What is Metabolism?

 

What is Metabolism?

         Your metabolism is the amount of energy in calories that your body burns in order to maintain its weight. Whether you’re sleeping, running, sitting, standing, riding in a car, or eating a bowl of chocolate fudge ice cream, your body is constantly burning calories in order to keep you going. Think of it as a fire within you, burning your fat and food away. No, sorry but you won’t burn enough calories chewing your chocolate fudge ice cream to cancel out the calories you just took in by eating that bowl of ice cream. It would be nice if it worked that way, but it doesn’t.

        Get any group of women together, and even some men, get them talking on the topic of their metabolism and you’ll hear moaning and groaning and complaining about how their metabolism is so slow, that when they were younger they could eat anything they wanted to and not gain weight but now if they simply *think* about a piece of cheesecake they put five pounds on.

          It’s a sad but true fact of life that as we age our metabolism slows down. It doesn’t stop (although at times we might feel as though it has) but it does change. The reason for this is that we have more lean muscle mass at 20 than we do at 70, and lean muscle mass is what helps burn calories.

         Some people have higher metabolisms than others and are able to burn off the calories they eat and never gain an ounce. Others have metabolisms slower than a slug and everything they eat seems to stick with them and not get burned off. No two people are alike in the calories they burn and the rate of their metabolism. Having said that, is it possible to boost your metabolism in order to burn more calories and be able to lose weight? Evidence suggests that there are a number of ways to help maximize our metabolism in order to more efficiently consume the food we eat, whether we’re walking, reading, or even sleeping. Boosting your metabolic rate is possible and I’ll show you how.

Don’t Diet

When we see beautiful models in magazines and svelte actresses in movies, we are tempted to cut down on our eating in order to lose weight and look more like them. We decide to stop eating as much so we can drop some pounds. Less food taken in should mean you’ll lose weight quickly, right? Not necessarily. Our bodies are very efficient at storing food as fat as a defense against starvation. When you cut your calories, and if you do it drastically enough, your body panics. Think of it in terms of an army and its rations. Body: “Danger! Danger! There’s not enough food! We’re starving!” Metabolism: “Cut down on production men, we’re going into survival mode! Slow and steady! Emphasis on the slow!” Body: “Just make sure we have enough fat stores to get through this famine”

Metabolism: “Aye Aye Captain!”

   

     Orders have been given and voila’, thunder thighs are born. Or Jelly Bellies, saggy arms, double chins, saddlebags, and any number of fat stores are created in order to make sure that your body doesn’t starve. Think of it as the general of an army, laying in stores for a very long winter. When your body is in survival mode, it takes fewer calories to sustain itself, to maintain its current weight. Excess calories are stored as fat and the stores are parceled out to the soldiers reluctantly and very s l o w l y in order to make sure the resources last as long as possible.

          Severe restriction of calories is a sure-fire way to cause your metabolism to slow down to a crawl. If you’ve been crash dieting for years without exercising then your metabolism has been affected. Dieting like this burns muscle and the less muscle mass you have, the fewer calories you burn and the slower your metabolism. You will now need fewer calories to maintain your current weight. This means that if you consume more calories, your body won’t need to use them for energy and will store them. Helloooo belly fat.

          When you put the weight back on, and you will if you’ve been crash dieting, then it will be put back on as fat. This means that your metabolic rate has probably dropped a little bit each time that you’ve crash dieted. Putting on more fat and losing muscle will cause your metabolism to slow down even more. It seems like a cycle of doom, don’t I? It can be if you don’t break that cycle. I’m about to show you just how to increase your metabolism in order to burn the most calories possible, even when you’re sleeping.