Inability to Burn Fat

Factual Questions
1

Okay, I need to know if I’m just odd (beside the obvious), because these things just don’t happen to me.

I don’t get the the “hitting the stride” or “getting my second wind” feeling when excercising. I don’t remember feeling it in over ten years. Fact is, I don’t remember it at all, but I used to be able to run quite a distance, so I assume that I felt it then and just don’t remember :slight_smile:

Also, the longer I excercise, the less I seem to be able to do. For instance, I recently started jogging. I started off doing a mile and feeling okay. The next time, I could only do 3/4 mile and felt exhausted, and now I’m at about a 1/2 mile. This is a similar effect to any sports I have played within the past few years (aerobic kickboxing, badminton, tennis, ultimate football, etc.): I just can’t do it for as long as I could when I started.

This kind of gives me the feeling that I’m not actually buring fat, but instead burning blood sugar the whole time, and at a certainly point, there just not much left. Is this at all possible??

As far as the physical manifestation of fat on my body after excercising, people have said that my facial feature are looking more refined, but my belly has not gone down an inch, as far as I can tell. I avoid sugars as much as possible and try stick to whole grain foods.

My current excercise program consists of weight training for about 60 minutes twice a week as well as jogging once a week for about twenty minutes(or however many I can handle).

I must note two things, however, about my medical condition. A year ago, after coming to the point where I could not do sustained excercise for more than 20 minutes, a friend told me I might have what she called “excercise asthma”. I went to the doctor and found that my lungs were only getting 60%(!) of the air that was normal (I had to take the test a few times to even register on the test). He told me I had a disease, the name I forget, but basically, my diaphram cannot go down enough to fill my lungs. One of the reasons, he told me, was because of the pressure my belly was placing on my diaphragm. I now use an inhaler prior to any excercise. (Footnote: He told me the daughter of a friend of his died because she didn’t use her inhaler when going roller blading; her brain was oxygen starved.)

The second medical note I must make is that I have epilepsy. It’s completely under control (thank goodness!) with drugs. However, in high school, I did have a siezure on the tennis court which did injure my skull and possibly my brain. After that injury, I was too tired to excercise for about six months… that is when I gained this belly that has not yet gone away. Oddly, it’s still the same size (roughly). That was about ten years ago.

My congratulations for having read this far about me. I thank you in this manner. :wink:

2

First, my disclaimers, I don’t know anything about epilepsy and very little about excerise induced asthma. For an otherwise healthy person though, the symptoms you describe (declining performance) sound a lot like overtraining. You might consider getting a heart stress test and then training with a heart rate monitor. This makes it easy to measure your training duration and intensity and you will know when to train hard and when to back off. You may also discover that you are receiving more benefit from your training program than you think you are.

I hope this helps. Thanks for the link…

Phil

3

I had a similar problem though not anywhere as severe. What I did was set a milage goal. For instance if I set out 2 miles I ran, walked or crawled till I hit 2 miles. If I couldn’t make it I did it for 1/2 mile then rested for 20 minutes then walked for the next half mile then rested. It took a long while but I got my air back.

I still have problems with leg exercises. Remember the thighs are big muscles and demand oxygen. But eventually I got to a 9 minute mile. (over TWO YEARS) I know that ain’t good but it’s far better than I ever thought I’d do.

4

Remember to pace yourself, too. I had the same experience when I started running of losing mileage; I asked a marathon-runner friend who said to try to run more slowly. He said that to begin, it’s a good idea to run only a little faster than you walk. I tried it; it worked wonders. Turns out I was tiring myself out sprinting the first half-mile. Then I got the shin splints. Ouch!

And yes, I agree with walking whenever you can’t complete your mileage–just walk very briskly. The idea is to exercise for X amount of time rather than X miles (if your primary reason for running is fat-burning and not training to run for its own sake) with your heart going ka-boom ka-boom. Well, not really. But you know…

I too had a tummy problem, and sit-ups help a lot. I think, actually, in today’s world, sit-ups are not as good as some other execisize, but it helps to isolate your abs.

5

Thanks for the advice. I did do a little better yesterday. I decided to walk 1/8 of a mile, and then jog 1/16 of a mile, and repeat for about a mile. Before, I was walking 1/16 and jogging 1/16.

I’m still concerned about the lack of the “second wind”. Until that kicks in, I don’t think I’m burning much fat, but simply just my blood sugar.

As far as crunches/situps go, there is a ab-isolator machine in weight training that works pretty well. However, I was under the impression that you could excercise your abs all you want, but that doesn’t necessarily burn off the fat on top of them. Who knows, my abdominal muscles may be in great shape underneath this belly :slight_smile:

6

Skott,

Your assumption is correct. Aerobic exercise will burn fat off your body. Your whole body.

Sit-ups, crunches, leg raises etc. will strengthen your abs, but there is no way of isolating a particular location from which to remove fat.

7

I know the stigma of dragging something up again, but after last night things were going through my head.

I recently changed my weight training program from strength training to endurance training, since I didn’t have the endurance to build any more muscle. I cut all my weight amounts in half and did double the reps.

Last night, just as I was finishing training, I had a seizure.

It was a complex partial seizure, so it wasn’t too bad. I could only understand english for a second or two at a time and my brain would not record conversations to my memory.

Based on who I am, I have two theories about why this happened:

  1. It was the first sign of my brain shutting down. Since I had done a lot of aerobic excersize, it may be possible that I wasn’t taking in enough oxygen as I needed (although I felt I could breath fine) and my brain’s response was a partial seizure.

  2. The part of my brain that tells my body to burn fat instead of blood sugar has been damaged. Last night, it actually tried to kick in and since it’s got a short circuit, so did I.

Although the second theory is really unsupport and a guess at best, I like it better. What do you think?