Understand Your Metabolism

Metabolism Explained

Metabolism is a word that gets thrown around a lot in weight loss circles.  People always complain the reason they cannot lose weight is because they have a slow metabolism.  Others claim that if you charge up your metabolism then you can melt away all your excess body fat and have the body you have always dreamed of.

 

Your metabolism is a very complex biological phenomenon as you can see on the picture. While it sounds like a really powerful thing few people have an understanding of it.
I’ll go into what it is and how it works in very basic detail and hope that it’ll shed some light on this subject.

Basically, your metabolism is the number of calories you use each day.  There are 3 main areas that determine your metabolism:

 1) Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR):

This accounts for around 65% of your daily calories and represents all the functions that keep you alive.

 2) Physical Activity: 

This accounts for around 25% of your daily calories and represents any physical activity you do.

 3) Thermic Effect Of Food: 

This accounts for around 10% of your daily calories and represents the calories that are used when you digest food.

 Can You Influence Your Metabolism?

 The good news is that you can influence your metabolism.  The bad news is that you cannot influence it as much as many weight loss programs would have you believe.

As I said above, 65% of your daily calories are used to perform all the basic functions that keep you alive.  You cannot influence these calories.

The remaining 35% of your calories are used to perform physical activity and digest your food.  By doing regular exercise and eating the right foods (I will show you how to do this later in the report) you can have a small influence over these calories.

 How Does This Fit In With Losing Weight?

Although you cannot have a massive influence over your metabolism, it is still a very important weight loss tool.  Once you understand the concept of metabolism you can then use the principles behind it to calculate your target metabolism (the amount of calories you will burn each day at your target weight).  This target metabolism can then be compared with your existing diet to show you where changes need to be made.

 Calculating Your Target Metabolism

Calculating your metabolism is not difficult.  Just follow the simple steps below:

 1) Calculate Your Target BMR:-

You can calculate this manually by multiplying your target body weight by 14 if you are male or 12 if you are female.  Alternatively, you can use an online BMR calculator (just remember to enter your target weight and not your current weight).

 2) Adjust Your Target BMR For Physical Activity:

Once you have your Target BMR you then need to adjust it based on the following activity levels:
- Sedentary (little or no exercise) = BMR x 1.2.

- Lightly Active (light exercise up to 3 days per week) = BMR x 1.375.

- Moderately Active (medium exercise between 3 and 5 days per week) = BMR x 1.55.

- Extremely Active (heavy exercise between 6 and 7 days per week) = BMR x 1.725.

So if you have a target BMR of 1,500 and rate yourself as extremely active then you need to multiply 1,500 by 1.725 which equates to a target metabolism of 2,588 calories per day.