Trying to lose weight? If you haven’t already, you’ll soon begin to hear a lot about your body’s metabolism. Here’s an explanation of what exactly that means.
Think of your metabolism as your internal powerhouse. It’s the thing that takes the food you eat and the nutrients your body has stored and turns all of it into energy for your cells to use. Many people don’t realize it, but your metabolism is actually doing this all the time.
Even if you haven’t eaten all day, your metabolism is currently working. It’s producing energy for your cells so that they can repair and rebuild, it’s producing energy to keep you breathing, to keep your heart beating, and just to support your other constant bodily functions that are happening around the clock without a second thought.
It’s also working on a secondary level, to support the physical movements (both intentional and inconsequential) that you do throughout the day. Things, like typing on your laptop or even running through the park, will require that second level of your metabolism to be activated, meaning the more you move, the harder your metabolism is working to keep up.
The third level is your digestive metabolism. This is how your food is turned into energy. When you eat something, your metabolism has to work harder still in order to convert it into things your body can use and then direct anything that can’t be used out of your body through sweat or other bodily fluids.
As you can see, your metabolism has a lot to handle. The main thing to understand about it, of course, is that it’s not just getting its energy from the food you’re eating. In fact, when you aren’t eating, your metabolism is doing its best work because it’s being forced to reach into your body’s stored reserves, like your fat cells, in order to get energy to fuel your day.
The issue isn’t what your metabolism does or doesn’t do. The problem for people trying to lose weight is that our metabolisms are often slow and could use some speeding up. That’s when your routine, exercise levels, and diet will come into play as you try to burn as many calories as possible.
If you’re able to earn yourself a faster metabolism, you’ll be burning more calories even while you sleep.
