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Total Metabolic Makeover

By Robert Francis

Basically, the metabolic rate is the process by which food is converted into energy. The amount of energy used by the body can be measured by the amount of heat produced by it. Basal energy is the minimum level of energy required to maintain normal body temperature.

To some extent, our basal metabolic rate (BMR) is predetermined by genetics. Studies have shown that the children of obese parents often have a lower BMR than children of moderate weight parents.

Tufts University Research on infants that measured the number of calories taken in and how many were burned off by babies showed that by three months of age, babies of overweight mothers were generating 21 percent less energy than the rest.

By one year of age they had become overweight while eating the same number of calories as the leaner babies. Researchers, not able to pin down the precise reason for the overweight babies' lower calorie expenditure reasoned that the babies who gained excessive weight were less active than the babies who didn't. So, even for infants, exercise is likely the best medicine for obesity.

SET POINT THEORY

The set point theory holds that hereditary and cultural forces may program our bodies to level off at a set weight. It is believed that everyone has a natural, biological weight compatible with his or her metabolism. People who have been over fat since childhood are likely to have naturally high set points, and usually those who were physically active at a young age usually have a lower set point.

Lean bodies are more efficient calorie burners because of the higher ratio of muscle tissue to fat, the faster the metabolic rate will be. Men have a larger proportion of lean muscle tissue making it easier for them to lose weight. As we age, our BMR becomes progressively slower, so that with each passing decade, we need about 2 percent fewer calories to maintain the same body weight.

Of course diet, as I have pointed out, plays a large role in reducing fat-but, the key factor in boosting your slowed metabolism are the MUSCLES.

GAINING CONTROL OVER YOUR METABOLISM

The most important change you can make is to incorporate intensive exercise into your life. Muscles are where bodily energy is mainly used. They are not merely the engines of the body, their strength enhances the integrity of the joints and their production of power for movement releases energy as heat in proportion to the demands. Muscles are "expensive to the metabolism".

In other words they "cost" a lot of calories to keep them around. Lower intensity activity will release some energy, ie; burn SOME calories. Very high intensity demands will release and burn a larger number of calories. But that is not the whole story. In fact, the relationship of muscles to metabolism gets much better from there. Adding a pound of muscle to your body will RAISE your metabolism by 50 calories a day.

Which means that gaining 10 pounds of muscle will make your metabolism burn 500 EXTRA calories per day. That's regardless of your activity level-500 calories are required just to keep that extra muscle alive! The inverse is also true. Lose a pound of muscle from inactivity and you will burn 50 FEWER calories per day. You may be interested to know that if you are a man, you have been losing up to a pound of muscle per year since age about 25. If you a woman the problem is a little worse because you have been losing up to 2 pounds of muscle since age 19.

For this reason, as you age it becomes more and more difficult to shed body fat. Each passing year you have less of that calorie burning muscle!Restoring muscle that you have not owned since your teen years is equal to restoring your metabolism to what it once was.

This artifact of aging, the loss of muscle tissue is the agent of lowered metabolism with ageing and-it is to a larger extent than you may realize-REVERSEABLE.

A NEW STRATEGY

By far the most valuable medicine for re-charging a sluggish metabolism is the production of more lean muscle. Efficient exercise for this purpose need not be a daily chore lasting an hour. The very best muscle building plans are extremely brief but of a sufficient intensity to get your muscles stronger. And there is your key! Exercises that will STRENGTHEN your muscles will also build them back to their condition when YOU were a LEANER YOU.

Resistance training with weights and Nautilus machines may not be your idea of "fun". But that's why you have a trainer. Not to make it fun for you, but to assure that you get all of the benefit in the least amount of time. "If it's not fun, I won't stick to the program". I should have a penny for every time I've had to hear this.

FUN is wearing the same size clothing you haven't fit into in years. FUN is performing a previously difficult task effortlessly. FUN is the satisfaction of gaining control back over your body.

View exercise as my clients do, as their strategy for control over their body. Exercise is rewarding-not fun. We exercise for the physiological changes it produces. Not for the psychological fun. It is the simple, yet demanding means to cheat the forces of time and nature that conspire to foul up a perfectly nice metabolism!

ADDITIONAL HELPS AND HINTS FOR A SPEEDY METABOLISM

  1. Avoid Yo-Yo Weight Changes - With each new diet the body gets better at conserving fat calories.

  2. Steer Clear Of Strenuous Diets - cutting calories too quick or for too long will cause your metabolism to slow.

  3. Cut The Fat In Your Diet - A diet high in fat is more fattening than a diet of an identical calorie count composed of mainly protein and carbohydrates. A high fat diet also stimulates your metabolism far less than those other food groups. Researchers have estimated that you will burn 23 calories to turn 100 calories of carbohydrate food into body fat. You will burn only 3 to turn an equal amount of dietary fat into body fat.

  4. Don't Skip Breakfast - Waiting too long to eat can have the same effect as a strenuous diet. Ample research shows that people who skip breakfast have a lower metabolic rate than those who eat a regular morning meal. With nothing to burn, the body has nothing to fire up the metabolic furnace.

  5. Drink Plenty Of Ice Cold Water - It goes into you at one temperature and comes out at another. The calories lost in the process will accelerate your metabolism to an equal degree.

Cultivate these better habits and get on a strength building plan and your metabolism no longer has to be out of your control.

About the Author:

Robert Francis has been an Instructor of Nautilus exercise since 1980 and has been a featured speaker for the National Council On Exercise Standards and the High Intensity Training Seminars.

Robert's clientele enjoy a broad range of strength exercise services which can be viewed on his web page, http://www.StrengthCraft.com