There is some misinformation produced on social media regarding nutrition, exercise, metabolism, and hormonal response to promote an agenda or sell products. Information and product promotion are not always detrimental by any means. The problem becomes that many use the consumer’s lack of knowledge and poor, limited, or biased research to promote claims, ideas, philosophies, or products. The purpose of this document is to provide information on healthy nutrition, metabolism, and hormones to aid consumers in making informed decisions on specific health topics. The topic is healthy fat burning. The assumption is that many Americans wish to lose body fat in a healthy manner. The loss of body fat is not necessarily synonymous. People have committed to poorly designed programs, losing ten or twenty pounds but maintaining the same body fat percentage. This has been seen several times during a thirty year career.
It is important to explain how healthy fat burning takes place. One pound of fat is equal to 3500 calories. That means an individual must expend and or create a caloric deficit of 3500 calories to burn one pound of fat. This is usually done through proper caloric intake and expenditure through exercise. This should be done at a target heart rate and percentage of VO2 max, but that is a subject for another time or article. On social media there are many fad diets and approaches making claims to entice people to adopt a philosophy or buy products such as supplements, meal plans, cookbooks, or subscribe to one channel or another. The goal is to explain physiology without getting into a long biochemistry or organic chemistry lesson.
The ketogenic diet claims to burn fat, boost metabolism, and use ketones for energy which are presented as a better energy source than carbohydrates. There is a certain amount of energy needed to burn fat efficiently. Reducing the amount of carbohydrates consumed, especially those with a high glycemic index and low in fiber is beneficial for weight and fat loss. The problem with this diet regimen restricts to five percent or less of daily caloric intake. This approach relies on very high fat consumption to replace carbohydrates and leads to the formation of ketones. As a juvenile onset insulin dependent diabetic, the formation of ketones means that my metabolism and health is severely compromised. The argument that this is so unhealthy for some people and optimal for health in others borders on delusional. We are all human beings with the same bodily functions, PH, etc. The brain and nervous system rely almost solely on glucose for fuel. Therefore, reducing carbohydrates so drastically can be very dangerous. When in a starvation state or unhealthy inadequate carbohydrate ingestion, the body will form ketones which is a product of incomplete fat breakdown. Fat can provide a lot of energy but breaking it down for utilization takes much longer than carbohydrates. In extreme carbohydrate depletion or starvation. The body starts the fat breakdown process to use for energy but does not have enough time or energy to complete the process. This promotes ketone formation, protein breakdown from dietary sources or muscle, and massive conversion of substrates to a usable energy source through gluconeogenesis to maintain normal brain, nerve, and muscular function. This is very hard on the body especially the liver. The liver must provide energy substrates through gluconeogenesis and manufacture bile to deal with the excessive fat ingested using the keto diet. The liver produces bile, the gall bladder stores and releases into the intestine in response to dietary fat consumption. Ry the high fat consumption used, the gall bladder and liver are working overtime. The suggestion is that carbohydrate reduction can be beneficial, but it does not have to be this extreme. The recommendation is using an adequate calorie count and reducing carbohydrates as low as thirty percent of daily caloric intake. The benefits include a metabolism boost, muscle maintenance rather than loss, complete fat breakdown, healthy blood lipid profile, normal gall bladder, liver, brain, and nerve function. As mentioned previously, the goal is not just weight loss, but healthy weight loss using solely stored fat as the substrate.
One other social media post that was found interesting was one that said food was used for boosting testosterone levels to burn fat. Some think that steroid use will make someone lean. This idea is widely accepted, but not true. Testosterone and other steroids do not directly burn fat. Steroids are derivatives of cholesterol and include many classes of hormones. Steroids have cholesterol as the base and pass through the phospholipid bilayer of the cell wall into the nucleus where it stimulates the DNA to exert its effect in the cell. Other hormones bind to the outside of the cell and use e second messenger inside the cell to produce an effect. Cholesterol derivatives include many classes of hormones such as mineralocorticoids, glucocorticoids, androgens, estrogens, and others. Testosterone is a nineteen-carbon steroid molecule derived from the twenty-seven-carbon cholesterol molecule. Normal testosterone level has many health benefits such as maintaining muscle mass. sex drive, spermatogenesis, ads secondary sex characteristics, but does not directly burn fat. It does help increase muscle mass that does increase caloric expenditure slightly throughout the day. Several ads on social media continuously promote burning fat by boosting testosterone levels. He needs a basic endocrinology lesson. Fat breakdown is started by epinephrine or adrenaline and maintained by growth hormone. Both are peptides. They are not classified as steroids, but testosterone is such a hormone that does not directly burn fat. The sole purpose here is provide useful information so that the public can make healthy, informed decisions