It’s simple, sit on your butt and surf the internet.
That’s what I do. Sidelined from snowboarding – I can’t even walk to the store if there’s snow on the ground and danger of falling – I’m spending my day surfing the net, reading, writing, and watching some movies. And cooking!
Yet I’m still burning about 1/2 pound a day. That’s 1750 calories worth of fat, beyond the ~3000 calories a day I’m eating.
The key is to eat right, and that means taking into consideration the hormones that drive fat storage and burning. I’m actually still eating carbs, but non before noon and no caffeine (which means no soda) after 5pm. I figure every 90 minutes that I go without carbs, I burn off another ounce of fat. Thinking of it that way, it’s easy to decide to skip the caffeine with breakfast and just eat my bacon, or eggs, or sausage. Lunch is usually a hunk of meat with a rich sauce (and maybe a coke). Dinner is the same, but without the coke.
Fatty acids are constantly moving from the blood into and out of adipose tissue. The rate of each leg is determined by hormones, primarily insulin and glucagon. For three hours after consuming carbs, those carbs work their way into the bloodstream and cause the pancreas to secrete insulin (but no glucagon). Insulin helps speed the process of storing fat. It’s also a signal to the body to conserve energy; except for the sugar-rush spike after ingesting food, a constant high-carb diet means the body won’t use its energy stores (i.e. fat) to full activity; if you don’t have blood sugar, your body won’t want to do anything. That’s why runners bring carbs with them; their bodies aren’t adapted to using the fuel it already has.
After fasting, blood sugar stabilizes and insulin drops. The pancreas starts producing glucagon instead, especially in response to a high-protein meal. This hormone helps mobilize all that stored fat, ready to be used by cells for energy. Both ketones and glucose can feed into the Krebs cycle that drives cellular energy; your body doesn’t need to convert fat into sugar before it burns it.
The system is complex, and it takes a while to stabilize on one method or another. The human body is full of homeostatic systems – that is, systems that try to maintain balance. If you’re not used to burning fat as fuel, you’re going to spend a couple weeks fuzzy-headed until your brain figures out how to burn ketones. And your digestive system, too, might not be ready for it. Fatty diets are best eaten in meals, not by grazing; eat two or three times a day, not more. Once a day works, too.
Probably the best way to burn 5000 calories a day is to get sick. I spent five days in the hospital recently after my spleen ruptured, and I didn’t eat at all the first 48 hours, and only barely after that. In addition to my normal metabolic needs, my body also needed some heavy-duty repair – and that means energy. Recovery, too, is best fueled with fats. I was in misery for nearly a week, and that’s damn good motivation to eat better. If you’ve suffered from any of the ailments of Western Civilization, avoiding its foods – grain, sugar, and frankenoils – is the best medicine.



