Break away from your fat; it's smart, it's sneaky, and it messes with your fitness plan. Here's how to defeat fat, fast and for good

In the perpetual challenge between fat and muscle, which player has the court advantage?

That would be fat.

Muscle is wannabe energy: Its filaments and fibers constantly expend and draw in energy. Fat, however, is energy. The body constantly raids this abundant furnace, feasting on its six fatty acids.

The beauty--and the horror--of fat is that it does its job by simply sitting there, shunning what muscles and those who seek them crave: water and protein. A relatively dry tissue, fat is made of about 20 percent water and 5 percent protein (compared to an approximate 70-20 ratio, respectively, in muscle).

And fat is smart, using your muscles for support so its 40 billion or so cells can continue to do what they do best, which again, would be to just sit there. In fact, if you're carrying excess weight, about 25 percent to 35 percent of it is muscle slaving away in service of fat.

So who's winning? Ask the 62 percent of Americans who are either overweight or obese, and whose fat-linked ailments--hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, prostate cancer, et al.--are rising fast. What can you do about it?

THE LOSING FORMULA

The tried-and-true formula for losing weight still holds: Slash consumption of calories (eating) while boosting expenditure of calories (exercise). Making things easier--or tougher--is the series of internal chemical and physical processes that makes up your metabolism.

Your body spends about 65 percent of its total calorie expenditure on breathing, circulating fluids, and maintaining muscle, bone and other tissue. Known as your resting metabolic rate, that figure can be tweaked up or down by gender, age, and body composition.

Movement does the rest, whether you're typing on a keyboard or lifting redwoods. Even fidgeting helps. A recent Mayo Clinic report found that extreme fidgeters can burn through up to 800 calories a day. "Fidgeting-like activities may add a further 20 percent to [daily] energy expenditure," reports study author Jim Levine, M.D., a Mayo Clinic endocrinologist.

But don't blame a "sluggish" metabolic rate for the extra pounds. "Many people come into my office convinced that they have a low metabolic rate or a hormonal imbalance, but their levels are usually normal," says Donald D. Hensrud, M.D., director of the Mayo Clinic's Executive Health Program.

"Overweight people in fact have higher metabolic rates, needed to sustain extra poundage."

DON'T BLAME YOUR GENES

Genes are another convenient scapegoat. Family history accounts for 25 percent to 30 percent of how you carry weight and the range ot weight that you're likely to settle into. "But environment--what you choose to eat and how you move your body--is the real determinant," says Hensrud. "The key is to maintain your weight at the lower range of what your genes hand you." (For more environmental ways to give your metabolism a helping hand, see "10 Metaboosters," above.)

10 METABOOSTERS

While genes determine your metabolism
to a substantial degree, it's advisable
to jump-start Mother Nature using the
following methods:

1. Lose it slow. If you starve yourself,
your body's homeostatic mechanisms
will go into defense mode, and your
metabolism will slow to a crawl.

2. Drink deep. Hungry? It may be
thirst pangs instead. Chronically
dehydrated people are physically
and mentally sluggish. If you're
feeling thirsty, you're already
dehydrated.

3. Don't sweet it. Too much sugar
spikes insulin, which tells your body
to stop metabolizing fat and start
storing it instead.

4. Choose fat wisely. Some fat is
necessary for your body to function,
but stick to monounsaturated and
polyunsaturated varieties. When in
doubt, use olive oil.

5. Eat less more often. Digestion
burns calories, so eat small, frequent
meals to keep your inner factory
working.

6. Eat water. Metabolic rates can
falter in the evening, so transition
from starchy carbs to water-rich
vegetables as the day goes by.

7. Fidget Or take a walk. Continuous
incidental activity burns a lot of
calories.

8. Go to sleep. People suffering from
sleep deprivation tend to have
slower metabolisms and higher
levels of cortisol, a hormone that
facilitates fat retention.

9. Cardio at dawn. Fat loss can be
optimized if you turn up the heat
first thing in the morning, so
schedule kickboxing before opening
that box of Kix.

10. Add muscle, Resistance training
revs up your metabolism for up to
two hours following a workout.

Simply losing weight will tweak your metabolic rate, complicating weight loss just a bit. "If a 220-pound man consumes 2,500 calories a day to maintain that weight, and then loses 20 pounds, his metabolic rate would drop by about 10 percent," says Jay T. Kearney, Ph.D., vice president of HealtheTech, a fitness software company. "So he's burning 250 fewer calories each day. His energy/balance equation has shifted. The body adjusts: It feels you're trying to starve it, so it lowers its energy output."

During this period of adjustment, combining the right workout with optimal foods counts the most. While cardiovascular exercise such as cycling and rowing burns calories, strength training is essential to maintaining the muscle you have and to building more. Each pound of muscle you carry burns 30 to 50 calories per day just by existing, boosts your metabolic rate, and helps you stay lean.