5 Different Types of Fat and How to Burn Them
Discover five different types of fat you carry on your body, and how to effectively target and burn each.
Look at your belly. Is there any fat there? Now your collar bones. Any fat there? How about your legs? Your arms? Believe it or not, each of the types of fat in each of those areas is different and is going to respond to a different type of exercise and diet strategy. In this episode, you’re going to discover five different types of fat you carry on your body, and how to effectively target and burn each.
Let’s jump right in, shall we?
Types of Fat:
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Subcutaneous fat is the fat that lies just below your skin, and what we typically associate with love handles, muffin tops, big bellies, saggy arms, and flabby necks. Now, fat is technically an “endocrine organ,” and this means that, just like any other organ, fat can release hormones and other chemicals that affect your physiology, longevity, and health.
In the case of subcutaneous fat, these hormones and chemicals are actually less harmful than those released by many other types of fat. For example, subcutaneous fat is your body’s main secretor of the hormone leptin, which is a powerful appetite regulator. Subcutaneous fat also releases large amounts of adiponectin, which possesses anti-atherosclerotic effects. Underneath your subcutaneous fat in your belly is visceral fat, which lies inside the abdominal cavity. Visceral fat surrounds and envelops the organs, but unlike subcutaneous fat, it releases far less leptin and adiponectin and instead releases large amounts of something called “interleukin-6,” which is an inflammatory cytokine. To target subcutaneous fat, intense interval training is ideal. The spike in something called “catecholamines” from intense exercise will also target visceral fat.
In How to Train Your Body to Burn More Fat, you learn that this concept of intense training burning belly fat is actually relatively recent news. Increased fat utilization during exercise is well-known as one adaptation to exercise training, particularly endurance training such as running. But prior to this point, it was thought that you couldn’t burn large amounts of fat while exercising at high intensities. It turns out this simply isn’t the case, and in this study, runners exercising at over 85% of their maximum intensity still experienced fat oxidation contribution as nearly a third of their total energy expenditure!
In other words:
- A) You don’t have to exercise in your “fat burning zone” to burn large amounts of subcutaneous fat.
- B) The more seasoned and consistent you are at exercise, the higher amounts of both overall calories and also fat you can burn, even at higher intensities.
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Next is intrahepatic fat, which is the fat inside your liver. This is somewhat nasty stuff. More than any other type of fat, intrahepatic fat is associated most strongly with obesity. For this type of fat, you’ll need to focus not just on high-intensity interval training but also on dietary strategies, specifically:
- Limited sugar and fructose
- Limited alcohol
- Plenty of choline from sources such as egg yolks and liver
- Healthy saturated fats such as organic, grass-fed beef, cocoa from chocolate, and coconut
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Epicardial fat is the third kind of fat and is simply the visceral fat that surrounds your heart. If you ever took an anatomy course in school and saw a cow or sheep heart wrapped in a layer of hard yellow fat, then you’ve seen epicardial fat. Unfortunately, large amounts of this type of fat are associated with obesity, diabetes, inflammation in surrounding organs, and high blood pressure. To target epicardial fat, both short bursts of high-intensity cardio and longer steady-state cardio both seem to work.
If you ever took an anatomy course in school and saw a cow or sheep heart wrapped in a layer of hard yellow fat, then you’ve seen epicardial fat.
- Next is intramuscular fat, which is the kind of fat that lies inside your muscles. You’ve probably seen this type of fat marbling in a fatty beef steak, and fortunately, intramuscular fat can provide a readily available source of energy for your muscles if you’ve actually trained your body how to be a “fat burning machine.” From an exercise standpoint, one of the best ways to do this is to engage in low-level aerobic activity at at least under 75% of max heart rate, preferably with limited carbohydrate intake or in a fasted state of “ketosis.” How do you find out which zone is best for this type of fat? In What Is The Fat Burning Zone? you learned that for most individuals, the fat-burning zone occurs at 45-65% of the maximum heart rate, and that is the typical calculation used by personal trainers. They’ll take the number 220 and subtract your age to find your maximum heart rate, then take 45-65% of that number to find your maximum fat-burning zone. But this number is highly variable and tends to be erroneous, primarily because the maximum heart rate is highly variable. So check out that episode for my quick and dirty tip for finding your personalized fat-burning zone far more accurately.
- Finally, there’s brown fat, which is highly metabolically active and can be used to burn calories to generate heat in response to cold exposure. Since they can’t shiver to stay warm, babies have plenty of brown fat, but until recently researchers thought that adults didn’t have much brown fat. That’s since been proven false, and the concept of cold thermogenesis relies on the fact that you can train yourself to build more brown fat or to convert subcutaneous “white fat” into brown fat. Want to learn how? Check out my episode on how to use cold weather to lose weight.
Finally, it’s important to understand that different people from different ancestries will have different body fat distribution patterns, and that’s why there are four different basic body shapes for men and four different body shapes for women. For example, sme men will carry more fat on the trunk and less fat on the limbs, while some women carry more fat on the lower body but less fat on the upper body. To learn more about these different shapes, and how to get a targeted exercise and diet program for each, visit www.GetFitGuy.com to read “Get Fit Guy’s Guide To Achieving Your Ideal Body”.
Do you have questions, comments or feedback about how to burn more fat from all the different fat storing parts of your body? Join the conversation at Facebook.com/getfitguy.
About the Author
Ben Greenfield received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from University of Idaho in sports science and exercise physiology; personal training and strength and conditioning certifications from the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA); a sports nutrition certification from the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN), an advanced bicycle fitting certification from Serotta. He has over 11 years’ experience in coaching professional, collegiate, and recreational athletes from all sports, and as helped hundreds of clients achieve weight loss and fitness success.
