Blood vessels play an important role in metabolism too. You must have read this mystical word - metabolism - in almost any fitness article or book. What does it mean? It means transformation or change. Your body has two kinds of metabolism. One: the transformation of food, which is burned by oxygen, to become energy. Two: the transformation of food into forming new tissue.

To give you an example of how it works: your car runs on petrol which is transformed into energy which makes the vehicle run. Similarly, food is fuel for your body and oxygen transforms it into energy to enable you to 'run'.

Your body needs carbohydrates, proteins and fat food to keep its metabolic equilibrium.

But, if you overeat, the balance of the body gets upset. It can only transform a certain amount of fat for energy. If you pour in more fatty food than it can take, it overflows like your vehicle would if you put more petrol than its tank can hold. This overflow goes into your blood and, unfortunately, has strong staying power. Your blood vessels are the possessive types and refuse to let go of that extra fat. And they become even more possessive if you are the sedentary sort who does not exercise. The fat gets deposited on the inner walls of your arteries as extra cholesterol which resist the blood-flow.

If you have been exercising daily, your efficient metabolism will dissolve that fat from your bloodstream within two to four hours. If you have not been exercising at all, the fat remains in your bloodstream for a longer time-span as long as ten hours. Chances are that in those ten hours you will eat again at least once. And over the days, weeks, months, years, you have un-metabolised fat filling up your blood. And slowly, the body which began as a healthy mechanism at ease, becomes unbalanced and is uncomfortable and not at ease. This is how a person gets a disease ­meaning dis-ease or not at ease.

To prevent this from happening or even to correct the imbalance of your body, your doctor tells you to eat fatless food and exercise. So that as your body's system gets trained, the metabolism revs up and begins to burn off that extra fat. If he or she asks you to stop smoking, it is to stop you from inhaling carbon monoxide and to allow oxygen to circulate freely through your body enabling the purifying process to take its own natural course.

Sedentary people who land at the doctor's dispensary, however, quite often do not seem to understand the importance of exercising. Since swallowing a pill makes them feel better they are convinced that the pill is their saviour. They couldn't be more wrong. The pill is a temporary suppressant of their symptoms. Exercising - depending upon the illness ­provides the long-term and permanent cure.

What is the co-relation of fat and muscle? Fat is the fat man in your system, while muscle is the lean guy. If you do not exercise, fat spreads itself gleefully all around making the poor lean muscle shrink further into himself. But when you begin exercising the muscle has to move. As the oxygen pours in, he perks up and starts flexing himself. As he gets more toned up, he claims his territorial rights by using his oxygen-filled 'breath' to burn off his foe - fat. As the fat begins to burn, the lean muscle takes its place. And your skin tautens where previously it had bulged with fat.

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