We need movement. It promotes life, in many ways it is life. In a macro sense it helps everything from blood-flow to peristalsis, as well as of course overall strength and mobility.
What about intensity?
It seems a lot of people get into exercise or training for body composition. “To lose some weight.”
In the industry, it’s apparent there is still a big drive towards intensity to help with this body composition. “Work harder, burn more calories.”
Well, like many other things in the industry, I don’t follow this model.
At rest the muscles consume mostly fat and the vital organs consume mostly glucose. This is how we want to burn fat.
When we aren’t at rest, the muscles prefer glucose also.
How do we lose weight then? We need to heal our liver (ability to store glucose) and down-regulate stress and increase muscle mass (which burns fat at rest!) in a way that doesn’t chronically elevate stress.
If your liver is healthy and not stressed, then the liver and the muscles will take care of the fat you are trying to lose.
No stress: No high cortisol.
If you want insulin to be low, keeping the stress hormones at bay is paramount. The body remains in a general insulin-resistant state when cortisol levels are chronically elevated.
So, we can either follow blindly and only partake in high intensity work in the hope of burning a few more calories (but also risk further elevating stress hormones), or we can learn the art of down-regulation, increase muscle mass and eat in a pro-metabolic fashion to keep our metabolism up, then burn fat passively.
