Can you tell me about fat mobilization and glucagon?

Hi Richard

Exercise has many effects that lead to fat loss:

1. the actual increase in calorie burning from the activity itself
2. the extra calories burned either from recovery or due to having bigger muscles that require more calories to maintain them on an hourly and daily basis.
3. the change in insulin and glucagon - decreased insulin and increased glucagon creates the perfect environment to deliver energy to the muscles, which increases both fat and carb burning because more carbs and fats are released into the blood and aren't getting stored due to the signalling of these hormones.
4. Increased growth hormone - this further increases the use of fat for fuel and builds joints and has a moderate effect on muscle building.
5. Increased testosterone - this increases the muscle-building process, which requires energy (and amino acids) to continue.

Many people concentrate too much on these hormonal effects but the main fat-burning effect comes from number 1 and number 2 above. Also, studies prove that you can dramatically increase protein synthesis during exercise by taking essential amino acids (EAAs) during training. This means that instead of net breakdown of muscle during training, you'd be experiencing net muscle growth ("net" muscle growth just means that the rate of muscle-building is greater than the rate of muscle breakdown - both of which are usually occurring in muscle simultaneously).

So take your EAAs before training and just get your overall training and diet in order by searching the Fitness Inventor site and forget about all of the hormonal minutia!

Thanks for that. Doing my precision nutrition cert and one of the questions in the workbook asked, what role does insulin play in protein synthesis? How could this be maximised via nutrition? And does fat become more easily mobilzed, transported and used with chronic exercise
? Why or why not? Will put your reply down! Cheers :)