Lifting weights help you lose muscle by building muscle and increasing your metabolism.  Using fatty acids as your energy source during exercise is as easy as knowing which exercises, and what will facilitate it.

People seeking to lose weight will want to reduce the stores of fat, and build more muscle.  Adipose or fat is the largest energy source stored in the body, so we want to tap into it.  The best type of exercise that uses fat as the primary source of energy should be sustained and moderate.  Walking, hiking, running, swimming, bicycling, canoeing, and manual labor all are fat burners.  If you want to build more muscle, lifting weights is recommended.

Let’s learn about the fat burning process.  The liver glycogen might be empty first thing in the morning, and your blood glucose will be used first when you start to exercise.  The glycogen in the muscle is used next, and can be trained to store more energy.  One of the benefits of training is improved use of fatty acids as a fuel source in the body.

The average 150# male has about:

80 calories of glucose stored in their blood (6 minutes of running)
360 calories of glycogen stored in the liver (30 minutes of running)

1440 calories of glycogen stored in the muscle (1 hour, 45 minutes of running)
80,600 calories of fat stored in tissue (92 hours of running)

When the body uses stored fat as energy, triglycerides are released from fat cells and transported and absorbed by the muscle cells

Hitting the wall is when your glycogen levels get low, and as you can see by the chart above, there is not as much energy stored as glucose and glycogen, compared to fat.

Adrenaline and caffeine stimulates the release of fats into the blood.  Research shows that caffeine (2 cups of coffee) will help endurance runners go further and bicyclist exercised for 29% longer during an exercise session.

Try running a marathon on fat as your fuel source.  You will  notice the highs and lows from the glucose and repletion made the run much more difficult then just using water and electrolytes.

Drinking a little coffee before an endurance exercise may be helpful to use fat as your energy source with sustained and moderate exercise.  Do a fat burning exercise routine twice a week.