20 Fascinating ways that sugar makes you fat..............

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It has always been indicated that it isn't easy to tap into your fat storage. So if someone is averaging a 500 calorie deficit for 30 days (15,000 Cal) does this mean the person will lose 4 1/4 lbs (1.92 Kg) at 3,500 calories per lb? I'm sure there's variance in that figure but let's assume.

My understanding is that energy is burned from other sources....but those sources have to be replenished by some means. Either by the food you eat or by glycogen from your liver, fat tissue, etc.

I've lost close to 9 lbs since March and would sort of put me in the ballpark of things and not have followed a super strict diet. (I say close because I could have been slightly dehydrated or have simply had less food in my system... I try to weight myself under the same conditions because of course I'm going to be lighter if I sweat a ton from running 7 miles).

Ah, indeed 1 pound of fat is 3500 calories, give or take. But fat is one of the last things to be used as energy source.

Carbohydrates are used first and foremost. Blood and intracellular glucose, then muscle glycogen, then liver glycogen and maaaaaaybe then fat will be considered. It's more complicated than just maintaining a calorie deficit or cutting out food or carbs, because the organism is ruled under strict signalling control that may respond to these events as a scarcity period, which means keeping fat reserves intact unless the most vital processes are jeopardized.

Ideally your work out and diet need to be directed neither at starving, fasting nor exhaustion, but to controlling your insulin levels (reducing intake of bad kinds of carbs and sugars and eating smaller portions more times a day are popular ways to attempt this) along with short spanned but high intensity exercise to put your organism on high oxygen consumption and thus, high rate of oxidative catabolism.

It's proposed that once you do this, you promote an evironment in which fat will be mobilized when the immediate glycogen reserves are depleted. By doing some muscle build up at the same time, you exchange adipose (energy storage) tissue for muscle tissue (energy spender), increasing your basal metabolic rate.

All of that ^ doesn't happen overnight and is not the result of extreme dieting or super killer work outs, but rather "smart" eating accompanied with appropiate types of work out. Carbs can't disappear from your diet, for example, but they need to be restricted to a certain percentage of the calories consumed per day and come from good sources (i.e. fiber rich whole grain bread instead of white processed flour bread).

Even then, not everyone has the same metabolism, so every one could have a different process and could take less or more time to get there.