What is Metabolism?

Your metabolism is the amount of energy in calories that your body burns in order to maintain its weight.  Whether you’re sleeping, running, sitting, standing, riding in a car or eating a bowl ice cream, your body is constantly burning calories in order to keep you going.  Think of it as a fire within you, burning your fat and food away.
However, unless you have a very fast metabolism, you won’t burn enough calories chewing and swallowing your ice cream to cancel out the calories you just consumed.  So you need to perform physical activities which will help you burn those calories so you don’t gain weight.
Get any group of women together, and even some men, and mention the word metabolism, and most of them will start to complain that their metabolism is slow. Many of us suffer the same problem. When we were younger, it seemed we could eat anything and not gain weight. Once we’re past 30, if we simply *think* about a piece of cheesecake we seem to put on five pounds.
It’s a sad but true fact of life that as we age our metabolism slows down.  It doesn’t stop (although at times we might feel as though it has) but it does change.  The reason for this is because we have more lean muscle mass at 20 than we do at 70, and lean muscle mass is what helps burn calories and keep our metabolism fast. It uses fuel more efficiently and does not try to store the calories we consume as fat on our body.
Some people have a higher metabolic rate naturally than others,  and are able to burn off the calories they eat and never gain an ounce.  Others have metabolisms which seem slower than a slug, and everything they eat seems to stick with them and not get burned off.
No two people are alike in the calories they burn and the rate of their metabolism, but there are some things we all have in common, that lean muscle burns calories, and that the extra calories and fat we consume is stored as fat.
It possible to boost your metabolism in order to burn more calories and be able to lose weight?  Evidence suggests that there are a number of ways to help maximize our metabolism in order to more efficiently consume the food we eat, whether we’re walking, reading or even sleeping.  Boosting your metabolic rate is possible and in this series of articles we will show you how.

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Author: cs

Carolyn Stone has been working in consumer health publishing and women’s interest publishing for over 22 years. She is the author of more than 200 guides and courses designed to help readers transform their lives through easy action steps. In her spare time, she is actively involved in fostering children and pets.