Do you know what metabolism is? I have no doubt you have heard of your metabolism but do you actually know what it is and how it works ?.
Metabolism really is a simple thing to understand. In a nut shell metabolism is the capacity with which your body breaks down calories.
Basal Metabolic Rate/Resting Metabolic Rate
Calories are obtained from the food we consume on daily basis. Our body burns these calories in processes such as digestion and the functioning of our internal organs. This is referred to as our Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) or Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR). Our BMR/RMR is responsible for using somewhere in the region of 70% of the total calories we use daily. Those calories are used just to keep us alive !
Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis
The other 30% of the calories we use are burned up during our daily activities such as walking, moving around and doing our daily chores. This is known as Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT).
Exercise Induced Thermogenesis
We then have Exercise Induced Thermogenesis. This is the calories we use up when taking part in physical activity. The amount of calories burned here depends on the amount and intensity of your training. To put this into perspective, running for 20 minutes at 6 mph burns 229 calories, while running at 8 mph burns 299 calories.
The combination of our BMR, NEAT and EIT is called Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE). This figure can vary from day to day depending on your activity levels throughout the day.
INCREASING YOUR METABOLISM
Muscle Mass For Metabolism
Increasing our muscle mass is a great why to speed up our metabolism. Muscle maintenance uses up a huge amount of calories daily, so the more we muscle we have, the more calories we burn. When dieting, It is highly important that you maintain your muscle mass as much as possible. Losing muscle decreases your metabolism and weight loss becomes more and more difficult. When working with weight loss clients I aim to maintain muscle mass by introducing weight baring training and insisting on adequate protein consumption. If you want to increase your Basal Metabolic Rate then you need to work on your muscle mass. This is because on an average day every pound of muscle you have in your body single- handedly breaks down about fifty calories. But if you lose that pound of muscle your metabolism will decrease by 50 calories a day and that’s not good.
Exercise For Metabolism
Exercise, as we all know is very good for the body. Carrying out physical activities helps increase the metabolic process in the body. When deciding on exercises there are several kinds of exercises that a person could engage in, if the aim is to increase the body’s metabolic rate.
Cardio Exercise
You can engage in any of the cardiovascular exercises of your choice. Exercises such as running, swimming, jogging dancing and biking, etc. This enables your body metabolism to speed up through out the day or after the exercise. The one draw back of cardiovascular exercise is the fact that we tend to only burn calories while engaging in the activity.
Resistance Training
Resistance training/weight training is a major exercise for metabolism boosting? It enables the body to generate heat after burning calories in the body. It has an after burn effect on the metabolism that can boost the amount of calories you burn for between 24hrs and 48hrs. It also gives an additional advantage of helping the body develop muscles mass which is also instrumental in increasing the rate of the body’s metabolism.
So there you have it, your metabolism is your bodies ability to burn calories. Can you control your metabolism ? Yes you can. Stay active, engage in resistance training and build muscle.
Side Note
Don’t get caught up in the assumption that you have a slow metabolism. Slow metabolism is very rare. Chances are you aren’t active enough and
you’re over consuming food. Go here to calculate your BMR – https://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/bmr_calculator.htm
