Boost your Metabolism – part one

“If you want to lose weight quickly, you need to boost your metabolism and you will burn calories faster”

How often have I heard that? Metabolism has become a convenient scapegoat to blame for our weight loss struggles. The question is metabolism really to blame? And, is there something that you can do about it? Well, a bit of knowledge will help you to make your metabolism work for you and not against you.

Metabolism is directly proportional to the muscles, bones, and water in the body. To put it differently, metabolism is a function of your fat free body weight. Two individuals with the exact same weight will probably have very different metabolism conditions.

A high metabolism will help you to burn the fat. Ok, the bad news come, as you lose weight, so your metabolism slows down. The body is accustomed to providing energy at a specific weight that was maintained for a sustained period of time. It will have to work harder to provide energy for more cells and it will have to work less to provide energy for fewer cells. That is the first reason why it is so easy to lose weight after recent gains.

The combination of high metabolism and some exercise will help you to lose weight quickly. But, if you've been stationary at an overweight or obese weight, then the body will start to slow down the metabolism as more weight is lost. In fact, most experts agree that the first ten percent of body weight can be lost without much effort. Losing more than 10% of weight will become increasingly difficult as you try to maintain weight loss with an ever slowing metabolism.

If weight is increased significantly, then the metabolism will increase to compensate and try to get back to the known weight. If significant weight is lost, then the metabolism will decrease. And that is why the yo-yo diet phenomena are so prevalent. By the time we've reached our goal, our metabolism has also slowed down significantly, making it much easier to gain back most of the weight that we've lost. It is widely accepted that two people at the same weight will have roughly the same metabolic rate, but someone that has reached that through dieting will have a slower metabolism than a person that has been at that weight all the time.

Exercise is a must if you want to maintain your ideal weight. Any form of exercise will help. Cardio exercises will not grow muscles to the extent that weight training will, but even that will over time increase muscle mass. Don't only focus on the calories burned during exercise; the real benefit comes from the calories that are burned the rest of the day. Cardio exercise is not a bad place to start. It will burn more calories than weight training and will lead to additional muscle.

Weight training will have a much more profound impact on the overall body composition. Maximizing the benefits of a faster metabolism will require a higher percentage of muscle. I know that many women fear that they will become bulky and muscular. Women don't naturally have the necessary hormones to build huge muscles. Even many guys with the correct hormones struggle to gain muscle easily. If you want to keep the weight loss permanent, then the best solution is to combine weight loss with muscle increase.

- To Be Continue