Fats and Exercise -

Fat: An Additional Energy Source During Exercise

Many have often heard the hazardous risks fats pose to our body. Yes, from the health standpoint, fats are hazardous. Excessive consumption of certain types of fat will contribute to coronary heart disease, cancer and obesity among others things. Therefore, many recommendations have been given to reduce the fat intake to a reasonable level.

From the athletic standpoint, however, dietary fats do contain several essential nutrients that serve a variety of important functions in human nutrition. One of the most important functions fat provides for an athlete is energy.

What are Dietary Fats? Understanding the Basics

To understand what fats an athlete needs, we have to dig down to biochemistry. But stay here, it's worth it!

Fat consists of several substances called lipids. Lipids are a class of organic substances. There are three major types of lipids: triglycerides, cholesterol and phospholipids. Although all three types play an important function in the body's processes, we will try to concentrate on the first two.

Triglycerides, or the true fats are the principal form in which fats are eaten and stored in the human body. They are also divided into two other categories, known as fatty acids and glycerol.

Fatty Acids are chains of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen atoms that vary in length and in degree of saturation with hydrogen. The main thing to know about fatty acids is that they provide fuel for exercises of low to moderate intensity. Once you start exercising, specific hormones secreted during exercise cause your fat tissue to release fatty acids into the bloodstream. Combined with fat pools within the muscle, they supply most of the energy needed for exercises of low to moderate intensity. Glycogen and blood glucose will supply the rest. See Carbohydrates for athletes.

The use of fat by your body depends not only on the intensity of your workouts, but also on their duration. As the time spent exercising increases, the contribution of fat to the energy demands also increases. In fact, fat may supplies as much as 60 to 70% of the energy needed during exercise of moderate intensity which lasts 4 to 6 hours. As the time of your exercise increases, the glycogen stores become depleted, that's where you have to decrease the intensity of a workout to depend more on fat metabolism.

Keep in mind that muscle glycogen is the primary fuel for most forms of exercise. Fat is available in the form of fatty acids as fuel for 30 to 60 minutes of continuos exercise. This doesn't mean, however that a person needs to exercise for an hour to lose body fat. When the workout creates a caloric deficit, the body then pulls from its fat stores at a later time to make up that caloric deficit.

What is the RDI of Fat for an Athlete?

Saturated fats (see below) should account to no more than 10% of your calorie intake, or best avoided at all. In trying to estimate the best intake of fats, some researchers have pointed out to highly athletic groups such as Tarahumara Indians. Interesting fact is that even in their 50's, both men and women of this Mexican tribe perform fantastic running feats of 100 miles or more on diets that get only 9-12% of their calories form fat. Other researchers found low rates of degenerative disease in countries such as Japan. Calories from fat rich up to 15% in Japanese diet.

The amount of fat you should take also depends on what type of sport you play. If you are a runner, your daily fat intake will be much lower than that of a heavy-weight boxer. Keep in mind, however, that every once of extra body fat increases the energy needed to move your body, and thus, reduces your maximum possible speed. Therefore, except for the essential fatty acids, the only fat you should eat is that which you can't avoid. Aim to keep total fat intake below 15% of daily calories. For example, in a 3,000 calorie diet, 15% is only 450 cal. That equals to 50 grams of fat. About 20 grams will be unavoidable saturated fats.

What foods will improve my performance without harming my body?

There is one more thing we didn't talk about! Saturated and unsaturated fats. It is important to understand those and to limit the intake of saturated fats, which are harmful to your body. Here's why. Saturated fat as the name implies, have all their carbon atoms "saturated" with hydrogen. In simple terms, they will not hold any more hydrogen, which means that the places that supposed to hold hydrogen atoms don't exist, unlike unsaturated fats, which do contain empty links. "What's the deal about links?" You may ask. Well, the absence of links make saturated fats virtually inert. Their only biological role is as calories, to be burned for energy. Notice, however that most athletes carry more energy reserve of fat than they will ever use, they have no need for saturated fat. Therefore, try eliminating saturated fats from your diet!

Avoid cooking your meals on peanut, palm and coconut oils - they are the ugly oils. When eating meat or fish, take off the fat. Try substituting poultry for meats, when possible. Fish can also be an excellent source of calcium! Some products in milk groups are high in saturated fat. Substitute whole milk for 1% or skim milk.

The word "cholesterol" is known to all of you. It is indeed a "bad word" for your body. High blood cholesterol levels are responsible for heart disease. Stay away from it. The yolks on eggs contain a lot of cholesterol. So do many of the animal products, such as bacon, hamburgers, salmon, and processed meats (bologna, etc.)

So what fatty foods can you eat? Try substituting the two categories above with monousaturated and polyunsaturated fats. For oils, use vegetable ones, such as corn, canola and sunflower. Substitude low-fat dairy products for high-fat dairy products, such as whole milk, cheese, ice creams and yogurt. Be more ware of "hidden fat" in foods such as hamburger, french fries, granola, bakery goods, avocados, chips, nuts and many highly processed foods.

Although, fat does add taste to our food, keep us from getting hungry for longer periods of time, is the most concentrated source of food energy, it should be a limited nutrient in your body. Recognizing the "right" kinds of fats as described above will make you a smart eater and limit the amounts of "ugly fats" in your body. It does take patience and practice, but will pay off at the end.

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