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How Metabolism Effects Your Healthy Weight Loss Program

January 17th, 2010 louisj Leave a comment Go to comments

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How Metabolism Effects Weight Loss

Your metabolism is the key to effective weight loss, but not in the way that most people think. Effective weight loss only happens when you burn more calories than you consume. When you burn more calories than you consume you begin to burn fat and that causes you to lose weight. Your metabolism is the complex process of your body converting what you consume into energy. In other words your metabolism is the process of converting calories to energy. If you convert more calories to energy than you consume you lose weight.

Basal Metabolic Rate.

Your Basal Metabolic Rate or BMR is your resting metabolic rate. This determines the amount of calories that you burn during rest. This includes the calories necessary to breathe, for blood to flow throughout your body, for your cells to regenerate and repair, your brain, liver, kidneys and all your internal systems to function. Your BMR is all the functions your body performs to operate your body even when you are at rest. Your Basal Metabolic Rate accounts for 60% to 80% of the calories you burn. There is not much you can do to increase or decrease this. There are no pills, potions or lotions that would dramatically increase your BMR. There is one way that you can increase your BMR and it is important to burning fat and how your metabolism effects weight loss. That is to increase lean muscle mass.

Lean Muscle Mass Burns More Calories.

Even when you are at rest your lean muscle mass burns calories. Your muscles requires your body to burn more energy than fat. As such your Basal Metabolic Rate is higher while you are it rest or sleep and you burn more fat just by increasing your muscle mass. This means that resistance training helps you lose weight even in sleep and while you are resting. This is one reason why strength training is so important to your weight loss program.

Regular Physical Activity.

If 60% to 80% of energy consumption is based on the activities your body do whether you are sleep, at rest, couch potato or highly active, then 20% to 40% of your energy is used for physical activity. For your healthy weight loss program to be effective, you must increase your physical activity to increase your energy consumption. For example; if you consume 2500 calories a day and you burn 1500 of them with no physical activity (60%) then your regular physical activity must burn over 1000 calories to lose weight. Therefore your physical activity will determine whether you lose weight, gain weight or stay the same. There are 3 ways to do this.

Non Exercise Physical Activity (NEPA my word) will help you lose weight because you are constantly in motion. This increases metabolism or burns energy. So any increased physical activity burns more calories.
Aerobic exercise helps you lose weight because of the increased physical activity. We should plan regular physical exercise as part of our healthy weight loss program. Even a 30 minute brisk walk daily will help you lose weight and improve your heart.
Resistance training the has a triple effect. First you increase your regular physical activity. Resistance training in and of itself burns more energy. As resistance training is a regular part of your program, at least 3 times a week, you build muscle mass and increased muscle mass burns more calories while at rest.

Starvation Slows Metabolism.

Some diet plans advocate drastically reducing the calories you consume as a means to lose weight. If you do that your body will soon go into starvation mode and will burn less calories at rest. You will also not have energy because your body is purposely conserving energy because you are not feeding it. Therefore you may even gain weight by eating drastically less food. It is recommended to choose a healthy diet of fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains, nuts and beans, with a little lean meat. This high fiber low fat diet of no more than 10 per cent of your calories coming from lean meat will help you lose weight without drastically reducing your calories.

Finally, There is a Limit.

Everyone has an optimal weight. There is a point that you will no longer lose weight. 95% of us have not reached that point. Remember to see your doctor regularly and understand that we attain optimal health when we eat a healthy diet, use nutritional vitamin supplements and exercise regularly. These are the net effects of our metabolism and weight loss. It is not about losing weight, its about living a long and healthy life.

Be Blessed. Be a Blessing.

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