Burning off your favourite treat

By Gabrielle Maston

Have you ever wondered how much exercise it would take toburn off your treat? Here are some figures to make you think twice beforereaching for your favourites treats.  

It's not all doom and gloom though. You will be glad toknow, that having the occasional high fat treat will not do as much damage asyou may think. Having a high energy snack 1-2 wk is all part of normal eating andyour body is able to compensate for this.

Let's look into the science behind this train of thought. Onour body we have both white and brown adipose tissue (fat tissue). As babies weare born with a larger percentage of brown fat tissue. Brown fat ismetabolically active. This means it burns a lot of energy. White fat does not.That is why babies are always warm and can eat a lot of food, even though thereso tiny.  

As we grow into adults our brown fat stores disappear. Wetend to have more white tissue.  Whitefat tissue is actually a hormone producing organ. It causes inflammation andpromotes more storage of fat.  When we overeat the little amounts of brown fat that we have as adults becomes more activewhen we over eat. The body begins to burn off energy by producing heat to useup the extra energy we ate. That explains why after eating a large meal we tendto feel hot or at least warm. So you can be assured that a one off high energymeal or snack will be burnt off and your weight will remain the same.

Our body likes our weight to be stable.  It also likes being a certain body weight.This is called our set point range. Our set point range is the weight that yourbody naturally likes to sit at and it will always return back to, even afterdieting. 

Keep in mind though that overeating over a long period oftime will turn off this process and you will gain weight.  It will also destroy your natural set pointrange. You may even push your set point range to a higher weight. This mayexplain why larger people stabilize at a higher weight and find it difficult tolose weight. There body is fighting their new set point.

Your now probably asking to yourself, how can I get morebrown fat and how can I decrease my weight set point?

The truth is that levels of brown fat are geneticallydetermined; you cannot influence that at all, unless you're born to differentparents. However it is possible to cause a reduction in your set point weightrange to a lower setting through exercise and the amount of muscle youhave.  Start an exercise program withstrength training.

Healthy eating is all about enjoying food and that means theoccasional over indulgence. So enjoy your muffin once a week with pleasure.

Gabrielle Maston writes for http://www.changingshape.net.au/. She is a qualified dietician and her blog is full of interesting advice and helpful tips 

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