One way to think about metabolism is to understand how the body uses the fuel you take in. You produce energy from the food you eat.
You use energy to:
- Keep your cells and organs alive
- Digest food
- Move
- Be active
Unfortunately, excess energy in the food is stored as fat. If you want to lose weight, you must use more energy than you take in as food.
- Some people have a body that is very good at converting the food or fuel they eat into energy for good health and activity. This is considered a well-conditioned metabolism and is associated with someone who has a fast metabolism and energy level.
- If your energy-producing systems are not healthy or in shape, then you are more likely to store fuel as fat, feel tired more often and have a slow metabolism.
Learn how to get the energy producing systems in your body into great shape so you can easily convert food into fuel for an abundance of energy and feel great.
There are 3 ways your body uses energy:
1- Resting Energy Expenditure
This is the amount of energy needed just to keep you alive. It is also the energy needed to keep your organs and brain healthy, heart pumping and muscles and cells alive.
For most people, this is the energy expended during the day and accounts for 60-75% of all the energy use per day.
Many people think they have no control over their resting energy expenditure and believe it is all genetics.
However, weight-bearing exercises and creating lean muscle has a direct effect on resting energy expenditure. In other words, lean muscle is an active tissue and uses energy to stay alive, while fat tissue does not. The number one reason why men typically have a higher metabolism than women is due to their lean muscle mass.
Resting Energy Expenditure is calculated by measuring the amount of energy used when you first wake up, lying perfectly still in bed and before breakfast. This time has always been thought of as the lowest energy expenditure.
However, there is another time when the body is shut down, almost in a hibernating state when your metabolism really slows down and that is when watching TV.
The average child watches 4 hours of television per day. By the time he or she graduates high school, they have spent more time in front of the television than in a classroom. Can you believe it? No wonder there is an epidemic of obesity in this country.
2- Thermal Energy
This is the energy required to digest our food and accounts for 10% of all the energy used during the day.
You can actually increase this amount by eating smaller, more frequent meals (every 3 hours) with good quality protein and fiber. Protein requires more energy to be digested than sugars or fats.
3- Energy For Exercise
Obviously exercising and moving more is the best way to increase metabolism. When you exercise regularly and condition the body to create energy, both aerobically and by lifting weights, you feel good and have more energy naturally.
Think about people’s lifestyles today. We get up and walk to the kitchen to press a button and make coffee, walk to the front door for the newspaper or perhaps push another button to turn on the TV. We might pick up a briefcase, walk to the car, turn the key and drive to work where we sit at a desk all day.
We are no longer walking to work, working the fields or hunting for food. This has had a huge impact on our health.
A Well-conditioned Metabolism
A well-conditioned metabolism is something we should all strive to achieve. There are some factors to consider when it comes to metabolism.
We need a body that:
- Can handle fats and sugars properly
- Is sensitive to insulin
- Has healthy muscles with the ability to move with force due to an increase in lean muscle mass
- Has enzymes within the cells and aerobic factories ready to produce energy efficiently anytime we move or want to be active
- Offers a strong cardiovascular system that can bring plenty of oxygen whenever the increase in demand is present
Boost Your Metabolism With Exercise
It doesn’t matter what time of day you exercise, the point is to exercise whenever it fits into your schedule.
Muscle burns more calories at rest than fat does and that is why it is important to incorporate some sort of strength training.
Having more muscle will definitely increase your metabolic rate. If you are not a morning person, then training in the morning is probably not going to work for you so schedule a workout in the late afternoon or after work.
Simply adding weight-training exercises can help your body win the weight loss battle.