Last week I wrote about brown fat which sets us up nicely this week with fat loss tips which are a bit different.
How can you activate your brown fat which will help you burn up some of your excess body fat?
Brown fat is activated by exposure to cold. This is known because brown fat’s activity has been observed by scanning people at different temperatures.
At a nice comfortable temperature of 25°C no activity was picked up in brown fat.
But when the temperature was dropped to 19°C brown fat became active as it started generating heat by burning energy.
This isn’t the only thing that happens though. Hormones from activated brown fat travel in the blood and when they reach white fat some of it converts into brown fat. This process is known as ‘the fat browning phenomenon’.
Fat Loss Tips
I’m always learning about health and on a recent course cold exposure was one of the highlighted health benefits. I was dreading this bit to be quite honest!
But the benefits to general health, the cardiovascular system, and shedding white fat forced me into gritting my teeth and just getting on with it!
There are many ways you can expose yourself to cold and get all the benefits. The way I’m doing it right now is the alternating hot and cold shower. Basically I do what I need to do for a few minutes while it’s nice and warm, and afterwards start with the cold treatment.
For the next 5 minutes I alternate – 20 seconds cold, 10 seconds hot. Doing this in the morning before eating is the best time because your body has to draw on it’s own reserves to maintain its core temperature. If you do it after you’ve had calories your body will just use those.
Along with intermittent fasting and a fasted walk – that’s three pretty easy things you can do for your health and weight everyday!
Some people do this twice a day (I don’t!)
If you’re interested in finding out about an complete bad ass when it comes to benefits of cold exposure check out Wim Hoff.
He blows my mind. What’s more mind blowing is that anyone can train their body to do what he does. He actually runs retreats to train people (not currently on my list of things to do!)
He survives extreme cold by a number of processes. One of them is his brown fat generating heaps of heat to maintain his body temperature, burns loads of energy in the process.
Have a great week!
Dr Julie