Why can one person eat like a growing teenager and not gain a pound while another person's every indulgence shows up on the scale? Several factors affect your metabolism including your body size and composition, sex, and age. Metabolism is used to describe the number of calories your body burns resting, digesting, and moving. It powers everything from breathing to blinking. Metabolism is actually a combination of biochemical processes that convert the food you eat into energy.
Your body always needs energy to function for fueling actions such as breathing or circulating blood. A fast metabolism is like a hot furnace that burns through fuel (calories) quickly. A slow metabolism needs less fuel to keep a body running. It’s tempting to blame weight gain on a slow metabolism, but there are ways to support metabolism and maintain a healthy weight. It turns out there are numerous misconceptions about metabolism since people oversimplify a complex process.
Certain
foods can fire up your metabolism-While so-called
health gurus and diet supplement infomercials promote the idea of a magic
weight loss pill, the truth is that there is no substitute for a balanced
lifestyle. The largest culprits in these miracle claims are green tea,
capsaicin, and lemon juice. Researchers found that 500 mg of green tea extract
increased participant metabolisms
by about 2 percent for four hours after
ingestion.
Let’s put this
in perspective: If you you’re on a 2,000-calorie diet and took 500 mg of
green tea extract that’s the equivalent of seven calories. The study concluded
that green tea extract alone has a relatively minor effect on metabolism. In
addition, there is extremely limited evidence showing any long-term benefits of
capsaicin (found in hot peppers) or lemon juice on metabolism and weight loss.
Don’t eat after a certain
time at night (or before you go to bed)-As far as
metabolism myths go, this seems like a fairly reasonable one at first glance. You
lie in bed without moving much when you sleep, so it stands to reason that you
don’t burn many calories during that time. If you eat right before sleeping,
wouldn’t you worsen the problem further, storing that food as fat instead
powering your daily activities? There are two issues with this premise. First, your
metabolisms do not slow down to a crawl, even when you are sleeping. Your
bodies are still quite active at night, keeping you functional and healthy
through simple processes like breathing and heartbeat.
Metabolism
actually increases during sleep
in leaner participants while slowing down in obese participants. Secondly, your
body is in a constant state of flux when it comes to burning or storing energy.
Foods that you eat are not converted into energy or stored as fat immediately. Your
body is constantly switching between anabolism (building) and catabolism
(breaking down). They’re pulling energy from stores when needed and refilling
the stores constantly. In short, having a late dinner or snack at night
won’t hurt you at all if you stick to eating within your caloric limits.
Eating
breakfast jumpstart’s your metabolism-There are many
benefits to breakfast. It can provide vital nutrients and improve
performance. Kicking your metabolism into
overdrive is not a breakfast benefit. The concept that your metabolism needs a
boost from food right when you wake up is completely unfounded. A 16-week
study showed that regardless of whether
subjects ate or skipped breakfast their metabolism was exactly the same at the
end of the study (as it was on Day 1).
There was no difference in calories burned between the two
groups, nor was there any change within each group over the 16 weeks. Body fat
percentage, lean body mass, waist circumference, and Body Mass Index (BMI) also
remained similar between the two groups. The breakfast eaters appeared to eat
significantly more calories throughout the day. They ate 2,730 calories on
average compared to 2,191 in the breakfast skippers despite being of similar
weight and statures. This surge in calorie count was balanced by a proportional
increase in self-reported physical activity, which explains the lack of weight
gain in the breakfast eaters’ group. So while eating breakfast may not help
your body burn more calories passively, it could give you the energy for the
gym in the morning.
Eating
smaller, more frequent meals throughout the day increases your metabolic rate-The
idea is simple. Whenever you eat food, your body has to burn calories in order
to break the food down and absorb the nutrients. If you were constantly eating,
then couldn’t your bodies constantly be burning calories? If you ate six meals
a day, then technically you would burn twice as many calories as if you eat
only three meals. In reality, it is not quite that simple. The thermic effect
of food (TEF) is the energy you expend to process, use, and store the nutrients
in your meals.
The temporary boost in your metabolic rates is directly
proportional to how much and what types of foods you eat. So those six small
meals slightly increase your metabolism six times over the course of the day,
but three larger meals would provide three proportionally larger boosts. That
means the same amount of calories have been burned at the end of the day. A meta-analysis of studies on metabolism came to the same conclusion.
There is no evidence supporting differences in metabolism or
weight loss based on meal size and frequency. In the grand scheme of things,
relying on TEF to help you lose weight isn’t a very smart choice as it accounts
for roughly 10 percent of all calories burned. If you find eating more
frequent meals helps you avoid overeating and stay
within your calorie budget, go for it. It
won’t magically make you burn calories faster.
Skinnier
people have fast metabolisms-The truth of the matter is that
there is very little variation in how many calories you burn when you take both
lean mass and body fat into consideration. A study published in Nature found that of the 35 obese and
28 normal-weight participants, the obese subjects on average had
proportionally higher metabolisms.
The amount of calories burned daily was most closely related
to an individual’s lean body mass, which includes muscles, bones, and organs.
So chances are, the more you weigh, the higher your metabolism actually is. A clinically
evident thyroid disorder, which can impact how quickly your burn calories,
affect less
than 1 percent of the U.S. population. True
hypothyroidism, which may present itself as unexplained weight gain due to
decreased production of certain hormones, affects roughly 0.3 percent of
the population.
“I believe in eating smaller
meals more often throughout the day to keep the metabolism going. Don't deprive
yourself just make better choices. At 50 years old, it is definitely a lot
harder to stay in shape then it was when I was in my 20's.” (Todd English) [i]
[i] Sources used:
“4 Metabolism Myths and Facts”
·
“5 Myths and Facts about Metabolism
That You Need to Know” Carina Wolff
·
“5
Metabolism Myths You Should Stop Believing” by Lindsey Metrus
·
“5 Myths about Your Metabolism” By David Hu
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