This word “metabolism” gets thrown around a lot these days. You know that if yours is too slow you might gain weight.  But what exactly does this all mean?

Well technically “metabolism” is the word to describe all of the biochemical reactions in your body.  It’s how you take in nutrients and oxygen and use them to fuel everything you do.

Your body has an incredible ability to grow, heal, and generally stay alive.  And without this amazing biochemistry YOU would not be possible. Metabolism includes the turnover of energy in the cells in your body that allow:

  • Activities you can control (e.g. physical activity etc.).
  • Activities you can’t control (e.g. heart beat, wound healing, processing of nutrients & toxins, etc.).
  • Storage of excess energy for later.

So when you put all of these processes together into your metabolism you can imagine that these processes can work too quickly, too slowly, or just right. Which brings us to the “metabolic rate”.  This is how fast your metabolism works and is measured in calories (yup, those calories!).

The calories you eat can go to one of three places:

  • Work (i.e. exercise and other activity).
  • Heat (i.e. from all those biochemical reactions).
  • Storage (i.e. extra leftover “unburned” calories stored as fat).

As you can imagine the more calories you burn as work or creating heat the easier it is to lose weight and keep it off because there will be fewer “leftover” calories to store for later.

So what affects your metabolic rate?

The first thing you may think is that dreaded treadmill. And yes, aerobic exercise temporarily increases your metabolic rate.  Your muscles are burning fuel to move so they’re doing “work”.

But that’s not the only thing that affects your metabolic rate.

How big you are counts too! Larger people have higher metabolic rates; but your body composition is crucial! 

The thing is, when people lose weight their metabolic rate often slows down (because there is less body to feed).  So one way to offset that is with more muscle mass. The more lean muscle mass you have the more energy your body will burn and the higher your metabolic rate will be.  Even when you’re not working out – bonus right?!

This is exactly why weight training is often recommended as a part of a weight loss program.  Because you want muscles to be burning those calories for you. 

There’s one more thing I want to mention – your thyroid.  This gland at the front of your throat releases hormones to tell your body to “speed up” your metabolism. 

Of course, the more thyroid hormone there is the faster things will work and the more calories you’ll burn.

However, it is possible for this gland to not produce enough of this metabolism revving hormone and tis is called “hypothyroidism”.

If you have symptoms like excess weight, fatigue, dry skin, hair loss, feeling cold and irregular menstrual cycles, a trip to your GP may be worthwhile to test your thyroid function.

So there are two takeaways from this article:

  1. As you lose weight your metabolism will slow down – so that magically fast weight loss at the start of your diet? It’s unlikely to last. Unless you…
  2. Build up your lean muscle mass. There are numerous other benefits to weight training but if it can help you burn calories while you’re doing nothing… well thats a pretty big motivator if you ask me!

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Kelly Moriarty is an online health & nutrition coach and founder of The Green Body Plan.

After 5 years as a veterinarian Kelly was unhealthy, stressed out and generally dissatisfied.

She now helps professional women make the same changes she did to beat burn out, lose weight, recover their energy and take back control of their health naturally. 

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