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An average person has just one heaped teaspoon of glucose in their bloodstream. The body breaks down or converts most carbohydrates into glucose. Excess glucose gets stored in your liver and muscles as a substance called glycogen. Your liver and muscles are essentially a "battery" for your body (glycogen is easily broken down into glucose). Stored glycogen can provides around 1700 calories or 500 grams of glycogen, which is enough for an hour of exercise.

  • If you perform hard exercise when there is no sugary foods or drinks in your digestive system, your bodies glycogen storage starts to deplete.
  • When you stop exercising, DON'T GET A SUGAR HIT.
  • Your body will start to "burn" fatty acids and fats as an energy source when glycogen is depleted. This is a process called Lipolysis where fat cells separate into free fatty acids and glycerol. Glycerol is easily converted into glucose for energy and glycogen for storage.

This is a very efficient process when you are in a fasted state (during intermittent fasting). Your body will burn fat after exercising stops. It does this because it must replenish your glycogen stores. The only thing that will stop this is eating sugars and simple carbohydrates constantly.

The quickest way to lose fat is to exercise hard in short bursts AND not depend upon sugary foods and simple carbs as your main calories. If you implement intermittent fasting and HIIT exercises you will pressurise your glycogen storage and start tapping into fat reserves. Autophagy is activated following nutrient deprivation, some forms of exercise and different types of fasting. During fasting, when we don’t eat, our insulin levels go down and glucagon goes up. This enables the body to identify damaged cells and break them down preferentially. This process was first described in 1962 when researchers observed increased lysosomes (the part of cells that destroy things) in rat liver cells after glucagon was infused. The term, which is derived from the Greek auto (self) and phagein (to eat), meaning to eat oneself, was coined by Nobel Prize winning scientist Christian de Duve in 1963.