There are so many things in life that you can control and there are those that you absolutely have zero control over.
The same goes in our journey to fitness. While you can control the food you eat and the beverage your drink and the exercise program that you can follow on a regular basis, one major thing that has a huge contribution to weight loss and fitness, which you have no control over is your metabolism.
Defined as the chemical reaction in one’s body that breaks down energy tor burns down calories that are used for humans to function.
And one’s ability to have a fast or slow metabolism is, as they say, just by a stroke of luck. Lucky are those who have genes of faster metabolism as they are the ones who can eat anything and not gain weight at all. Others aren’t so lucky and end up having a slower metabolism, which means that their body does not have the capacity to burn calories faster.
There are several ways to burn calories: through everyday activities, through exercise and believe it or not, while you are at rest.
Applied to fitness, it would mean that your metabolism plays a vital role to your ability to reach your fitness goal.
You may look at metabolism this way: Imagine that your body as a furnace and that it is always burning. For it to continue burning, you need to put more fuel in it. In humans, this fuel is the calories that we get from the food we eat. For people with the fast metabolism, they need to eat more in order to keep their weight. Or if you are active, you need to eat to have enough energy to do what you do.
When you are idle or for people with a slow metabolism, you do not need that much fuel. So you need less food.
But then we make some really bad food choices and you are not burning as much, this is when you see spike in your weight.
When we gain weight we suddenly feel crappy and we end up doing all sorts of crazy means just to shed off the weight: We go on crazy diets and silly workout regime. And if you are successful, you will still eventually gain that all back again.
Crash diets are never ok.
To address this, it is advisable to build your diet gradually over a long period of time. Slowly but surely your body will be able to adjust.
But in simple terms, treat metabolism and how it affects weight loss and weight gain this way: Calories in and calories out.
If you are eating more than you are burning, then you are surely gaining weight. And in essence, if you take in fewer calories that are burned, weight loss is guaranteed. But you need to fuel your body for it to continue the ‘burning’ process. If you deprive yourself, the body will go in starvation mode. The body’s response will be to reserve the energy so fewer calories will be burned. This is when losing weight is a challenge.
Top Tips
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Lift weights to build lean muscle tissue to increase your bodies ability to metabolise fat
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Move more!
