Improving Energy with the HCG Diet Protocol

“How do I get more energy?”  This is a question I am asked at least once per day with my HCG Diet patient population.  The truth is that fat burning and energy improvements often go hand in hand. It is not just a coincidence that those people carrying around 20 + extra pounds also feel tired.

When your body becomes metabolically flexible and you begin to burn fat, energy begins to rise!

Let’s Talk about the Definition of Energy in the Human Body

The currency of energy in the body is a little molecule called ATP (adenosine triphosphate).  ATP helps the body to complete nearly all of it’s millions of functions each and every day. If you were to stop making ATP you would not be able to stay alive.

Food is converted to energy in the body.  Any food you eat will be broken  down in the body to one of three basic structures. Carbohydrates break down into glucose, fat breaks down into fatty acids, and protein breaks down into amino acids. But before these breakdown products can produce actual energy, they first need to be converted to ATP.

Protein is the least preferred fuel for running metabolism as the body prefers to save protein for healing and making tissues such as bones.  Fat and carbohydrates are the fuel sources that have a direct impact on our metabolic function.  Yet, these two fuel sources produce very different “mileage.”

Our bodies prefer fat over sugar as we have evolved to use it as our primary energy source.  Fatty acids are much better at producing ATP than glucose.

MITOCHONDRIA: THE ENERGY FACTORIES IN YOUR CELLS

The mitochondrion is the place where energy production happens in the cell. Mitochondria (plural) are basically little ATP factories, churning out ATP/energy for every process of life.

I feel it is very important to know how to keep our mitochondria happy!  Knowing how the mitochondria work is important.  Also, we need to know what damages them, what protects them and what they need to be kept healthy!

These little cellular energy factories are adept at making energy from either sugar or fat, but they vastly prefer FAT as a fuel substrate.

When you’re burning sugar for fuel, the yield is between 2 and 36 molecules of ATP.  One molecule of even a short-chain fatty acid yields 48 ATP molecules, bettering glucose by 33% right there. A long-chain fatty acid produces 147 ATPs.

Now get this: 95% of the fat in your body is in the form of triglycerides.  A triglyceride contains three fatty acids. That means one triglyceride can generate as much as 147 x 3 molecules of ATP, or 441 units of energy!

In other words, sugar can be looked at like kindling and it will burn fast. Fat is like the big log on the fire that continues to keep warmth going.

If one brand of gas (glucose) gave you a couple miles per gallon, but another brand (fat) gave you a couple hundred miles, which brand would you rather use?

When you burn fat, you create a ton of energy. No wonder people who lose weight feel so damn good!

Categories: Body Composition, Eating Well, Food Information, General Wellness, hCG Diet, HCG Diet Weight Loss, HCG Weight Loss, Weight Loss