Metabolism: Get Moving

What is metabolism and why does it feel like it slows down as we get older?

Metabolism is the chemical processes that we need as living beings to maintain our life. What most people relate it to is your resting or basal metabolic rate.  This is the number of calories you need in a day to keep your body alive and functioning on a daily basis.  

Certain things influence your BMR

• Muscle Mass

• Age

• Gender

• Genetics

• Physical activity

• Sleep 

Keeping these few things in mind we can begin to understand why someone who used to play sports at a younger age could put on a few extra pounds when they find their career is sitting at a desk for 9 hours a day. So what is the biggest difference from 16 year old you and 46 year old you? I don’t know, I’m asking. Take a minute to think about it...

Let's set aside the things we can’t change like biology, and think of the things we have changed and are doing differently.  Muscle Mass, Physical Activity, and Sleep. 

Muscle Mass

The more lean tissue you have on your body the harder your metabolism has to work to maintain it. Even more so the raw weight is more for your body to carry around and requires more energy to just physically hold.  Like a weighted vest, but all muscle. 

Physical Activity

Total Daily Energy Expenditure or TDEE is becoming a key acronym for reference as a key for weight loss.  You use energy, you can consume more energy, in the form of food. Unless you're a plant then get all the photosynthesis you can. TDEE takes into account a few things:

• Exercise

• Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT)

• Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)

Exercise:

The structured physical activity that you do that is either lifting weights, pilates, zumba, functional fitness, cardio or some other form of structured movement. Also keeping in mind that this counts for a small amount of daily calories burned.

Rule of thumb is for burning calories in exercise. The longer the duration  and more sustainable the movement the better. Resistance training is not meant for burning calories, you burn hardly anything lifting weights.  You are going to burn about the same amount of calories going on a brisk walk for the same amount of time as you are for lifting weights.  Weight is from maintaining muscle or growing muscle. 

Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis:

Well that’s NEAT.  Indeed it is. All of the other things that you do that aren’t exercise but are a physical activity.  Yes all of them and any of them.  This is where you can get a good bit of “metabolism boost”. This could be walking, chores, physical activity. Whatever you want to do but just make sure to move to increase that NEAT.

BMR:

Life functions through digestion.  One way to increase this is to eat higher protein foods which require more energy to break down.

Sleep

The more you exercise the more time you need to recover.  Makes complete since.  The younger you are, the more sleep you will need. Combine those two things you can see that child and adolescent athletes need tons of sleep.  

As it pertains to body composition the amount of sleep effect that drastically either way. Even 1 hour of sleep loss per night can lead to muscle loss and fat retention compared to those who got a full night of sleep.  This was shown in a hypocaloric state for both groups which means if you are losing weight but you aren’t sleeping enough it’s more than likely is mostly muscle.

Read more about Sleep HERE!

So your metabolism might be a bit slower, which is fine, but figure out what you can do about it. Exercise is great with a little bit more walking. Yes, you didn’t have to do that when you were younger but you also have a lot more wisdom now to combat your parent’s genetics.