Metabolism refers to all the biochemical process involved in breaking down the food you eat for bodily functions and energy. The rate or speed and efficiency of your metabolism is called the metabolic rate.  In simple terms, metabolic rate is the rate at which your body burns calories for energy.  Your metabolic rate will determine how much food you will require to sustain life. No two bodies are exactly alike, thus metabolic rates have a natural variance from one person to another.

To understand how your metabolism works, we might compare it with the thermostat on your furnace.  If you turn the thermostat up, it uses more fuel, turn it down and it uses less fuel.  Your body’s fuel is the calorie.  A fast metabolism may be thought of as being set on “high” and uses more calories (fuel), while a slow metabolism, set on low, uses fewer calories.  Calories that are not used for energy are stored as fat.  If you have a slow metabolism, you use fewer calories for energy which means more will be stored as fat.  A fast metabolism uses more calories for energy and little is left over to be stored as fat.

If you are overweight, chances are you have a slow metabolism which means you are using fewer calories for energy and leaving more to be stored as body fat.  Thin people eat more calories!! According to studies, thin people eat an estimated average of 600 calories more per day than overweight people.  A thin person’s metabolism burns calories at a faster rate, leaving fewer to be stored as fat.  On the other hand, the fat individual may eat fewer calories, but having a slower metabolism, will burn the calories slowly and more are left to be stored as fat. For this reason, an excess of body fat must be viewed as a symptom of a slower than normal metabolism. Dieting is an attempt to treat only the symptom and treating symptoms is a no win situation.   You cannot treat the symptom, you must treat the cause. The slow metabolism must be increased so that calories will be burned faster, and less body fat will result. Correcting the cause will result in permanent normalization of weight.  

If you have a weight problem, dieting will aggravate the problem.  In fact, dieting may have actually created the problem to begin with.  Cutting back to a low calorie intake will alter your metabolism…the wrong way..it will slow it down.  Dieting slows down your metabolism with each subsequent diet. This means you are burning calories at an even slower rate than you were before the diet.  In addition, fat producing enzymes will be four or more times more active in their fat storing activities after dieting than before, due to the body’s natural response to food shortage.  If you’ve trained your body to accept less caloric intake to function, it responds by listening to you and expecting you to give it less fuel to run, so that when it receives any fuel at all, it hoards it, thinking it may need to salvage it for a ‘rainy day’.

Work with your body, not against it.  Let me let you in on a little secret…which shouldn’t be a secret… the more you eat, the more calories you burn. Every time you eat, your metabolism increases. Calories are used to fuel the many process necessary to digest the food.  This “heating up” effect after eating, is called the “thermic effect” of food.  This thermic effect requires extra calories, which means that some of the calories consumed by the food will be “lost” in production of heat.  Since metabolism increases after eating, the body requires the use of calories at a much faster rate than normal throughout the entire digestive process.  Therefore, every time you eat, the thermic effect of food and the increase in metabolism will increase your caloric expenditure.  If you increase to frequency of eating with appropriate small between meal snacks you will increase your metabolism more frequently as well as the thermic effect.  Thereby you will not only “waste” more calories, but will convert fewer of them to fat.  Eating more frequently will also help you control your appetite.  With less appetite, there is less hunger at mealtimes and you’re less likely to over-eat.  

Your body produces less fat and more energy from smaller, frequent feedings.  As a result, energy levels usually increase quickly, weight goes down, and the lethargic, “stuffed” feeling associated with eating too much does not occur.  Not only the frequency of eating, but the time of day you eat, will influence your body’s fat production.  You’ll want to consume more of your daily calories during your most active periods of being awake.  Generally, this means during the breakfast and lunch periods, instead of taking on a heavy dinner and then lounging out on the sofa for the rest of the evening. Of course, quality of the food counts!!!  Eat “whole foods”. ….meaning, not processed.

Fiber fights fat. High fiber foods like whole grains and vegetables will combine with the fat in a meal, preventing some of its absorption.  Fiber also increases food transit time, which means that fiber moves food through the intestines quicker, limiting the amount of absorption time.  High fiber foods are usually very filling, but not calorie dense.  To aid in weight control, a high fiber food should be eaten with each meal and for snacks.

To increase your metabolism you’ll need to follow a nutrition and exercise plan that will take into consideration your metabolic rate and enable your body to effectively utilize the calories you give it.

The average body can only metabolize approximately 1-2 pounds of fat per week.  A greater loss than that usually suggests that lean tissue (which is heavier) is accountable for part of the lost weight.  Loss of lean tissue will lower caloric requirement, which in turn may stop weight loss.  It is important to take this information into consideration when gauging the amount of weight loss while embarking on a fat loss plan. One pound of fate takes up five times the space of one pound of lean muscle tissue.  It is for this reason that inches lost are very dramatic when losing body fat.  Soooooo, forget the scale…take out the measuring ruler instead.  Notice how your clothes fit rather than notice what the numbers are saying on the scale. Losing lean tissue can be life threatening, especially if the weight loss is sudden and quick.  Metabolism augmentation should happen gradually with noticeable increase within four to six weeks.