Body Solutions Body Bytes: 1/31/10

In my first Blog I spoke about how we affect weight loss by doing two things. Decreasing the amount of calories we eat, and speeding up our metabolism. Today I am going to write about the steps we take to speed up our metabolism.

Everybody has a “resting” metabolic rate. If you want to get all scientific it’s known as your Basil Metabolic Rate, or BMR. What we are talking about here unscientifically is the number calories your body needs to lay down with no movement and not digesting food. Think about this as your body on screen saver mode. Our BMR is set by our genetics, and our hormones. This is where we start.

We are going to use an example of a 35 year old woman who is 5’ 4’’ and 150 pounds and a BMR of 1486 calories. That means that if she at a 1500 calorie diet she would slowly begin to gain weight.

Luckily we can speed up our metabolism. These are the basic factors we want to manage:

Move- The more we move the more calories we burn. This is the largest factor in speeding up your metabolism. It can be as simple as parking in spots farther from the store, to doing hours of cardio. The more you can move the more you will burn.

Eat more often- That is MORE OFTEN not MORE! This step is the one that most people have the hardest time excepting. Our body has an amazing safety mechanism to prevent us from starving, it stops burning calories. After three to four hours your body will begin to conserve energy and cut down on the amount of calories it burns. So you want to eat every three to four hours, but still stay within your ideal category range. YOU HAVE TO EAT TO LOSE WEIGHT!

Create more muscle- It takes more calories to maintain lean muscle than it does to maintain fat. The debate is out on how many calories it actually takes to maintain a pound of muscle some say 5 calories a day some say 50 to 100. Let’s be conservative and say 10 calories a day. That doesn’t seem like much but if you can add 3 pounds of muscle to your body you will burn close to 1000 extra calories a month. Not to shabby.

Drinking enough water- Drinking 8-10 glasses of water a day depending on how are will help to clean out your system and make it more efficient. It may only gain you a minimal amount of calories but in our weight loss fight every calorie counts.

If you can align these four major factors you will be a giant step ahead in the weight loss battle.

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