Storing Extra Energy on Your Body - Fat

The human body requires a certain amount of energy or calories to continue to function adequately each day. Each person requires different amounts of energy. Because of this, your body adapts to the amount of food it consumes. If you eat more than you actually require, your body stores this as fat. Think of your body as a storage tank for extra energy. When you eat more than you need, the unused energy, whether it's fat or not, is stored on your body as fat. These are hidden reserves of energy your body stores away for later use.

Fat is the easiest type of energy for your body to store. It's ready for storage without any extra conversion. That means no energy is used to store fat since it's already fat. On the other hand, carbohydrates and proteins are not as easily stored and must go through a conversion process to become fat. During this conversion process, you will need additional energy to turn carbohydrates and proteins to fat. The net result is more energy is used to convert carbohydrates and proteins to fat.

Quick Tip #13: Fat is easily stored on our bodies since it requires no conversion. Carbohydrates and proteins are not as easily stored and require additional energy to convert to fat.

Fat has little place in a healthy lifestyle. You do need some fat, but overall, you can eat a low fat diet and still obtain the required amount you need. The single most important lesson you should get out of this book is to reduce the daily amount of fat you eat. If you can learn to control the amount of fat you consume, everything else begins to fall into place. You automatically control your total calories, because you're focusing on the composition of your calories: fat, carbohydrates and proteins. You just need to count fat grams. The key is knowing what amount of fat is in the food you eat. Nutritional labels like the one on page 19 allows you to make the correct decisions. Once you know what you are eating, it becomes simple to monitor the amount of fat you eat. Nutrition information is the power you need to combat fat! Read those labels!

Quick Tip #14: Reduce the amount of fat you eat. This is the most important point in this book.

Reducing Fat Intake...The Fat Game

It's easy to ask you to reduce your fat, but how do you actually do it? The best way to reduce fat is to make it a simple game.