Posts Tagged ‘Metabolism’



How Metabolism Affects Your Weight

Monday, April 19th, 2010

Metabolism is the rate at which your body consumes calories. Someone with a high metabolic rate is able to burn calories more efficiently than someone with a slower metabolic rate. Assuming these two people eat roughly the same amount of calories, the individual with a faster metabolic rate “burns up” more of the calories she eats; the person who has the slower metabolism doesn’t burn all the calories taken in, so the extra calories are “saved” and then converted to fat.

Since many factors can affect your metabolism (e.g. age, overall health), it can actually slow down without you making any lifestyle changes. The good news is that aerobic exercise is an ideal way to increase your metabolism and combat weight gain.

Aging in particular has a noticeable impact on your metabolism, due to changes in hormone balance. That doesn’t mean aging makes weight gain inevitable. A 2001 study by the USDA Agricultural Research Service showed that older people can significantly improve their metabolism and fend of weight gain by participating in strength training (using weights or other resistance) exercise. The reason both exercise and strength training can improve your metabolism? Muscle burns calories more efficiently than fat; the more muscle you have in relation to your body fat, the higher your metabolism will be.

Metabolism is an important part of the weight-loss formula. It’s important to burn as many calories as possible when trying to lose weight, and metabolism plays right into that.

The Shrinking Team
Weight-Loss is Hard, We’re Here to Make it Easier

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The Mathematics Behind Weight-Loss

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

All weight-loss simply boils down to burning more calories than you consume. This is the principle behind diet & exercise, bariatric surgery, and any other weight-loss methods. If you burn more calories than you consume your body will have to start burning fat stores for the energy it needs.

Exercise is important because it increases the number of calories that you burn daily, while eating less and maintaining a healthy diet helps to limit your calorie intake. Understanding these basic facts let’s us start looking at weight-loss from a more methodical and mathematical standpoint. A pound is 3500 calories. So for each pound you want to lose you will need to burn 3500 calories more than you intake.

Here are a couple of examples to show you how to think about your weight-loss program mathematically.

Example #1
First, let’s say that Joe weighs about 350 pounds and wants to get down to 250. He has a Basal Metabolic Rate of 2920 calories per day. If he maintains a diet of 1800 calories per day then he will have a net loss of 1120 calories per day. And since there are 3500 calories in a pound, he can expect to lose about .32 pounds per day. So it would take him about 313 days to reach his weight-loss goals if he just maintains his diet of 1800 calories per day.

Example #2
If Joe is more aggressive and adds a daily workout to his weight-loss plan then he can accelerate the weight-loss. If he does a moderately intense workout and burns 750 calories each day, in addition to the 1800 calories diet, he can have a net loss of 1870 calories per day. With a calorie deficit of 2670 calories (.53 pounds) he can expect to reach his weight-loss goal in about 189 days.

Here is a simple formula to help you calculate your weight-loss and show you what you can realistically expect.

The Weight Loss Formula

Ever wonder how contestants on The Biggest Loser lose so much weight? It’s simply because of the same formula. Contestants on the show spend about 6 hours per day in the gym, so they can burn 6000-7000 calories per day. Let’s look at an example.

Example #3
Jane is a contestant on the show and weighs 310 pounds. She has a BMR of 2140 and maintains a diet of 1800 calories. If she burns 6000 calories per day, then she can achieve a deficit of 6340 calories, which is about 1.81 pounds. So in a week she would be able to lose around 12.5 pounds.

It’s also important to note that your BMR will change as you lose weight. As you get smaller you will need less calories to maintain your weight, so the BMR will drop correspondingly.

All methods of weight-loss target one portion of the weight-loss equation. Diets and bariatric surgery focus on the calories consumed part, exercise increase the number of calories burned, and so on. Understanding what it actually takes to lose weight is an important part of the process and can show you the commitment that you need to make to be able to achieve your goals.

The Shrinking Team
Weight-Loss is Hard, We’re Here to Make it Easier

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Understanding BMR – Basal Metabolic Rate

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

MetabolismTrue weight-loss success comes from a basic understanding of metabolism. Metabolism is the rate at which your body uses energy or burns calories. Your body will expend energy no matter what you are doing, even when you are asleep. Basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the rate at which your body burns calories while at rest. BMR decreases with age and with the loss of lean body mass. Increasing your muscle mass increases your BMR.

Discovery Health has our favorite BMR Calculator, so you should check it out and see your rate. You can get a more personalized and accurate BMR figure by seeing a qualified trainer or a registered dietitian; they can actually take a measurement on a device similar to a calculator that will estimate the number of calories your body burns per minute.

Understanding your BMR (at least approximately) is an important part of knowing how best to lose weight. Knowing whether your body burns 2200 calories or 2500 calories per day makes a significant difference when planning your ideal calorie intake for weight-loss.

The Shrinking Team
Weight-Loss is Hard, We’re Here to Make it Easier

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Posted in Health, Weight Loss | 3 Comments »