Rev Up Your Metabolism!

Have you been jogging and watching your meals, but can’t seem to tip the scales? Barely had over 800 calories to eat all day, yet it feels like you’re gaining weight by the week? Your metabolism clearly isn’t on your side and Lakshika Pinto intends to find out exactly how to rev up that rusty ol’ engine again!

- Lakshika Pinto

Sometimes it feels like no matter how hard you’re trying you’re just not getting anywhere with the weight loss game. You’re following the exercise routines and counting your calories but your body’s stagnant. What most people forget to take into account when trying to understand weight loss is just how big a role metabolism plays.

Understanding Metabolism

Metabolism is the method through which chemical reactions in our bodies create and break down energy necessary for life. This is how your body burns calories. Of course, metabolism is part genetic which is why you’ll find some people born with the ability to chow down two Big Mac meals for dinner followed by a sundae for dessert and still not gain an ounce. Despite the genetic aspect, there still are ways to speed up your seemingly snail paced metabolic rate.

Consider your body to be a vehicle. The engine never turns off even when you’re asleep, it fuels up on the calories we feed it. How fast this engine runs is essentially your metabolic rate that will determine how many calories you burn. Simply put, the higher the metabolism, the higher the number of calories burned.

Weight Control

As much as we would all love to sit around and blame our genes for not being cooperative, the fact is weight control is part nature and part nurture. The increasingly common trend of obesity is a clear example of the fact that something isn’t right with our lifestyles, as opposed to just lazy genes.

Lifestyle boils down to what we eat and how active we are on a day-to-day basis. The math behind your weight problem is simple:

Daily caloric intake – Daily caloric output = Weight gain/loss