Revving up your Metabolism!

Written by Tonya Reynolds on Feb 21, 2012 3:41 pm

We eat food for fuel, which in turn is burned for energy to run our bodies. Metabolism is basically all the chemical processes that take place in the body in order to sustain life. It allows us to breathe, pump blood, brain function, and extract energy from our food. Our basal (or resting) metabolic rate refers to the number of calories our body uses each day to keep all our vital organs functioning. You burn more calories with other activities and exercise, but he majority of the calories that are burned each day are your basal calories.

Our bodies can be divided into two compartments. One is all the body fat. The other is everything else: bone, fluid, tissue, muscle. That is the fat-free compartment. The size of this fat-free compartment determines your metabolic rate. Every pound of fat-free mass burns about 14 calories per day. So, if you weigh 150 pounds and 50 is fat and 100 is fat-free then you burn about 1,400 calories per day at rest. That is why its important to eat 1,200 calories minimum per day. The body easily burns that just to maintain itself. The highly controversial new diet pill HCG limits caloric intake to 500 a day! That isn’t even enough calories for the body to function properly. Yes, people lose weight quickly, but they also gain it back quickly when they are no longer taking the HCG. It is a band-aid for the root problem. People need to change to healthy eating habits and exercise regularly to maintain a healthy body.

I have a friend who seems to gain weight very easily. Then, there is my daughter who seems to eat whatever she wants to without gaining any weight. Well, there’s a couple reasons for all this. As my friend and I, have gotten older we don’t do near the exercise we did when we were chasing the ball down the soccer field everyday. We don’t have weight lifting 3 days a week with our coach. So, our muscle mass has decreased. Therefore, our fat-free compartment isn’t burning as many calories as it did when we were more muscular. My daughter doesn’t play sports, but she is always moving. Whether it is taping her pencil or rocking her foot. She burns a lot of calories through Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT). Basically, she just moves around a lot. People who seem like they can just “eat whatever they want and never gain weight” usually are making healthy, relatively low-calorie selections naturally. And they burn more calories through NEAT. They fidget, they get up more during the day, they cross and uncross their legs, they don’t worry about getting the closest parking spot in the parking lot because they don’t mind walking a little, they just move more. While others are more stationary. They send an email instead of getting up and walking over to their colleagues desks, they don’t use many hand gestures when they talk.

Since our fat-free compartment contains muscle tissue, one of the best things you can do to boost your metabolic rate is to strength train to increase your muscle mass. If you just build up 10 pounds of lean muscle mass, that’s 140 extra calories per day, plus the calories you burn during the exercise!

What else can you do to Rev up your metabolism????

~Exercise 30 minutes a day, children should get 60 minutes

~Strength train at least 3 days a week.

~Start small- try walking with just one- to two-pound weights

~Never skip breakfast! this jump starts your body

~Do Not eat fewer than 1,200 calories a day, your body will start reserving everything because it doesn’t know when it will get more food.

~Have a supply of protein-powered healthy snacks on hand instead of carb. loaded junk food.

~Nutritional supplements such as Herbalife’s Total Control and Herbal Tea Concentrate, can help boost metabolism. (To find out more about Herbalife products please see the “My Products” tab)

On top of a healthy diet, your body needs regular exercise! Rev up your metabolism today!

Happy Healthy 2012