Fat as you probably know is often referred to as visceral or subcutaneous.

The visceral is not visible and is found around the organs – the stereotypical hard beer belly.

Subcutaneous is found in-between the skin and muscle, is visible and squidgy.

Visceral fat is considered more dangerous to health but due to its rich blood supply is considered easier to burn.

The squidgy, more unsightly yet less harmful one is harder to get rid of.

Its often referred to as stubborn fat.

In my experience, it is this squidgy stuff which many endurance athletes suffer with – why?

Simple really!

When we carry out large volumes of low-intensity training we burn a lot of calories (a lot by normal standards at least).

This signals to the body that we are at risk of running out of our fat stores – the stores we will need because we are doing sooooo much training.

The body then will look for ways to slow out metabolic rate (energy burnt).

As such we burn muscle for fuel because the muscle is metabolically demanding.

We lose muscle and keep the fat for that famine which the body thinks is coming.

Now, there are two ways to get rid of this squidgy fat:

1 – Literal starvation – the body will eventually burn these squidgy stores in order to live.
2 – Optimising your nutrition – convincing the body to keep the muscle and burn the fat.

2 is obviously the preferred option but how?

Optimising your diet, that’s how.

That means:

– The right amount of protein
– The right carbs at the right time
– Enough micro nutrition
– Quality recovery
– And some strength training – to keep the muscle we have.