Originally posted by PapaumauI FOUND THIS TO BE REFRESHINGLY INFORMATIVE
Most people know that the tendency to store fat and fluids is connected closely to personal metabolism-rate.Some people are storers and some people are burners and if you are a burner you can struggle to keep weight on as opposed to the other way in storers.
Being a competetive athlete I need to know what suites me and how I can tackle the storing and burning thing.
When athletes are looking for energy they eat lots of pasta and drink lots of water only using glucose just before a competition, but they don't need to worry about the carbohydrate in pasta or in bread or in potatoes and rice as they deal with these materials easily during the serious training that they do.
The cells in the body that deal with sugars and starches are called Mitochodria, and their job is to metabolise sugars into heat which warms the body as part of the body's natural furnace.
( This is how the Atkins diet works as it cuts down hard on the intake of carbohydrates ! ).
When we are young we have a fair amount of a material called Adipose tissue down our backs and in other places in our bodies, This material is in two types: Brown adipose tissue and white adipose tissue and as young people have more of this material than older people have their metabolism is naturally running faster and is burning off fat at a faster rate, while keeping them warm. ( This is one of the ways that a baby can survive in low temperatures where an older person might not ). As you get older you lose a lot of the most dynamic version of this tissue; the BROWN tissue, ( this is why old people have trouble keeping warm in the winter ).
As people age some lose more of this tissue than others and become storers - finding dieting difficult - others have more and even into old age might still be a comparatively good burner than those who have lost this tissue. Burners stay slim with little exercise and are able to eat almost anything but storers find losing weight very hard and even the smallest intake of food may produce overweight conditions.
Read more about Adipose tissue here: