The secret wish that every person who wants to drop extra fat, lose weight, and get fit is to burn excess fat, but how does this “fat-burning process” take inside the body? Calorie deficit is the route through which weight loss happens. And a calorie deficit happens when you consume lesser calories through food than you can burn each day. When there’s calorie deficit, the body reaches for its fat stores to source the required energy, and as more and more fat deposits around the body gets used up, weight loss happens! Fat burning happens through an extensive process called “lipolysis,” where fat gets broken down into an energy form, gets oxidized or burned inside energy factories of the cell (called “mitochondria”). But before that, they get converted into fatty free acids to be utilized as fuel by the cells. This entire process is called lipolysis. There are two major types of fat found in the human body – white and brown. White fat is found all over the body, around the waist, thighs, hips – all that fat is called “stubborn” because it’s much more resistant to fat burning than brown fat. Brown or adipose fat helps to regulate body temperature and found typically around the sides of the neck, upper arms, shoulder, upper back area, between the shoulder blades, and the side of the upper spine. For faster weight loss to happen, we need to activate brown fat because it transfers energy from food into heat form. When activated, brown fat tends to burn 20% of food intake, amazing, isn’t it! Now the issue is that we do not have much of brown fat in the body, most of the excess calories get deposited in “white” form and does not respond readily to burning. But the good news is that research has revealed another variety of fat that lives within white fat, and it’s called “beige” fat which also burns calories to generate heat. When activated, it’s possible to convert white fat into beige through a process called as “browning,” so that the body is more efficient at burning energy, and weight loss happens at a faster pace.
Brown Fat, White Fat, and Beige Fat:
So, essentially, there are three type of fats in the body – white, brown, and beige. While majority of it is white, a small portion is brown. White fat stores lipids and brown fat burns energy. So, ideally, for weight loss to happen, there should be more brown fat that would readily burn more calories and less of white fat which is “stubborn” and resistant to fat burning. As we have mentioned previously, when excess calories are consumed through the diet, most of it gets stored in white fat cells as lipids or fatty acids. With continued calorie surplus intake, white fat cells increase in size to accommodate more fatty acids. The function of brown fat is to generate heat by burning up fatty acids and it can generate 300 times more heat than any other tissue in the body. Brown fat can burn calories at a very high rate, and while white fat stores energy, brown fat uses it. So, if someone can manage to burn extra 200 or 300 calories a day through their brown fat, they can shed weight quite fast.
Coming to beige fat, it mimics brown fat, is thermogenic in nature, uses up a lot of calories, and is found inside white fat. Now, beige fat, can be generated from white fat through a process called “browning,” which is not an easy task but still possible. In this post, we would throw light on different ways to induce the browning process of white fat, so that more and more fat storage gets used up and you can lose weight rather well.
11 Ways to Activate Beige Fat inside the Body to Lose Weight:
1. Turn Down the Thermostat: Beige fat behave just like brown fat cells, they’re thermogenic, and consume lots of energy, and happen through a process called browning, and that can happen majorly through exposure to cold temperatures. Cold temperature can stimulate browning and cause beige fat to use up energy and produce heat. In fact, brown fat burns off more calories to maintain the core temperature of the body when you lower down the temperature and sleep in a relatively cold environment, but remember not to freeze yourself out.
2. Exercise in Cold Temperature: Swimming in cold water and exercising outside in cold weather or with the air conditioner on can stimulate some amount of white fat to heat generating beige fat.
3. Build a Strong Gut: A healthy gut and good bacteria helps with development of beige fat when there is restricted calorie intake. Apart from including a lot of probiotics in your diet, here’s how you can “Improve Gut Health to Lose Weight.”
4. Calorie Deficit: Maintaining calorie deficit is absolutely necessary for losing weight, and to stimulate browning of white fat. The weekly diet programs on the Rati Beauty app help you to be calorie deficit so that you can drop weight by eating the right kind of food.
5. Resveratrol in Fruits can Trigger Browning: Resveratrol can accelerate the conversion of white fat to beige fat. Inclusion of berries such as blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, and fruits such as grapes, apple, vegetables such as cabbage and spinach can help convert excess white fat into beige fat. Resveratrol is an antioxidant which also neutralize the harmful effects of free radicals, accelerating the fat-burning process.
6. Coffee: Not only does a cup of coffee stimulate burning of brown fat, it also facilitates the browning of white fat too.
7. Green Tea: Just like caffeine, green tea too is found to increase energy expenditure and boost conversion of white adipose tissue to beige fat.
8. Capsaicin: Capsaicin is the active ingredient in peppers, cayenne pepper, and capsicum, and is found to activate brown fat.
9. Turmeric: The compound curcumin, has been found to induce fat browning in animals. The next time around, say yes to turmeric latte because turmeric does boost the overall weight loss process.
10. Balance out Blood Glucose, Cut Down Sugar: People with lower glucose levels tend to have more brown fat, so there you go, give up refined sugar completely, and see your weight drop down really well.
11. Eat the Whole Apple: Apart from having weight-loss friendly “fiber,” apple has a compound called ursolic acid that is found in high concentrations in apple peels and increases brown fat percentage, also improves glucose tolerance. Plums, prunes, holy basil, peppermint, blueberries, cranberries, also have a high amount of urosolic acid that can make more brown fat out from the adipose tissue.
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