health and wellness

Understanding Your Metabolism 

Your metabolism plays a crucial role toward your weight loss goals. Metabolism is the rate at which the body burns the calories we eat for food. Therefore, in order to lose weight effectively, the body needs to burn more calories than it is taking in. Weight loss occurs when the body does not have enough calories coming in to maintain the daily activities being performed. For the person wanting to lose weight, this lack of calories is a good thing.

If the body normally burns 2500 calories per day and you eat 1500 calories per day, that will cause a negative of 1000 calories per day adding up to a loss of 2 pounds per week. Fantastic! But many people want to eat more than 1500 calories per day, so that is where an increase in metabolism comes in. You need to teach your body that it needs more calories for energy and the only way to do that is to break its habit and to trick your body into responding to new demands.

It takes about 21 days for the body to break a habit. If you exercised for 21 days, just enough to burn an extra 200 calories a day or 1000 calories a week, over those 21 days, your metabolism would speed up during and even after exercise, and your body would learn that it would need these extra 1000 calories each week; then your body would burn just enough to keep you going. The weight loss would move from 2 pounds to 4 pounds a week.

But don’t take stock in the fact that weight loss levels are so high for long. Because the less the body weighs, the less calories it will need to function and perform, and the cycle will start again. A small drop in caloric intake and a small increase in exercise, and boom, the scale is moving again in your favorite direction.

You see, the body is a well oiled machine. It will only burn the amount of calories it needs to function, and any surplus of calories put in, the body will store as fat for later use should the body need to tap in to those reserves. Your body is designed to keep you alive, and the body loves nothing more than to have fat reserves in case of famine. Therefore, in order to lose weight, you need to trick the body into responding to what you want it to do.

Weight loss is a science, and it can be fairly simple if you are patient and you understand how the body survives and operates. Losing weight is not a short term affair, and once you take the time to learn what your caloric needs are, you will be able to teach your body some new metabolic tricks. There is no sense in taking a ton of diet pills that swear to rev up your metabolism, as they will not produce permanent weight loss, and will do nothing but cause nervousness to your heart rate.

Estimating Your Basal Metabolic Rate

In order to lose weight you need to get to know what your caloric intake should be. Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) is a measure of how fast your metabolism is running. It’s the number of calories you burn to keep your heart beating, to keep you breathing, to keep your muscles alive, to keep you functioning etc. It’s the number of calories your body needs while at rest. The guide is below:

Women: 661 + (4.38 x weight in pounds) + (4.33 x height in inches) - (4.7 x age) = BMR

Men: 667 + (6.24 x weight in pounds) + (12.7 x height in inches) - (6.9 x age) = BMR

To estimate the TOTAL number of calories your body needs per day, multiply your BMR by the appropriate number below:

• 0.9 if you are sedentary and have yo-yo or crash dieted frequently during the past two years.
• 1.2 if you are sedentary.
• 1.3 if you are moderately active (exercise 3 days per week or equivalent).
• 1.7 if you are very active.
• 1.9 if you are extremely active.

This is only a way to estimate caloric expenditure.

*note: there are 3500 calories in one pound. Therefore, you would need to expend 3500 calories in order to lose one pound.

Later, we will apply this information and take it a step further to look at ways to help speed up your metabolism and attain your weight loss goals!

             -written by Angela Doss