How to Optimize Your Metabolism

For mostly personal reasons, it seems we all want a "fast metabolism." A fast metabolism allows us to eat a lot, perhaps anything we want, and lay on the couch all day and watch television and not put on any weight -- or at least that's what many people think.
And conversely, a slow metabolism condemns us to a life of inevitable and uncontrollable fatness. It's the slow metabolism that did it for sure -- and not how slothful we were. Wrong on both counts.

What is Metabolism?

Metabolism is the rate at which your body uses energy, mostly by "burning" fat and glucose. It's measured in calories, or more correctly, kilocalories. Theoretically, the more you can speed up this metabolic rate of energy expenditure, the more food energy you can eat and not get fat. Yet, it's not that simple. A person's metabolism is governed by a range of factors.

Factors that Affect Your Metabolic Rate

1. Body size. Larger people generally have higher metabolisms, especially if that extra size is mostly muscle. Even so, somewhat paradoxically, obese people have higher metabolisms because of the extra weight they need to move around.
2. Physical activity. The more energy you expend in movement, the more your metabolism is increased to adjust for this additional energy expenditure. Studies of non-exercise activity thermogenesis or NEAT shows that the more you move, the higher your metabolism. NEAT is the movement you do when you're not doing organized exercise -- gardening, housework, walking to shops etc. Conversely, the less you move, the more your metabolism slows down.
3. Gender. Men usually have higher metabolisms than women. This is most likely to do with leaner weight and higher levels of the male hormone testosterone.
4. Genes. The idea that you can be born with a high or low metabolism, or some other hereditary factor that predisposes you to obesity has some factual basis. In very rare cases, genetic disorders can result in obesity from a young age. Others may have a genetic tendency or predisposition to obesity that is influenced by lifestyle and environmental factors. Such people may have to take particular care with their nutrition and exercise, but for this group, obesity is not unavoidable.
5. Age. As we age, our metabolism slows down. This is partly to do with loss of muscle mass and declining hormone status. Exercising, especially with weight training in your exercise program, helps maintain muscle mass.
6. Temperature. When it's cold the body uses extra energy to maintain normal body temperature. Shivering is a part of this process.
7. Illness and anxiety. A fever will raise your metabolism by increasing body temperature, and so will being anxious or depressed as stress hormones boost your metabolism. Thyroid diseases and abnormalities theoretically can increase or decrease metabolism, but for the most part obesity is not caused by an underactive thyroid (hypothyroiditis) alone.

Best Strategies for Boosting Metabolism

As you can see, your metabolism is affected by a cluster of factors, not just your genes and heredity, and except for rare metabolic disorders, genetic influences are likely to account for no more than a few percent of difference in individual metabolism according to the weight loss expert, Tom Venuto. The bottom line here is that your obesity problem is just about always because you eat too much and move too little. However, you can boost your metabolism by following some proven practices.

• Include some exercise training at about 75% of heart rate maximum. This is usually regarded as moderate to high intensity and it's at about 7 out of 10 on the effort scale and involves harder breathing and some sweating. An example might be a circuit training program or a 20 to 30 minute run, depending on your fitness to exercise at this level. This higher intensity demands extra energy expenditure after exercise as your body recovers. This "afterburn" energy expenditure is called "excess post-exercise oxygen consumption" or EPOC.
• Do some solid weight training. Not only does weight training help you maintain muscle mass while you lose fat, it can produce EPOC and raise your metabolism -- but you have to work hard at it.
• Don't do crash diets. Although you need to cut your calorie intake when trying to lose weight, very-low-calorie diets will lower your metabolism and make it harder for you to reach a stable plateau.
• Don't rely on fat-burning foods. So-called fat-burning foods like chili peppers, green tea and coffee/caffeine may produce small increases in metabolism, but the effect is small. Don't rely on fat-burning supplements either; they don't work.

In summary, eat healthy, natural foods, cut the fat and sugar, and exercise powerfully to ramp up your metabolism for long-lasting weight control.
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