
2 mm of mercury for every kilogram of weight lost now most adapost tissue in adults is white or white adapost tissue but another type of fat that is more widespread in the fetus and infant is brown fat or brown adapost tissue which obtains its darker color from a very rich blood supply as well as from numerous pigmented mitochondria that participate in a special form of aerobic cellular respiration which we'll talk about in just a minute but coming back to this white adapost tissue white adapost tissue can also be further subdivided by its location and this
does have some important Health implications white fat located just below the skin but on top of the muscles is referred to as subcutaneous fat and this is the fat that many are concerned with when it comes to losing weight because from an Aesthetics perspective the thinner that subcutaneous fat is the easier it is to see those Rippling muscles underneath however there's also visceral fat which is a deeper fat because it surrounds the internal organs and the word visceral actually translates to pertaining to internal organs now visceral fat is sometimes referred to as the more dangerous
fat but too much of subcutaneous or the visceral fat is linked to numerous health conditions but it is true that more research is showing that visceral fat tends to have a stronger link to certain health conditions such as type 2 diabetes and here on this particular body this body actually has what you'd consider a unhealthy amount of visceral fat you can see how thick it is on surrounding the intestines and you can even see a high amount surrounding and engulfing the heart to the point where you can't even really make out the shape of the
heart whereas if you look at this body over here this is a more normal amount of visceral fat where you can definitely make out the shape and form of the heart now in some ways we are trained to think that fat is always a bad bad thing but fat like many other processes in the human body follows the Goldilocks principle you don't want too much of it you don't want too little of it you want to have just the right amount now granted with our virtually unlimited access to food these days we for sure deal
with having too much of it more than we do with having too little of it but there are situations where certain Eating Disorders can lead to dangerously low amounts of fat especially in females too low of body fat can interfere with the menstrual cycle reproductive health and even bone health but even certain bodybuilders can get to levels that are unsustainable and would be even considered unhealthy in the long term but the point is fat does have some extremely important functions and from an evolutionary perspective we and other animals would not have survived without it so
what are some of the essential functions of fat now one thing we are going to learn in just a second is that excess fat can convert testosterone into estrogen which can contribute to low testosterone in men but fat is not the only place testosterone can get converted into something that leads to a less than ideal outcome you see testosterone can get converted to dihydrotestosterone or DHT in the hair follicles of the scalp and this is one of the factors that can result in hair loss luckily if you're one of those who is concerned about hair
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interested visit the link in the description and use our coupon code ioha to get $625 off the IR restore Elite device and now let's get back to the functions of fat and how to lose it fat functions to store an incredible amount of calories and before us humans had easy access to food we didn't know when our next meal was going to be so when humans and other animals went for extended periods of time without food fatty acids could be released from the atpo cells and into the bloodstream for other tissues and cells throughout the
body to use as an energy source and I've always been impressed by these numbers one pound of fat is worth about 3,500 calories so if you had a 180 lb individual that was fairly lean at say like 10% body fat that means they would have about 18 lbs of fat times that by 3500 and that would be 63,000 calories and if that 180 lb person was at 15% body fat that would mean that individual would have almost 100,000 calories of energy reserves white fat is also an incredible insulator meaning that it helps reduce the amount
of heat that is lost from the skin think about certain animals like a polar bear and how they survive in the Arctic but Brown fat also helps with body heat but in a different way Brown fat has a different and special type of mitochondria normally we think of mitochondria as utilizing or burning fatty acids to generate energy in the form of ATP but the mitochondria that are in brown fat utilize or burn fatty acids to generate heat rather than ATP and there's some very interesting research about if we can increase our amount of brown fat
or at least produce more of these special mitochondria in the brown fat that we already do have through deliberate cold exposure and we cover that more in our cold plunge video that I'll link at the end fat also functions as a protective cushion for our internal organs and also acts as somewhat of an endocrine organ that produces certain hormones such as leptin which helps regulate hunger and long-term energy balance and fat even releases estrogen which is the main female sex hormone but even though fat has some essential functions excess fat can disrupt insulin sensitivity which
will increase blood sugar levels and ultimately lead to diabetes excess fat has also been linked to Chronic inflammatory conditions as fat can release inflammatory molecules called cyto kindes there's also some evidence showing that high percentages in body fat in men can lead to lower testosterone levels because fat can convert testosterone into estrogen and of course there are links to various cardiovascular conditions such as coronary artery disease problems with cholesterol and high blood pressure which we talked about earlier so if excess fat is linked to all these different health conditions is there a best way to
get rid of it like is there really a fat burning Zone that turns you into this magical fat burning machine and can you control where you pull the fat from now when you exercise you are burning calories from both fats and carbohydrates but the ratio or the percentage of those calories coming from fats versus carbs varies based on exercise intensity and as exercise intensity goes up you start to shift more and more towards burning higher a higher percentage of carbohydrates so technically it is true that you can get to a zone or a level of
exercise intensity where you could maximize the amount or percentage of those calories that are coming from fat and I actually go into the exact numbers in a lot of detail in another video where we compare burning fats versus carbs and I'll link that at the end but even though this isn't the most popular thing to say percentages of carbs being burned versus fats is not the most important factor for weight loss the most important factor for weight loss that has been shown time and time again is creating a calorie deficit meaning if you want to
lose fat you want to burn more calories than you consume regardless of how many of those calories are coming from fats versus carbohydrates and again what we find with exercise is that the greater the intensity the more calories you burn now it is important to note that burning calories is only one side of the equation you can also limit the amount of calories going in with your diet furthermore I wouldn't recommend that someone just go all out at the highest intensity possible during every exercise Session One you would be at risk for overtraining any an
injury and two that's not a balanced approach to your overall Fitness and even though the fat burning Zone isn't the Zone where you would actually burn the most calories it does have some important utility but for some other reasons yes for those of you that have been watching us for a while I'm going to mention zone two again but the fat burning zone is pretty much zone two training and the benefit of spending some time in this Zone regardless of weight loss goals is that it is great for building your aerobic base which is definitely
an energy system you want to develop because on top of the obvious cardiovascular benefits it tends to stimulate the development of more mitochondria which is great for metabolic Health such as reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes and of course you also want to incorporate higher intensity sessions per week depending on your fitness goals and I try to get my patients to do at least one high-intensity or VO2 max session once per week on top of their aerobic Base building plus multiple strength training sessions each week and the last thing I'll mention is that fat
loss is systemic not local meaning we kind of need to forget about spot reduction those 100 crunches can definitely strengthen your rectus abdominis but they won't pull from your belly fat stores your body decides where it pulls fat from so unfortunately we don't get a say in that aspect of fat loss but fortunately we do get some say in the overall amount that we can burn so thank you for watching everyone if you don't mind please contract your flexor digitorum muscles and click that like And subscribe button and we'll see you in the next video
