Metabolism & BMR for Weight Loss…

What is Metabolism?

“The chemical processes that occur within a living organism in order to maintain life”.

What is BMR (Basic Metabolic Rate)?

“Amount of daily energy expended at rest” (How many calories our body burns each day).

A Common Dieting Mistake!!! Most people think that dieting requires a very minimal food intake, but severely reducing calories is counterproductive! It causes our body to go into ‘starvation mode’ (conserving fat stores for survival). This mechanism, which has evolved as a defence against starvation, means the body becomes super efficient at making the most of the calories it does get from food and drink.

What’s the main reason why our body does this?….To protect its fat stores for a “rainy day” (which never comes!). Instead, the body uses lean tissue or muscle to provide some of the calories it needs to keep functioning. This directly leads to a loss of muscle, which in turn lowers metabolic rate. The body therefore needs fewer calories to keep ticking over and weight loss slows down.  Of course, this is the perfect solution if you’re in a famine situation, but with a tesco’s, asda’s or fast food outlet on every corner, we’re not!!

If you’re trying to lose weight, losing muscle is not going to help you shift those unwanted pounds!!! We need to add muscle to aid fat loss.

As a general rule, we recommend never going below 1,200 calories a day if you’re dieting on your own. 1,200 calories made up of clean vegetables and protein and small amounts of carbs to get you through the day.

Calculating via a food diary instead of guessing how many calories you consume will take away any chance for error. This is essential to understanding nutrition!!!! Everybody should do this for 1 week, just to understand exactly what goes into the food they generally eat…you’ll be surprised!!!

Did you know that 1lb of Fat equates to 3500 calories!

So once we have calculated our BMR, if we eat a healthy meal plan that hits about 500 calories under the BMR each day, by the end of the week, we should have burned off 3,500 calories or 1lb of Fat! A very healthy way to lose weight in a controlled and consistent manner.

The metabolic rate – the rate at which the body burns calories – is partly determined by the amount of muscle we have. In general, the more muscle we have, the higher our metabolic rate; the less muscle we have, the lower our metabolic rate. This explains why men, who have a high proportion of muscle, have a faster metabolism than women, and why a 20-year-old has a higher metabolism than a 70-year-old – again, they have more muscle.Muscle & Metabolism…More muscle means a faster metabolic rate!!!

Ultimately, muscle burns a lot more calories than fat does, so when we lose muscle, our metabolic rate drops and we burn fewer calories.

This explains why it’s crucial to do as much as you can to protect your metabolic rate, especially when you’re dieting.

The Key to Success: Cardiovascular training mixed with Strength training!!!

For every extra 1lb of muscle you have, your body uses around an extra 50 calories a day! This means an extra 10lb of muscle will burn roughly an extra 500 calories a day without you doing anything – (1lb in a week is a sufficient amount to lose) . Building a healthy training routine into your lifestyle enables you to be a leaner, fitter, stronger you.

How to work out approximate BMR & Normal Dialy Calorie Needs:

View The Aark blog on How to work out approximate BMR & Normal Daily Calorie Intake…

Author: Lloyd Tilney