Metabolism: What is it and how you can take Control.

Diet will be key to not only your weight loss goal, as that is half the battle, but also to your obtaining six pack abs. The ideal diet will keep your metabolism running at an optimal pace. Do not be deterred, you can make changes to your diet that affect your metabolism. Our Western culture has a ritual of 3 meals a day, and these days, each meal grows in size until dinner is where we consume the most calories. The first step towards altering your metabolism is to forget this notion and switch to six smaller meals a day.

You can still eat at breakfast, lunch and dinner so you will still be able to join friends and family at these meals, you just want to scale back the amount that you consume at these times. You will also want to make your first meal the biggest one of the day and the last one the smallest, those in between can be of varying sizes as long as you stay in your caloric range for the day.

Eating in this manner will stop the peaks and valleys that your blood sugar and energy experiences when you eat large portions separated by long periods of time. Think of your metabolism as a fire, if you constantly feed it, it will burn reliably, if you give it huge amounts of fuel and then wait until it almost burns out, you have an unhealthy and unreliable metabolism. Your metabolism, which tells your body’s functions what speed to operate at, performs better when it isn’t overwhelmed with caloric energy and then starved throughout the day.

With a “reliable” metabolism established, you will feel your energy stay with you throughout the entire day and you will experience fewer cravings since your metabolism will be burning steadily. One of the benefits of eating like this is that you should never feel ravenous because you never go more than three hours between eating. Since you will have a steady flow of energy from this, your workouts will be better and more reliable in turn. Exercising on an empty stomach lead to fatigue and light-headedness while exercising on a full stomach is just plain old difficult to do. Try eating a lighter meal about two hours before your workout to really get the most out of this new method of eating.

To calculate how many calories you should consume a day, you can use the Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) formula which calculate how many calories you would need to survive if you did absolutely no activity. Once this number is calculated, you can factor in your activity level to see how many calories you would need to STAY at your current size. You would want to consumer fewer calories than this if your goal it to loss weight. Below is the formula and an example.

Women’s BMR Formula
= 655 + (4.35 x weight in pounds) + (4.7 x height in inches) – (4.7 x age in years)

Men’s: BMR Formula
= 66 + (6.23 x weight in pounds) + (12.7 x height in inches) – (6.8 x age in years)

Once you have calculated your BMR, multiply your BMR by the number below that matches your activity level.

Activity Level
Sedentary (little or no exercise) = 1.2
Lightly Active (light exercise 1-3 days a week) = 1.375
Moderately Active (moderate exercise 3-5 days a week) = 1.55
Very active (hard exercise 6-7 days a week) = 1.725
Extra active (very hard exercise/physical job/training) = 1.9

Here is an example:
A moderately active 33 year old man who weighs 200 pounds and is 6 feet tall would require the following number of calories in order to maintain his body’s current weight:

66+(6.23 x 200 pounds) + (12.7 x 72 inches) – (6.8 x 33 age)
= BMR of 2,002 x 1.55 = 3,103 calories a day.

If this person wanted to lose weight while maintaining the same activity level, he would want to consumer fewer than 3,103 calories a day.

This nifty formula can come in handy. It is solid fact, so give it a try and find out how many calories you would need to consume to maintain your current weight. Also see how many calories you would need if you bumped up your activity level. There are a few things to be cautious of. You do not want to lower your calories too much or you could permanently damage your metabolism because it thinks the body is starving and it will do everything to maintain your body like getting calories from your organs. Most diets for weight loss are 1,500 – 1,800 calories a day, never follow one that is below 1,200 calories a day.