On Muscle Type and Exercise.
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Striated muscle cells (note that this one is infected by larvae)
We’ve seen in the weight loss plan that exercise isn’t mandatory for fat loss. As long as there is a calorie deficit over time, and nothing gets in the way (cravings, resistance, …), then you will lose weight. Exercise can help, however, and understanding muscle cells will enable you to get the most out of it and optimize results.
The things that get in the way are generally the problem, which is why it is more than worthwhile to learn how it all works. It makes the difference. One of many reasons to subscribe on the top right of this page! Weight loss that works is one of the center themes on my blog.
Calories are almost always either stored or burned. The only exceptions are the proteins that are extracted from the blood by the kidneys, and the calories that never make it in the system (they do not pass the intestinal wall).
Today, we will focus on muscles, and you’ll understand how exercise can help you lose weight, how to pick the right kind, and why the answer to that question isn’t necessarily the same for you as anyone else.
Exercise is good for you, burns extra calories, increases metabolism, and makes you feel good.
Exercise releases endorphins, a molecule related to morphine that creates the relaxed, positive feeling you get from a good workout. Depending on what you do, it will have positive effects on cardio-vascular health, joints, will power, muscle mass…
It can burn a few hundred calories per hour (up to 1200 for intensive sessions), which isn’t the primary benefit. It increases metabolism (+ muscle mass), but that isn’t the primary benefit either.
The primary benefit is that it lowers resistance to insulin (increasing the number of glucose receptors in the cells).
Not everyone is made for the same type of exercise.
The reason for this is simple: there are two types of muscle cells, and everyone has a different proportion of each.
Since they are totally different, this plays a big part in determining just how different people are, and how they deal with energy (and fat) differently.
Type I muscles work for endurance effort.
There are many different kinds of sports, exercises or routines that can be used to burn more calories, which is ultimately necessary for fat loss. While calorie deficits do not necessarily require exercise, a good workout will slightly improve your metabolism (development of more muscle cells, a stronger heart) and it will help burn more calories.
All of the types of exercise you can choose from can be broken down into two categories: slow and fast movement.
Slow movement implicates type I muscle cells (red muscle cells).
Biological characteristics of red muscle cells and their importance for fat loss.
Red muscle cells do not have the same characteristics as their fast counterpart. They have a different mechanical structure and, more importantly, they process energy differently. Red muscle cells get the energy from the bloodstream for immediate use. They do not store much. This means that if you use them for long stretches of time (endurance sports such as jogging), they will need the bloodstream to constantly supply them with energy substrate.
If you run for an hour, the ability to regulate blood sugar using just glucagon and the glycogen in the liver will be insufficient. Glycogen storage in the liver would deplete dangerously and when it runs out, you would be unable to continue running and urgently need to eat carbohydrates to prevent your system from shutting down. Thankfully, a mechanism that shuts down the use of glucose and shifts your red muscle cells to a different source of energy kicks in gradually from the moment you start running (or practicing any kind of low to medium intensity effort).
That different source of energy is no other than fat (fatty acids that were released in the bloodstream by the adrenaline that was secreted as a result of physical effort). The mechanism that shifts from using glucose to using only fatty acids is called the Pasteur effect.
The fatty acids in the bloodstream are absorbed by your muscle cells, and enter the Krebs cycle in the mitochondria (a very important detail) where they will be catabolized into sugar, and ultimately ATP.
Does this mean that endurance effort is the ony way to burn fat?
No.
It is the only way to burn fat as a direct result of exercising. There is a very big difference.
Only cells that have mitochondria can use fatty acids for energy. Red muscle cells have plenty. White muscle cells, however, have very few. That means they are practically incapable of burning fat directly. But what counts isn’t the ability to burn fat directly. What counts is the ability to burn calories. White muscle cells can burn calories as well, and leave it to other cells to burn fat while they burn glucose (by breaking down glycogen storage, which they have plenty of).
This may all seem like plain trivia, but it isn’t. What makes these details extremely important is that each individual has a different proportion of red and white mucle cells. That means that each individual’s strategy for using exercise to enhance fat loss will depend on whether they have a red or white muscle cell predominance. At first, your efforts will concentrate on best using what you have available. If you want to become athletic, you will later aim for good balance between the two by developping the muscle type that you are lacking.
People that struggle with weight typically have a white muscle cell predominance. In some cases there are so few red muscle cells that the overall number of mitochondria in the body is so low that fat loss is made very difficult, or slow. In that case ketosis happens frequently (fatty acids are catabolized in the liver, which is dangerous). Medical supervision is especially required in those cases, and some development of red muscle cells through endurance training will be required before the body can become efficient enough for fat loss to occur.
This may be one cause for fat loss being difficult. There can be others, such as dehydration, lack of oxygen, poor lymphatic and blood circulation and resistance to insulin (glucose and fatty acids have a hard time entering your body’s cells). How to lose weight thus depends on individual characteristics, that lead to different fat loss strategies and a more or less important need for medical supervision.
Type II muscles are used for speed and strength movement.
For the subject at hand, it is important to note that type II muscles have very few mitochondria, and this makes them very poor fat burners.
However, it doesn’t mean strength and speed exercises need to be ruled out of your fat loss strategy.
Type II muscles get energy from glucose, and almost exclusively use anaerobic glycolisis for energy. This requires no oxygen, which is why you can lift heavy weights while holding your breath, like most power lifters do. This will turn you bright red, because the rest of your body does need oxygen as it runs partly on aerobic energy processing.
Anaerobic glycolisis may not be a good fat burner, but it is an excellent calorie burner. This is because it is energetically poorly efficient. This means that it will require a lot more calories to work.
So speed and strength movements bjurn very little fat (unlike slow, enduring movements, especially when the Pasteur effect has kicked in), but it burns a lot of calories in the form of glucose.
So how do you use speed and strength for fat loss?
White muscle cells store the energy that will be used for such exercises in the form of glycogen. When it runs out, it gets more sugar out of the bloodstream to rebuild its supply for the next round of speed/strength effort, but it can take days to restore that supply entirely. This is why after 5 reps you are burned out for the day and need to either move on to the next muscle group or call it a day.
By restoring glycogen supply, your white muscles use sugar that will no longer be available for the red muscles, as well as just about every cell in your body. They will therefore need to use fat that they can process in their mitochondria.
So while white muscle cells will not burn fat directly, they will cause all the other cells to do so… given there is an overall calorie deficit. This calorie deficit is easier to obtain using speed and strength because of the inefficient nature of anaerobic glycolisis.
But there are a few important points you need to be aware of. If you are too predominantly strength/speed profiled (too few red muscle cells), you have a lot less mitochondria that can burn fat. This means you will have to accept slow fat loss to avoid ketosis (very uncomfortable and unsafe).
In this case you will especially need medical supervision, and it may be required that you leave your comfort zone sooner to build some red muscle cells through endurance activity, despite the fact that that kind of exercise is very uncomfortable for you.
If that is the case, take things slowly. Rely on your strength abilities to some extent, but force yourself to build up your endurance. Naturally, if you start with very little, just walking will be great. Also consider swimming. Don’t try to go too quickly, and whatever you do, you should avoid ketosis.
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