Brown Fat & Weight Loss – What Does This Mean For You?

This will NOT just be a re-hashing of what you’ve heard on the radio, or read in the newspaper. It’ll be worth your while to read the whole 500 words (3-4min).

This week’s latest piece of weight loss news is about brown fat, or brown adipose tissue (BAT).  In lean people it burns up extra calories, and BAT activity can be stimulated by being cold (so far,  this doesn’t sound very fun).  Lots of scientists and reporters are hoping that BAT will provide a new target for a drug to ramp up its activity and increase energy expenditure in the obese.

The hope is that making BAT more active will create a calorie deficit and thereby end the obesity epidemic.

Why This Is Probably a Stupid Idea

The problem with this idea is that it assumes that there is no physiological relationship between calories in and calories out – that hunger is all in our heads.  Its just a matter of mind over hunger for the rest of your life.  (Why didn’t I think about being hungry when I was obese?  Oh right, I did, and I was!  And no matter how many motivational seminars I went to hunger always won!)

The problem is that EVERYTHING that we know about metabolism says that energy in affects energy out and vice-versa.

You know, when you are on a very low calorie diet you unconsciously stop moving, your sex drive disappears and you don’t have the energy to do much of anything.  Also, long bouts of strenuous activity make you want to eat more.

So, my point is that, if you were able to successfully stimulate BAT to burn up extra calories, it would not matter.  Burning extra calories would probably just make the person hungry, and those calories would get replaced by increased eating, or by the person moving a whole lot less.  Yes, the person could use will power to move more and restrict their intake for a while, but eventually the hunger will catch-up and the fat will come back – usually with interest.

The body is not some dumb machine where you can just change one important thing without there being consequences somewhere else.  This is why “eat less and exercise more” fails 98% of the time over the long haul.  Most people can’t be hungry forever.

What Gary Taubes Has To Say – The REAL Question For Your Body Fat

If you ever been impressed or learned something from anything I’ve said or written, it’s probably because I got it from somebody smarter than me.  Because he is WAY smarter than me, I asked Gary Taubes about BAT today.  Here’s what Gary had to say:

“I doubt it [BAT activity] means much because ultimately you’re concerned with the regulation of the white adipose tissue, which is the problem — not the total energy expended, but the regulation of the fat tissue. Why does the fat tissue take up too much fat? Not, why does the body expend too little energy?”

It seems like we’ve missed the point again.  The problem is that the overweight and obese accumulate too much white fat.  What regulates white fat?  Insulin, and pretty much nothing else does.

Josef Brandenburg is Washington, DC’s #1 personal trainer for busy people.  He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have.  To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here.