My Journey With Weight Loss – Metabolism

Once again the weather sucked today. I had 2 choices, do my interval training outside and get soaked or run on the dreaded treadmill. I opted for the latter and decided I just have to get used to long runs using that machine. I was doing pretty good up to the 8th interval (though had to open the garage door to let some cool air in) when my Fitbit went a little wonky and marked the training as finished. I so wanted to complete today’s training so checked the time on my watch and decided to just run the equivalent of those last 2 intervals, 24 minutes. Got through it and I admit I felt pretty good.

I have always thought that as I got fit and developed muscles that my metabolism would improve. That would explain how I can eat a bit more now but still maintain my current weight. However, metabolism slows down as you lose weight. Hold it, what? According to the Mayo Clinic your basal metabolic rate is higher the heavier you are. I thought this must be some kind of mistake but every credible website I visited said the same thing. Apparently it is a myth that skinny people have a higher metabolic rate, the calories your body burns is impacted by a lot of things including hereditary factors, hormonal levels, age and(wait for it) your physical activity.

Now here’s some interesting information that I found, 50-70% of the calories you burn each day come from just operating your body. That means using your heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, etc. The more overweight you are the higher that percentage will be as your body has to work harder. That made sense to me as my chiropractor talked to me about how my heart didn’t have to work as hard to pump my blood and feed things like all those fat cells.

So what is the point of working so hard to lose all this weight and build these muscles? Well, we know from all my test results that I am far healthier. Those muscles I have worked so hard at developing now are far more efficient at processing the food I put in my body particularly the healthy carbs. Most importantly my muscles now help the cells in my body be less insulin resistant.

Ok, all this work didn’t do the changes in my metabolism that I thought. It actually did much better things so I think I’ll just keep at it.