Research

Hormonal

Endurance training increases skeletal muscle lipid utilization during submaximal exercise by upregulating fatty acid transport proteins (FAT/CD36 and FABPpm) and enhancing intramyocellular triacylglycerol (IMTG) oxidation, thereby improving metabolic flexibility.

To improve your body's ability to burn fat during exercise, focus on consistent endurance training at moderate intensities. This training upregulates the proteins responsible for moving fatty acids into muscle cells and burning them, making you more metabolically flexible. You do not need to follow extreme low-carb diets to achieve this; regular training is the primary driver.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
following endurance training a shift towards an enhanced lipid utilization is evident at least when exercise is performed at the same absolute work load in the untrained and trained state... a higher FABPpm protein expression in homogenates from the vastus lateralis muscle was also demonstrated with exercise training
Bente Kiens · Physiological Reviews · 2005

Why this rating

The paper is a comprehensive review citing numerous human tracer studies and molecular analyses, providing strong mechanistic evidence.

Source

Skeletal Muscle Lipid Metabolism in Exercise and Insulin Resistance

Bente Kiens · Physiological Reviews · 2005

DOI 10.1152/physrev.00023.2004

narrative_reviewCited 468×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

This is one finding among thousands. Every one is graded and traced to its source, so you can see what the evidence actually supports. Browse the research →