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One of the best ways to lose weight and keep it off is to raise your metabolism. Your metabolism consists of all the chemical reactions/ processes that happen in your body to produce energy and sustain life. Of special interest to most people trying to lose weight is the Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) which should not be confused with the Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). They are often used interchangeably but they are slightly different. The Basal Metabolic Rate is tested under stricter conditions. The Resting Metabolic Rate is the amount of energy/calories it costs for you to maintain all your internal physiological functions at rest. That means it is the amount of energy to keep your lungs, heart, liver, kidneys, brain, and the rest of the nervous system functioning properly at complete rest. Your RMR typically accounts for 65-75% of all your daily caloric needs.

There are many variables that influence your Resting Metabolic Rate such as your sex, age, lean body mass, and overall weight. Men tend to have a higher RMR than women due to the increased muscle mass. As you age, your RMR decreases. One fact I find interesting is that the more you weigh, the faster your metabolism. The excess weight makes your body work harder to support itself. I know there are probably some readers out there who have just lost their favorite excuse for being overweight, but don’t kill the messenger! You can use that information to your advantage. If you cut back on your calories and increase your activity level, it will help you lose weight even faster. That is one of the reasons people say the last 10 pounds are the hardest to lose. The metabolism will slow down with the decrease in weight so you have to work out harder and/ or further reduce calorie intake to continue progressing.

The factor that you have the most control over in regards to your RMR is your lean body mass. Your metabolism increases as you put on lean muscle. Studies have shown that for every one pound of muscle you gain, you burn an additional 10-50 calories per day. So if you add 10 pounds of muscle, you can expect to burn an additional 100-500 calories per day while you sit around and do nothing. That is why you must do resistance training if you want to keep the weight off. The biggest mistake I see people making in the gym is doing the same cardio routine for months on end to no avail. Don’t get me wrong, cardio is very important when you are trying to lose weight because of the calories you burn while doing it but it doesn’t have the residual effect of weight training. For optimal results, they should be used in combination. A good example to illustrate is looking at them like working income (cardio) and residual income (weight training). You get paid (burn calories) when you show up to work but not when you go home or call out. With residual income, you get an upfront reward (burning calories) and still reap those benefits year in and year out as long as you keep the investment (muscle).

To keep your RMR up, you also want to avoid restrictive/ crash diets. Have you heard of people who lost weight initially on a diet and then gained it right back plus some? That’s because most of the weight people lose initially is due to muscle atrophy which slows down the metabolism. The metabolism is also lowered by the body to adjust to the lower caloric intake and skipped meals. It is a process called “starvation mode”. Our bodies have evolved over thousands of years to protect us in times of famine so when you simulate those conditions by skipping meals, it starts to hold on to every calorie you eat. Guess what it will store those calories as? Muscle, you wish. It stores it as body fat because it doesn’t know when the next meal is coming and it wants to keep you alive. Our bodies care about us or they could just be saving their own tail but whatever the reason starvation mode is not good. The best way to avoid this is to eat small frequent meals, 4-6 over the course of the day. You want to graze not gorge.

I mentioned earlier that the RMR accounts for 65-75% of your daily caloric needs. The amount of physical activity you participate in and the thermic effect of food take care of the rest. Physical activity includes your normal daily activities along with a structured exercise routine. The thermic effect of food is the amount of calories it takes to process the nutrients you intake. Typically, 15-25% of calories of the calories you expend are burned by physical activity and the thermic effect of food is responsible for around 10%. I will go more in depth about the thermic effect of food later in the week.

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