Thermogenesis: How to Lose Weight While You Eat

I know, I know—I hate cheesy titles too. Sorry, but, how do you grab people’s attention with a topic like thermogenesis? I contemplated the following:

Make Millions of Dollars with Thermogenesis!

Thermogenesis Can Make You Live Forever!

How the Thermogenic Industrial Complex Is Killing You!

Thermogenesis: Be Ready for That Special Moment….

Still, who needs gimmicks? If you’re interested in losing weight faster, eating more food and feeling better, I suspect that you’ll stick around for a couple of pages.

The problem is that as we become more conditioned and leaner, our bodies use less energy. That’s not really a problem; having lower metabolism is a symptom of being healthy.

Thermo means heat.

Genesis is the creation of something.

So thermogenesis refers to a creation of heat.

Metabolism is characterized by calorie burning because there is heat loss. Put your hand on the back of your laptop, and what do you feel? Heat. There’s about a million moving parts and a lot of work going on inside that little aluminum frame. Likewise, when food is digested and assimilated for use by the trillions of cells in your body, there is heat production. The greater the energy required or used, the greater the heat loss. It’s a simple measure of energy.

Interestingly, if weight loss is the goal, inefficient energy use would make us happier. That should sound a little weird. More heat production means more calories are being burned, right? Here’s an example: You want to reduce heat creation in your car engine—you want maximum efficiency. In the same vein, you don’t want your house to leak all of your heating and cooling attempts, wasting energy. If you were starving, you would be thinking about conserving energy, but in weight loss the goal is to spend energy liberally. Climbing on a treadmill at 4 a.m., killing a boot camp session, wearing a heart rate monitor during sex (if I can maintain 140 BPM for 20 minutes, will my trainer let me count this as cardio?)—we’ll do anything to burn more calories! The problem is that as we become more conditioned and leaner, our bodies uses less energy. That’s not really a problem; having lower metabolism is a symptom of being healthy. It is, however, a subject for another day.

Here’s a summary of the links between thermogenesis and metabolism:

• There are three macronutrients—which you already know.

• The macronutrientrs have various levels of complexity—which most of you already know.

• Some foods require more energy to digest—which you’d all better know by now.

• Protein is king of the hill, taking the most time to digest—which you think you know.