You’ve probably heard that a high metabolism is conducive to weight loss, and you also see that lots of overweight people blaming their weight on slow metabolism. But are these true?

Although it is somewhat true that metabolism is linked to weight, it may not be as crucial a factor to weight loss than you may expect. The thing is, contrary to the common belief, slower metabolism rates rarely is the cause of excessive weight gain. Metabolism does influence your body’s basic energy requirements, but ultimately its the amount of exercises, the diet take you have and the supplements that you take or do not take that will actually help or hinder you from your weight loss goals.

METABOLISM – Converts food into energy

What is metabolism? Well it is a process that’s finetuned to convert what you eat and drink into energy. It is a complex biochemical reaction, and when this happens the calories in your food and beverages combines with energy to release and produce energy for your body to function optimally. At rest, your body still needs energy for all of the other processes, and hidden functions of the body which include breathing, digestion, heart movement, blood circulation and a million other sub processes within the body.

The number of calories your body requires to carry out the basic functions is known as your basal metabolic rate – also known as metabolism in lay man’s terms. They are governed by several crucial factors.

1. Your body size and composition – More muscle you have the more fat you burn
2. Sex- males tend to burn fat faster since they have more muscle mass than women
3. Age – the older you get, the lower your metabolic rate gets, as you lose muscle mass, and calorie burning slows down.

And these factors below controls how many calories your body burns each day:

1. Food processing also known as thermogenesis. A lot of energy is also expended in digesting and absorbing the foods. To break it down. And it accounts for about 10% of the energy usage during the day
2. Physical activity -These and exercise consumes most of your energy, try running and cardio/gym exercises.

Metabolism and your weight

Many are tempted to blame weight gain on metabolism. But in truth, your metabolism can be altered by different things that you choose to do, so it is largely in your hands. I recommend not so extreme diets, as these may pose a medical problem in the future.

But focus more on the burning of calories by working out, exercise and doing a sport that you love, being conscious about having a great diet and taking supplements such as the african mango, and resveratrol select to boost the amount of calories burnt within the day. I wish you all the best in your weight gain goals.

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