What Is Metabolism?

This may be the only article about metabolism you read that isn’t an advertisement.

The speed at which your body burns through energy is known as your metabolism.

Similar to how a car runs on gas, your body runs on calories.

Your body’s processes, such as digestion and circulation, depend on calories for energy. But to move about, you also need calories.

Too many calories cause you to store them as fat. Here’s where things get tricky: Sugar tricks your body into believing “here come a lot of calories,” and most of the time it’s right because it’s simple to pack a LOT of calories into sweet foods. But for the time being, I’ll keep things at a high level.

You want your body to burn calories quickly, or your metabolism. You must expend more calories than you consume if you want to lose weight. You should undoubtedly eat less. However, there are three methods of calorie burning:

Basal metabolic processes: Calorie burn during basic metabolic processes, or when you’re not moving around. The “basal metabolic rate,” or BMR, is what is used to measure this. Your BMR will be higher the more muscle you have. Your BMR will be lower the less muscle you have. To keep alive, muscle burns calories.

Thermic effect of food: Digestion of food requires some energy. Not a lot. Proteins and lipids require a little bit more energy to break down than carbohydrates do. At most, this represents 10% of your daily intake.

Physical exercise energy expenditure: These are the calories used to move you. You burn more energy the more you move. Despite what our Ministry of Health may have you believe, walking and shopping don’t really add up to much. Mowing the lawn or climbing one flight of steps each day won’t help you lose weight. Your daily calorie use could increase by 20% or more with just one hour of vigourous aerobic activity.

There you go.

Increasing your muscular mass is the best strategy to burn calories. This entails using weights.

Let’s assume that you burn 1,000 calories per day as your basal metabolic rate. You consume 1,500 calories a day (yeah, right—no one consumes that few calories) and participate in an hour-long cycle class. Let’s assume that you make healthy eating choices and include protein or fat in every meal.

1,300 calories are equal to your BMR + thermic effect of food + activity. You continue to put on weight. You would acquire a pound approximately every 18 days if you performed this precise action every day.

Now suppose you increase your BMR. The ONLY way to achieve this is by adding muscle (other options include sleeping in the sun, consuming chemical foot warmers, or using thermic steroids; superfoods, apple cider vinegar, laxatives, and smoking cigarettes won’t work either.)

The thermic effect of food will not change if you continue to consume 1,500 calories per day at your current BMR of 1,200. However, as you exercise, the number of calories you burn every hour will increase.

With a little extra muscle, your new BMR is 1,200.

1,530 = Your BMR + thermic impact of diet + exercise. In fact, you’ve shed a little weight.

When your muscles refuel immediately after exercise, you burn calories. But the amount of calories you burn merely by moving around is far more, and the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn.

The first stage in fat loss is to create a calorie deficit. Not the only step, though. But if I were to suggest a person’s initial step in losing weight, I would advise them to lift weights. The next step is to stop eating sugar.