In the simplest terms, metabolism is the rate at which your body burns calories. The rate differs significantly from person to person. You and your friend can have the same activity level, diet, and weight but still gain or lose weight at different rates based on differences in metabolism.
Determine what is influencing your metabolism. There are some factors that you can change, and some factors that you can't.
● Age - metabolism slows 5% per decade after age 40.● Sex - men generally burn calories faster than women.
● Heredity - you can inherit your metabolic rate from previous
generations.
● Thyroid disorder - problems in the thyroid gland can slow or
quicken metabolism but this is rare.
● Proportion of lean body mass - metabolism increases with
muscle mass.
Regrettably, many people simply don’t understand the concept of metabolism and metabolic change. This, equally as regrettably, is hardly their fault. There is so much information floating around out there, much of it over the ‘net or through a “friend of a friend who has a personal trainer”, that there’s bound to be some confusion and conflicting messages. Furthermore, many people (quite understandably) mistake their own weight gain and loss episodes as a matter of metabolic change. Sometimes this is true, and sometimes it is not. For example, as we will discuss in this book, there are scientific ways to increase the rate of metabolic change, and thus enable the body to burn more calories.
Eating certain foods more frequently is one way to do this (again, we look closer at these in this book). Yet another way to visibly lose weight – at least on a perceived, temporary level – is to sit in a steam room for a few hours. Whereas the former method (eating the right foods) is a real, proven weight loss method through increased metabolic change, the latter method (the steam room) is just temporary because the lost weight is merely water, and will return as swiftly as it “melted away”. The point to remember here is that some people mistake their own weight loss attempts as being related to metabolic change; and, as you can see with the steam room example, that is not always the case.
If, after you read this article, you get absolutely nothing out of it, please be sure to take the following and implement them into your daily routine...
● Eat small, frequent meals. Extending the time between meals makes your body go into "starvation mode", which means it'll hold onto as many calories as possible and store them as fat. This is why fasting and skipping meals will only make things worse. In addition to having four to six small meals per day eating healthy snacks will also increase metabolism.
● Drink water. As with food, depriving your body of water can encourage it to "hoard" rather than "burn". In order to encourage your liver to focus on metabolism rather than water retention, make sure you drink an appropriate amount of water that is... Spread out the drinking of at least 8 8-ounce glasses of water throughout your day. This is often referred to as the “8 by 8” rule.
● Boost metabolism temporarily with aerobic exercise. Different activities burn different quantities of calories but the important thing is to raise your heart rate and sustain the activity for approximately 30 minutes.
● Boost metabolism in the long run with weight training. Muscle burns more calories than fat (73 more calories per kilogram per day, to be exact) so the more muscle you build, the higher your resting metabolic rate (RMR). Every bit of muscle that you gain is like a little factory that burns calories for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is the only way to increase RMR, which accounts for 60 to 70 percent of the calories you burn daily. Avoid smoking as a weight-loss method. While nicotine is a metabolism booster and appetite suppressant, the health hazards far outweigh any benefits.Expect your metabolism to slow down as you lose weight. The more weight your body carries, the more calories your body has to burn in order to sustain itself, even at rest. When you restrict your calorie intake, you lose weight relatively easily because your body's high caloric needs are not being met. However, after you begin to shed the weight, your body has less mass to carry and thus, requires fewer calories. In order to continue losing weight, you have to restrict your caloric intake even further in order to maintain a difference between what your body needs and what you are providing. Let's go through a hypothetical example:
● You are 200 lbs and your body needs 2500 calories a day to sustain itself.
● You cut down your caloric intake to 2000 calories.
● You lose 25 lbs. Now your body only needs 2250 calories to sustain itself because it's carrying less weight.
● If you continue with your 2000 calorie per day diet (the diet that helped you lose the first 25 lbs) you will still be losing, but at half the speed. In order to maintain a steady weight loss you will need to reduce your caloric intake further. However, it is at the utmost importance you do not try to consume fewer calories than your RMR.
● Another potential problem: If you continue with your 2000 calorie per day diet (the diet that helped you lose the first 25 lbs in the first place) you may actually gain weight back because of varying levels of exercise. Let's say you lose 50 lbs. on your 2000 calorie diet. Your sustaining calories might be 1800. You're actually consuming enough calories to gain weight, but how would that happen if you had stayed to your diet. This can happen when your exercise has burned through many calories. If you slowed on exercise at this point you would actually gain weight again. The point here is to recheck your RMR when you lose weight and compare it to your consumption.
Eating certain foods more frequently is one way to do this (again, we look closer at these in this book). Yet another way to visibly lose weight – at least on a perceived, temporary level – is to sit in a steam room for a few hours. Whereas the former method (eating the right foods) is a real, proven weight loss method through increased metabolic change, the latter method (the steam room) is just temporary because the lost weight is merely water, and will return as swiftly as it “melted away”. The point to remember here is that some people mistake their own weight loss attempts as being related to metabolic change; and, as you can see with the steam room example, that is not always the case.
If, after you read this article, you get absolutely nothing out of it, please be sure to take the following and implement them into your daily routine...
● Eat small, frequent meals. Extending the time between meals makes your body go into "starvation mode", which means it'll hold onto as many calories as possible and store them as fat. This is why fasting and skipping meals will only make things worse. In addition to having four to six small meals per day eating healthy snacks will also increase metabolism.
● Drink water. As with food, depriving your body of water can encourage it to "hoard" rather than "burn". In order to encourage your liver to focus on metabolism rather than water retention, make sure you drink an appropriate amount of water that is... Spread out the drinking of at least 8 8-ounce glasses of water throughout your day. This is often referred to as the “8 by 8” rule.
● Boost metabolism temporarily with aerobic exercise. Different activities burn different quantities of calories but the important thing is to raise your heart rate and sustain the activity for approximately 30 minutes.
● Boost metabolism in the long run with weight training. Muscle burns more calories than fat (73 more calories per kilogram per day, to be exact) so the more muscle you build, the higher your resting metabolic rate (RMR). Every bit of muscle that you gain is like a little factory that burns calories for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. This is the only way to increase RMR, which accounts for 60 to 70 percent of the calories you burn daily. Avoid smoking as a weight-loss method. While nicotine is a metabolism booster and appetite suppressant, the health hazards far outweigh any benefits.Expect your metabolism to slow down as you lose weight. The more weight your body carries, the more calories your body has to burn in order to sustain itself, even at rest. When you restrict your calorie intake, you lose weight relatively easily because your body's high caloric needs are not being met. However, after you begin to shed the weight, your body has less mass to carry and thus, requires fewer calories. In order to continue losing weight, you have to restrict your caloric intake even further in order to maintain a difference between what your body needs and what you are providing. Let's go through a hypothetical example:
● You are 200 lbs and your body needs 2500 calories a day to sustain itself.
● You cut down your caloric intake to 2000 calories.
● You lose 25 lbs. Now your body only needs 2250 calories to sustain itself because it's carrying less weight.
● If you continue with your 2000 calorie per day diet (the diet that helped you lose the first 25 lbs) you will still be losing, but at half the speed. In order to maintain a steady weight loss you will need to reduce your caloric intake further. However, it is at the utmost importance you do not try to consume fewer calories than your RMR.
● Another potential problem: If you continue with your 2000 calorie per day diet (the diet that helped you lose the first 25 lbs in the first place) you may actually gain weight back because of varying levels of exercise. Let's say you lose 50 lbs. on your 2000 calorie diet. Your sustaining calories might be 1800. You're actually consuming enough calories to gain weight, but how would that happen if you had stayed to your diet. This can happen when your exercise has burned through many calories. If you slowed on exercise at this point you would actually gain weight again. The point here is to recheck your RMR when you lose weight and compare it to your consumption.
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