Metabolism and Weight Loss
Written by adminMetabolism and Weight Loss
By now, you already have a sense of how metabolism relates to weight loss (catabolic metabolism, or breaking cells down and transforming them into energy).
To understand this process even more clearly, we can introduce a very important player in the weight loss game: the calorie.
Link Between Metabolism and Weight Loss
Written by adminLink Between Metabolism and Weight Loss
When there is an excess of energy, and the body can’t use this energy to deal with any needs at the time, it will be forced to create cells with that extra energy. It has to.
It doesn’t necessarily want to, but after figuring out that the energy can’t be used to do anything (such as help you exercise or digest some food), it has to turn it into cells through anabolism.
And those extra cells? Yup, you guessed it: added weight!
In a nutshell (and nuts have lots of calories by the way, so watch out and eat them in small portions…), the whole calorie/metabolism/weight gain thing is really just about excess energy.
When there are too many calories in the body – that is, when there’s too much energy from food – then the body transforms those calories into stuff.
And that stuff, most of the time, is fat. Sometimes, of course, those extra calories are transformed into muscle; and this is usually a good thing for those watching their weight or trying to maintain an optimal body fat ratio.
In fact, because muscles require calories to maintain, people with strong muscle tone burn calories without actually doing anything; their metabolism burns it for them.
This is the primary reason why exercising and building lean muscle is part of an overall program to boost your metabolism; because the more lean muscle you have, the more places excess calories can go before they’re turned into fat.