Your Metabolism How It Effects Your Fat Burning

I wanted to put together an article for you on your metabolism. Here are some facts and information to how your metabolism works and why.

Your metabolism you hear about raising  your metabolism to burn fat, but what is your metabolism and how does it affect you? Is your metabolism the real reason it’s often so hard to lose fat? And, more important, is there anything you can do about it?

“The process of metabolism establishes the rate at which we burn our calories and, ultimately, how quickly we gain weight or how easily we lose it,” says Robert Yanagisawa, MD, director of the Medically Supervised Weight Management Program at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York.

But we all don’t burn calories at the same rate.

Factors That Influence Your Metabolism:

*  Age (metabolism naturally slows about 5% per decade after age 40);
*  Your sex (men generally burn more calories at rest than women);
*  How much lean muscle you have (the more muscle you have, the higher your metabolic rate tends to be).
*  Heredity can also make a difference

A metabolism fact that may surprise you: the more weight you carry, the faster your metabolism is likely running. The simple fact is that the extra weight causes your body to work harder just to sustain itself at rest, so in most cases, the metabolism is always running a bit faster,

That’s one reason it’s almost always easiest to lose weight at the start of a diet, and harder later on, When you are very overweight your metabolism is already running so high that any small cut in calories will result in an immediate weight loss.”

Then, when you lose significant amounts of body fat and muscle, your body needs fewer calories to sustain itself,. That helps explain why it’s so easy to regain weight after you’ve worked to lose it.

Start Your Fat Burning Engine

Some of the factors affecting your metabolic rate can’t be changed, but, there are ways to maximize the metabolism you’re born with — even when you’re dieting.

Among the best ways is exercise. This includes aerobic workouts to burn more calories in the short term, and weight training to build lean muscle that will boost your metabolism.

“Since muscle burns more calories than fat — even while at rest — the more lean muscle you have, the higher your resting metabolic rate, which means the more calories your body will be burning just to sustain you

A Fat Burning Fact -  every pound of muscle in our bodies burns 35 calories a day, while each pound of fat burns just 2 calories per day.

30 minutes of aerobic exercise may burn more calories than 30 minutes of weight training, but in the hours after your workout is over, the weight training has a longer-lasting effect on boosting metabolism.

Having extra muscle also means you can eat more and gain less.

 You don’t exercise while dieting only to burn calories,  exercise builds muscle and that is what will help you burn more calories and maintain your fat loss.

Ladies don’t worry you don’t have the hormones necessary to build bulky muscles.

Eating Frequency And Fat Burning

Eat more often, and you’ll lose more weight. Small, but frequent, meals help keep your metabolism in high gear, and that means you’ll burn more calories overall.

* When you put too many hours between meals, your metabolism actually slows down to compensate. *

If you then eat a huge meal — at the same time your metabolism is functioning as if you’re starving — your body wants to hold on to every calorie. Doing this on occasion won’t hurt you but, make it a way of life and it can get harder to lose or maintain weight.

Researchers from Georgia State University reported that when athletes ate snacks totaling about 250 calories each, three times a day, they had greater energy output then when they didn’t snack.

The study also found that snacking helped the athletes eat less at each of their three regular meals. The final result was a higher metabolic rate, a lower caloric intake, and reduction in body fat.

I hope this article gave you some insight to how your metabolism works and it’s affect on our fat burning efforts.

                                                 Joe