There’s this one train of thought called CICO (calories in/calories out), there are practitioners that have said for years that if you take in less calories than you burn, you’ll lose weight and get in shape. Unfortunately, that’s one of those generalities that I was alluding to yesterday. Often it does not work quite like that.
When you ingest calories, your body does one of three things with them: 1. Uses them right away 2. Stores them as glycogen in your muscles for quick use 3. Stores them as fat in case it needs them later. For the most part, your body does number 2 or 3, but people usually have some free glucose in their bloodstream, also.
In the simplest terms, when you exercise or are active, your body likes to get the glycogen out of your muscles to perform whatever you need to do. If you’re not finished in 3 minutes or so, your body decides that it’s going to need energy from elsewhere. The first place it looks is for free glucose in your bloodstream and it uses it for energy. That gives it time to start burning fat to get energy if it is needed, but that’s a slower process.
Essentially if you don’t work out or aren’t active long enough or at a high enough intensity, your body will not tap into your fat cells to get energy. It will satisfy its needs from the glycogen stores in your liver and muscles or even simpler directly from the glucose in your blood.
It is hard to find the right balance of nutrition and activity to make solid, lasting lifestyle changes, but like I said before, I am glad to help.